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Old Saturday, March 21, 2015
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NEWS

Man can subsist without newspaper but no newspaper can subsist without news.
News is the spinal cord of journalism.
The basic assumption of journalism is the collection, presentation and interpretation of news
which is meant to inform the people about new and novel.


Definitions of News?

News has been defined differently by different experts. Some of the definitions are given below:

1. News is anything out of the ordinary (CHANGE)
2. News is something revealed.
3. News is anything that people talk about; the more it excites the greater its value. ,
4. News comprises all current activities which are of general human interest and the best news is that which interests most of the reader.
5. Anything that enough people want to read is news provided it does not violate the canons of good taste and the law of libel.
6. News is like a hot cake coming straight from oven.
7. News is the report of an event that is fresh, unusual and which is interesting to a greater number of people.

News writing
News writing attempts to answer all the basic questions about any particular event—
who, what, when, where and why (the Five Ws) and also often how—at the opening of the article.
This form of structure is sometimes called the "inverted pyramid", to refer to the decreasing importance of information in subsequent paragraphs.
News stories also contain at least one of the following important characteristics relative to the intended audience:
proximity, prominence, timeliness, human interest, oddity, or consequence.


Essentials/QUALITIES/ NEWS VALUES:

ACCURACY:
Factual accuracy means any statement with name ,date.age,address and quotation.

Balanced:
A reporter must inform his readers with details and gives an account of the new event in its proper relationship and perspective


Objectivity
News is the factual report of an event. What the reporter sees is supposed to report. Objectivity means to report the facts exactly the same way as they occurred.

It goes against objectivity if the reporter adds something from his own imagination.

Comment/suggestion or proposal is not the task of a news reporter.

These are considered right in a column, editorial, etc. In these formats of journalistic writings the writer can provide in-depth and background information.

In simplest words objectivity means just to report the tip of the iceberg and leave the rest to analytical and in-depth reporting.

Concise and Clear
There is a famous sentence about writing a news story : “Brevity and simplicity are the soul of journalism.”
Journalism has got a special language – journalistic language – which is quite different from all other languages and particularly from the literature.
Journalistic language is simple, easy, concise and clear. Its basic aim is to convey the message in the simplest way to the masses because every person in the masses is not highly educated.
There is an approved writing style of achieving concision and brevity. Which is called “Inverted pyramid style of news”? This news writing style has been explained in Unit No. 2 of this course.


Characterstics Of News

There are various factors that qualify an event to be a news story. Let’s discuss these factors.

Timeliness/Freshness

Time factor plays an important role in the effectiveness of a news story. Nobody likes to read an outdated story, even if it is very important. News is just like a perishable commodity having a very short life.
We can accommodate a past time story in literature, drama, feature, etc.. but it does not work in news. Journalism’s famous slogan is that “Today news is today”^

Proximity or Nearness

The importance of a news greatly depends on the place of its origin. Proximity in journalism does not only refer to geographical nearness but interest of nearness is well. For examples, Imran Khan’s marriage took place in U.K. but the story is .;iore interesting for the people of this part of the world.
An earthquake in China killing 200 people will be less important in our
newspapers than the story of earthquake killing 30 persons in Pakistan

Prominence
Readers have interest in names of persons with whom they are familiar. The bigger the personality involved in the event, the greater its news value. Stories of film stars, players, politician’s philosophers and poets etc., have greater news value.

Magnitude
The event relating to greater loss of life, damage or natural disaster creates interest for the readers. Example: A story of fire resulting in the death of one person will have less impact than the story of fire resulting in the death of 100 people.

Conflict
Everybody takes interest in confrontation among people, nations and groups. The highest form of conflict is war and no war story fails to create interest for the readers.

Oddity/Unusualness
A dog bites a common man is not a news but if a man bites a dog it is a great news because it is unusual. The more the event is unusual the greater its value.

Consequence
The news story that affects some change in the life of people will have great value. For example, news about budget, rise in petrol price, electricity rates and increase in salary, etc. are read with great interest by people.

Human interest
Human interest stories deal with usual events but usually these stories involve fellow feeling, emotion of brotherhood and humanness.
When a person reads about joy or sorrow of others he mentally associates himself with them.
Example: A story of a child rescued by a fireman as a seven-storey building caught fire has greater value than the story of the complete loss of the building.

Consonance:
Stories that fit with the media's expectations receive more coverage than those that defy them (and for which they are thus unprepared). Note this appears to conflict with unexpectedness above. However, consonance really refers to the media's readiness to report an item.


Reference to elite nations:
Stories concerned with global powers receive more attention than those concerned with less influential nations.

Reference to elite persons:
Stories concerned with the rich, powerful, famous and infamous get more coverage.

Negativity: Bad news is more newsworthy than good news.



There are essentially three origins for a story:

1.Naturally occurring "events" such as disasters, floods, earthquakes, fires, and airline crashes are inherently unpredictable and journalists must respond after the fact. News stories about disasters follow a predictable pattern: early reports, which frequently over estimate the severity of the disaster, rely on everyday people, because they’re frequently the only witnesses; later stories, assuming the story is newsworthy enough to become developing news over several days, tend to rely on officials – mayors and governors, insurance company representatives, disaster relief agency officials. This is a way the news becomes routinized.

2.Created and "subsidized" news is more frequent than unpredicted news. It occurs because a person, group or organization either does something public and newsworthy and/or seeks press attention. Public relations practitioners participate in the process of news making.

3."Enterprise" news is made when journalists act rather than react as they do in a disaster or tragedy. This is called enterprise news because the editor or reporter takes the initiative on a story. These can develop from beat coverage and investigative journalism.



FUNCTIONS OF NEWS

A typical newspaper perform following 5 functions.

News function

Information

Educational function

Opinion making function

Entertainment function.
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