A reporter may be able to see news without being able to write a good story, but the opposite seldom holds good. Certainly the best news writers are those who have learned, as reporters, what news is. The city editor of a metropolitan newspaper holds his position largely by virtue of his ability to pass quick and accurate judgment on the news value of a story. He has a “nose for news” that enables him to discard the trivial in the grist of the day’s happenings for the vital and interesting. It is this ability that the reporter must cultivate by every means in his power.
WHAT IS NEWS?
News has been roughly defined as that which interests people. But that definition is too general. A book or a sermon or a play may interest people, but in themselves they are not news. The fact, however, that a book has been published or a sermon preached or a play produced, is news, if that fact has an element of public interest.
The importance of a story in the eyes of the editor depends on one or more of several considerations—on the property involved, as in a fire or an earthquake; on the number and the prominence of the persons concerned; on the distance of the happening from the place of publication; on the timeliness of the story; on the element of human interest. This list is not exhaustive; local and temporary reasons often have weight in the editor’s judgment of a given story. To illustrate, suppose a newspaper is waging a crusade against grade crossings in its city. The story of a grade crossing accident immediately assumes an importance for that newspaper beyond its ordinary news value. Before the crusade was started the story might have been told in a paragraph; now it is allowed to run at length.
THE NEWSPAPER’S PROBLEM
Remember, in forming your estimate of the news value of a story, that the newspaper is read by men and women of all classes—by the banker and his stenographer, the day laborer and the college professor. A story is valuable as news in proportion to the number of persons it interests. The account of a great disaster, like the San Francisco earthquake and fire, appeals to all readers. It is the big news of the day, taking precedence over all other stories in the make-up of the paper. News of an increase in the cost of some necessary article of food is valuable because of the vast number of persons it affects. So with the story of a national election, a great labor strike or a declaration of war. These are the exceptional stories whose importance as news is as obvious to one unskilled in newspaper making as to the trained editor.
But what of the more commonplace happenings of the day? The problem that confronts the editor daily is to make a paper that will appeal to as many readers as possible. The man who asks a newspaper to print, as news, a long dissertation on recent discoveries in Asia Minor mistakes the purpose of daily journalism. Such an article might interest other men engaged in making similar discoveries, but it would be passed over by the vast majority of readers.
Newspapers are often charged with pandering to the sensational. Why, it is asked, do they print the story of a murder on the first page, while general religious news is published in a separate department, if published at all? The shop window of the merchant furnishes the answer: the merchant, like the newspaper, puts his most alluring wares in front. The display in both cases is based on a sound knowledge of human nature. What do people talk about in the evening? On his answer to that question the editor’s choice of stories largely depends. Mrs. Jones, talking to Mrs. Smith, tells first about the elopement of a neighbor’s daughter. Not until that is disposed of does she comment on last Sunday’s sermon.
Newspapers formerly were made on the assumption that men were the only readers. Now they are made with the tastes of women ever in mind. The evening newspaper, especially, is edited for the women, on the theory that it is taken home in the evening, while the morning newspaper is taken out of the home by the man going to work.
The newspaper is a business enterprise. In order to live it must get advertising. To get advertising it must have circulation and to get circulation it must interest its readers. It can not do this by shooting continually over the heads of its readers. But, while the newspaper reflects public taste, it is generally a little better than public taste. Certain classes of news are suppressed and others are carefully edited. What is done with news on the border line depends on the individual policy of the paper.