What are news?

News Reporting 2009 week 1 Martin Hirst

News are agenda

Some serious and not so serious definitions of news

The evolution of views on what are newsA brief overview of news questionsA couple of new questionsA brief discussion of news values (new

and old)What news are…

Are this news?

Nine-year-old Madeline covers the 2007 Martinborough Wine Festival

News: Yesterday, Today,

News exists because people need information about their world

Yesterday: Journalism began as pamphleteering and polemics (revolutionary press in 18th/19th centuries)

Today: 20th century – the age of industrial journalism News becomes a commodity The public interest fights with private commercial

interests News is now a global business

News: Tomorrow

The world of news and journalism is changingDigital technology creates new forms of

news and new ways of doing journalismThe line between journalists and non-

journalists is blurringThe line between news and entertainment

has almost disappeared

Professional and Accidental

Professional journalists – based in news organisations, or freelancingAre usually paid for defined work in newsUsually have some form of trainingAre expected to abide by an ethical code of

practiceAccidental journalists – on the scene

Usually have no trainingHave no formal code of ethics

News and Convergence

An expanding community of reportersCitizen journalistsBloggersSocial Networking “news”

Platform ShiftNews are everywhere nowNews are available 24/7The economics of news are changing

News are what we say it is

The ‘old school’ view that the editor knows best

News is what the audience wants – and our research tells us what the audience wants

News is what we can sell – what’s profitable

News is anything that the networks can cover live Tom Bettag, Evolving Definitions of

News, Nieman Reports, Winter 2006

News are what’s worth knowing

“The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands.”

-- Oscar Wilde

News are so yesterday

“Journalism is the first rough draft of history.”

Phil Graham, publisher of the Washington Post, circa 1963

“Journalism is in fact history on the run. It is history written in time to be acted upon: thereby not only recording events but at times influencing them. ”

“Journalism as theater [is what] TV news is.”

“The secret of successful journalism is to make your readers so angry they will write half your paper for you.”

-- Thomas Griffith, journalist and editor at Time

News are irrelevant

“Journalism largely consists of saying "Lord Jones is Dead" to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.”

-- G K Chesterton

“Journalism is organized gossip.”

-- Edward Eggleston, writer and Methodist minister (1837 – 1902)

News are about social issues

Dunne wrote a popular syndicated column called “Mr Dooley”

Raises the issue of the exercise of power in the media

"The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."

Finley Peter Dunne(1867-1936)

According to his biographers, Finley Pete Dunne was an anti-imperialist writer and satirist who bluntly addressed such topics as racism, the Spanish-American war, and the imperialism of the US Supreme Court.

“…all the rest is advertising”

Journalism: A profession whose business is to explain to others what it personally does not understand.

News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising.

Alfred Harmswoth – later, Lord Northcliffe

News are entertaining

“People may expect too much of journalism. Not only do they expect it to be entertaining, they expect it to be true.”

-- Lewis H Lapham

Lewis Henry Lapham (born January 8, 1935) was the editor of the American monthly Harper's Magazine until 2006. Most recently, Lapham has founded a quarterly publication on history entitled Lapham's Quarterly. He has also written many books on politics and current affairs.

News are hole filler

“I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat”

“Journalism is the ability to meet the challenge of filling space.”

-- Rebecca West, actress & journalist1892-1985

It's amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world every day always just exactly fits the newspaper.

-- Jerry Seinfeld

News are an emotional attitude

I write … because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. But I could not do the work of writing a book, or even a long magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience.

Journalists’ nose what are news

“A news sense is really a sense of what is important, what is vital, what has colour and life - what people are interested in. That's journalism.”-- Burton Rascoe

News are based on questions

News reporters have six basic jumping off points for their enquiries:Who?What?Where?When?Why?How?

“There can be no higher law in journalism than to tell the truth and to shame the devil - remain detached from the great”

-- Walter Lippmann

News are Values

Public InterestTimelinessNoveltyConflictProximityConsequence

Public Curiosity Prominence Celebrity Emotion Comparison Contradiction

News values – the key ingredient in the mix

News are…

Who is responsible?

What went wrong Where were you

when it happened? When will you know

the results? Why are you doing

this? How many people

are affected?

News are seeking the answers, that no one wants to give, to the questions everyone is asking.

Who’s going to pay? What are the effects of

this policy? Where have you hidden

the money? When will you solve this

crisis? Why is there a gap

between rich and poor? How are you going to

pay?

News are Concerned Journalists

Asked if bottom-line pressures were hurting television news, 53 percent [of journalists] said yes. Asked if news organisations are moving too far into entertainment, 74 percent said yes. [Bettag]

There is a growing debate within news organisations about our responsibilities as businesses and our responsibilities as journalists. Many journalists feel a sense of lost purpose. There is even doubt about the meaning of news, doubt evident when serious journalistic organisations drift towards opinion, infotainment and sensation out of balance with the news.

[Committee of Concerned Journalists, 2005]