University of Baltimore 21st Century Communication: Chapter 65: The Changing Nature of “News” InstructionsAfter studying the assigned reading 21st Century

University of Baltimore 21st Century Communication: Chapter 65: The Changing Nature of “News” InstructionsAfter studying the assigned reading 21st Century Communication: A Reference Handbook: Chapter 65: The Changing Nature of “News” considering the concepts of timeliness, proximity, unusualness, prominence, impact, conflict and human interest, provide a current example of a compelling news story. Answer the following questions or prompts, but do not include the questions in the essay : A) Why is it compelling? Which of the concepts does it exemplify? B) In general, how have these concepts been challenged by the advent of immediacy in news release? Support the responses with research from the Learning Resources. Use APA in-text citations where necessary and cite any outside sources. Create an APA Reference List or Bibliography at the end of the document. Submit the responses in the file submission area for this assignment by attaching a MSWord o document, and please also copy and paste your response into the comments area. 400 to 500 words 21st Century Communication: A Reference
Handbook
The Changing Nature of “News”
Contributors: Michele Weldon
Edited by: William F. Eadie
Book Title: 21st Century Communication: A Reference Handbook
Chapter Title: “The Changing Nature of “News””
Pub. Date: 2009
Access Date: August 26, 2019
Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc.
City: Thousand Oaks
Print ISBN: 9781412950305
Online ISBN: 9781412964005
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412964005.n65
Print pages: 592-599
© 2009 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
This PDF has been generated from SAGE Knowledge. Please note that the pagination of the online
version will vary from the pagination of the print book.
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© 2009 by SAGE Publications, Inc.
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The Changing Nature of “News”
What Are News Values?
“Man bites dog” is an old newsroom joke demonstrating what kind of event would be considered universally
newsworthy to tell any audience, what would justifiably make it to the printed front page or the opening moments in a television newscast. It is a story that has time-honored news values, including timeliness, proximity, conflict, impact, and unusualness.
The story is timely as well as local, and the conflict arises from the notion that a dog is no longer man’s best
friend, which has broad implications and consequences. Of course, it is unusual, and if the man biting the
canine turns out to be a celebrity, then the story has prominence as well. And if the dog is famous (appears in
commercials, movies, or skateboards in aYouTube clip), well, then we have an undeniably newsworthy story
with double the celebrity value.
But such simple definitions of news have become splintered and confused in an increasingly chaotic and
crowded media landscape. How the local man-bites-dog story is told in the 21st century depends on the audience and the delivery mode—whether it is received as text, digital, or broadcast, or all these combined.
The content of the story would not stop at the simplistic text answers to the most fundamental and traditional
questions of who, what, where, when, why, and how in an inverted-pyramid-style story of 250 words.
It would be an elective experience for the audience on many platforms and in many shades of intensity driven
by personal interests.
Today, a consumer would go to the newspaper’s Web site, see the bulleted brief or a simple headline—perhaps 15 words underlined and in blue, click on it, and watch a video of the man being taken away by the
police, perhaps following a car chase resulting in a reality-TV-ready arrest. The bitten dog’s owners would be
interviewed on a separate audio podcast, with links to information about the breed, how to report pet abuse,
plus a Flash-enhanced timeline of man-bites-dog incidents in history, as well as a photo slideshow with audio
of comments from neighbors and coworkers on the “canine-ivorous” man’s recent behavior. A link would be
available for a longer text profile of the man who bit the dog, accompanied by a visual graphic of a timeline,
explicitly defining the chronology demonstrating how exactly the bite happened, and a separate graphic of the
anatomy of a man’s head and mouth compared with a dog’s. A Man Bites Dog blog would be available for
readers to post their comments as well as their own video and audio about related stories. Readers/viewers/
users would then vote online their preferences for segments of the story they liked most, and pieces of the
story would likely become viral through blogging and social network sites such as MySpace or Facebook, with
related photos posted on Flickr. This is a case study demonstrating a model of information flow that is more
about less.
The newsworthiness of the story would be closely connected to the voluntary behavior of the audience and
would shift according to the needs of that audience. The story would then erupt into a user-driven multimedia
package with nearly infinite incarnations involving perhaps one mobile journalist, several staffers and freelancers, citizen journalists, bloggers, and consumers providing different informational pieces of the totally puzzling experience.
Timeliness, Proximity, Unusualness, Prominence, Impact, Conflict, and Human
Interest
The definitions of news have altered because the playing field for news has been disrupted, redefined, and
sculpted to court and suit a highly fickle audience. It is an audience no longer defined principally by geograPage 2 of 12
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phy but also by social demographics, age, education, ideology, affiliations, behaviors, and specific media use.
They can create a self-motivated audience craving more information about fewer topics or less information
about more topics. The 21st-century media landscape for news offers the possibility for consumers to delve
into topics a mile wide and inch deep or an inch wide and 100 miles deep. They can be mobile and technologically savvy consumers who no longer sit patiently for the delivery of the newspaper on the front doorstep
to read the news or who lounge passively in their living room at the appointed time of 5, 6, 10, or 11 p.m. to
watch the newscast delivered by two well-paid anchor readers.
These are often consumers who intend to participate in the choice of news stories offered, the gathering of
news, public commentary on the news, and the ongoing news choices made by editors and journalists. This
is a different approach to the news than we have seen in the previous media age beginning in the mid-19th
century of top-down, elitist, editor-driven journalism. So today’s journalism requires a modernized toolbox of
news judgment factors. Yes, there is still an audience who waits for the newspaper every morning to enjoy it
with a cup of coffee and then unwinds at night with a favorite local newscast. But this is a shrinking audience.
The feared extinction of this audience and the necessity for news producers to chase new audiences and
capture their attention is why news has changed.
In generations past, “readers needed news and had limited ways to learn about current events,” Michael
Hirschorn wrote in the December 2007 edition of The Atlantic. “Editors would tell us what to read and we
would read it. News didn’t have to be interesting, because it was important, and any self-styled citizen of the
world needed to know what was important” (p. 137).
In the 21st century, not only is the reader/user/participant pressed for time and bombarded by more options
for information, but the walls between user and news provider have become porous. In many instances, the
barricades have fallen completely away as citizen journalists contribute to mainstream media and to their own
viable, vetted citizen journalism Web sites and popular blogs. Since the debut of South Korea’s OhmyNews
International in 2000 and, later on, domestic citizen journalist hyperlocal sites such as http://Backfence.com,
http://Goskokie.com, http://NorthwestVoice.com, and hundreds more, the formerly passive consumers now
want to be part of the journalistic process. They want to participate in stories important specifically to them,
but they also require the option to consume stories offered by the mainstream press that they could not otherwise find on their own. The question of access in many instances is still insurmountable for citizen journalists.
Though bloggers can get press credentials at a national political convention, citizen journalists are still not
granted wide backstage access to the events, drawing rooms, and offices of major newsmakers.
A tolerance for top-down “news you should know” that fits rigidly into the old definitions of news as construed
by a finite group of journalists in a closed-door editorial meeting has given way to a consumer push for a
breadth of stories told in a variety of ways. These stories can forgo the traditional justifications of timeliness,
proximity, unusualness, prominence, impact, and conflict, as long as they can be sheltered by the umbrella of
human interest.
And it is that humanistic element, the connecting anecdotal link, the character portal leading the audience
into the story, that drives the news consumer’s desire and appetite for news. The overall dramatic shifts in
types of stories from text, digital, audio, and video outlets toward a focusing on citizen sourcing and a casual
writing style reflect this cultural reverence for the personal story and a revolutionized set of news definitions.
No longer will a story be relevant solely because it delivers news such as “The mayor said Monday” edict.
The story must be told in a compelling way across a variety of media, illuminating the stories of individuals
while personally connecting to the lives of the audience. It is no longer one door the consumer enters that
opens onto the news but a series of doors, windows, hallways, and obscured passages that the consumer
can choose from.
Just as the audience has become accustomed to changing cable channels in a millisecond, they can instantly
click away from the news site and go somewhere else. Logistically, a printed newspaper now is the last to
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cross the finish line on news. If something is breaking news and is hot, it has already been reported in a video
online, recounted on TV and radio, and blogged about on countless sites. Digital media has stolen print’s
thunder. So printed news reinforces and reinterprets the news through a different lens, rather than breaking
the news first. The consumer already knows that there was a fire in a department store from TV, radio, and
Web sites. Now they want to read the longer story of the firefighter who saved the customer.
So many options compete for the news consumer’s time that delivering a relevant story across any and every
platform becomes a race to offer the most useful, engaging, and informative content. Never has accurate and
keen reporting been as crucial or eloquent and insightful multimedia storytelling been as important to capturing the attention of the audience. As the traditional elements of newsworthiness continue to contribute to
the decisions of what stories are played in print, online, and digitally in broadcast and radio, additional forces
factor into news judgment.
News does not have to portray a rigid sense of timeliness; the story can be current, ongoing, recent, upcoming, or merely hypothetical. It can also be any item, individual, phase, trend, or event that was previously
unknown to the audience. While the news may be commonplace in one area of the community or the world,
it is “new” to this target news consumer. Timeliness has become elastic. Just because an event happened
yesterday no longer deems it automatically newsworthy. The notion of yesterday’s news told today or today’s
news delivered tomorrow has evaporated as news can be communicated digitally in real time. Traditional
timeliness is an antiquated notion left over from an era when citizens would not know of a news item unless it
appeared in the newspaper or on radio or television. Because of text messaging, cell phone photography and
videography, as well as audio recording on portable digital voice recorders, unfolding news events can often
be broadcast live by amateurs on their Web sites. Consider the images and reactions from citizens following
any number of recent tragedies; these were urgent, immediate, and raw visuals and commentary that were
unfiltered by professional journalists. The lesson of immediacy that was learned in those unfortunate events
is that no one has to wait for the reporter to arrive before the “news” is published, disseminated, and absorbed
by a wide audience.
Because of the universal accessibility to publishing, a news story is no longer constrained by geographic
proximity. A global economy mandates a global information network, so a story about a young girl in Kenya
struggling to succeed in school is as engaging and newsworthy as a story about a young girl in Kenosha
struggling in school would be to local Wisconsin readers. At a time when we are submerged in the infinite
and boundless flow of information online, and Facebook and LinkedIn users swap personal stories across
all physical boundaries, it becomes less important to define proximity limited by spatial closeness as a news
parameter. Human interest serves as the overarching, inclusive bridge.
The irony here is that being unlimited by the shackles of location in mainstream media, hyperlocal news has
built an enormous following in community journalism sites, weekly publications, zoned newspaper editions,
newspaper Web sites, and blogs. Traditional media outlets such as newspapers, magazines, and the local
television or radio station no longer have exclusive rights over local news. A single community blogger can
succeed in informing a local audience of local city council votes or even the latest scores in middle school
football. An audience can be built around a garden club, alumni group, or local transportation issue, offering
news that would no doubt be ignored by the larger press.
“What does it mean to me?” is still a question the news consumer wants answered in his or her media. While
the impact, importance, and consequence of a story for the consumer can be subjective, it remains influential
as a factor in news judgment. But the interest quotient has shifted from the flat response “Now I know” to
“What can I do about it now?” The news user in this current 21st-century iteration wants to take the information from a simple story told and apply it elsewhere, transforming facts into action, perhaps, and using this
story as a springboard for deeper examination, reflection, active feedback, involvement, and possible advocacy.
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For instance, at the end of the 20th century, a simple text story of 10 or more inches in the metro section of
a newspaper reporting on a city council vote to increase property taxes in a suburb or city would quote only
council members on their official comments during the meeting. Now, however, that simple story evolves into
a multimedia package telling citizens what action they can take, how to contact council members, and how to
have a home’s value reassessed, providing profiles with photos and audio of each council member and the
mayor, along with a podcast of the meeting, a video of citizen reaction to the vote, an avenue for bloggers to
post suggestions, as well as photos of homeowners and their homes affected by the property tax hike. Still,
the news of the tax increase may be the same, but the manner in which the news is delivered is a thousand
times more complex, urgent, and democratic. The rationale for that delivery has morphed into a more layered
and faceted portrayal of the news guided by the consumer’s needs. News gathering has become much more
complicated, enhanced, some say, by the technology of multimedia tools, while others claim that the multimedia options have only burdened the consumer with unnecessary bells and whistles that dilute the impact of
the message, distracting the consumer from the core news itself.
While unusualness still holds true as one undeniable factor in defining the focus for news; the story must
be more than just odd, such as the man-bites-dog story. As the media reaches far beyond the boundaries
of town, city, county, state, country, and continent, what is unusual for one audience group is commonplace
for another culture, and not even a distant culture. What is understood as an everyday occurrence in the far
western suburbs of Chicago may be unheard of within the city limits. Is this a story that for the main audience
would be unknown or inaccessible without the journalist’s intervention? Is this a trend, event, or person so
little understood or examined broadly that an illuminating and enterprising story informing the audience would
be edifying and useful to the consumer? Or is the consideration of this as unusual merely a reflection of the
journalist’s myopic view of the community and the broader world? And would publishing this as news alienate
part of the audience and only underscore the notion of the traditional ivory tower editors making decisions
disconnected from the broader consumer’s interests? The element of unusualness must be viewed through
the lens of diversity and inclusiveness, as news gatherers must embrace a higher sensitivity to all groups
whether they are defined by age, race, gender, religion, ideology, disability, geography, education, income, or
behavior. Because a news item is personally unfamiliar to the journalist or editor, this does not grant it unusual
status. In the sweeping reach possible with 21st-century media, a narrow view of newsworthiness may render
the news itself irrelevant.
An individual’s celebrity or prominence can control decisions of newsworthiness, but who is labeled a celebrity
in the transaction of news has changed. While webzines, blogs, television entertainment news shows, and
gossip columns in the mainstream press have maintained an obsession with the comings, goings, arrests,
births, deaths, and outrageous acts of a handful of Hollywood and MTV royalty, the culture’s celebration of
the amateur has invited a new brand of individual into the spotlight. A college student can become globally
well-known for a clever YouTube clip, while a diligent inventor can be vaulted into googledom for an ingenious
solution to a universal problem, such as a prescription bottle that easily opens or a coffee mug that does not
spill. Just by inclusion in the story itself, the individual secures his or her own celebrity and prominence. Being listed as a source in a reaction story run on a popular Web site can turn the average Jane Doe into an
oft-quoted and sought after expert on even the most obscure topic.
Conflict is a historically traditional sustained news value and is a fundamental component of human nature.
A 2007 study in Newspaper Research Journal of Yahoo! News found that both producers and users of news
ranked conflict as the news value occurring second most often in more than 1,000 news stories, ranked only
behind impact. It appears that no matter how the news changes in content, style, or sourcing, the drive to
understand conflict, whether it is political, social, professional, interpersonal, or more general, influences decisions to present news and information that contain these dramatic human elements.
Economic Factors Affecting the News
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The first decade of the 21st century was tumultuous for the traditional media. Newspaper closings, layoffs,
downsizing, revenue slides, breakups, and sell-offs of major chains such as Knight Ridder and Tribune Company seemed to further erode a wounded industry scrambling for identity, relevance, and profitability. Declining circulation among the majority of the country’s news papers had been in effect for more than 20 years,
and circulation was only stabilizing or gaining in a few markets. The former editor of The Wall Street Journal,
Paul Steiger, reminisced on his 40 years as a journalist in a Journal column in December 2007:
The cornucopia of national, international and business news, sports and especially opinion available
free on the Web is rich beyond historical parallel. Anyone with a fact, a comment, a snapshot or
a videoclip can self-publish and instantly compete with the professionals…. What happens next?
Change, rapid and largely unpredictable. Nearly every company in the industry needs major new
revenue, big cost reductions or a healthy dollop of each. (para. 8…
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