The first class was a little slow as the Professor was just trying to get to know the students and get acquainted with our lacking level of engagement. The real “first class” was the second class, where we were asked to bring in recent stories and discuss the definition of what constitutes a news story. One of the students raised the recent anniversary of the Tiananmen Square incident so the Professor had to explain it to a class with two dozen Mainland Chinese students. Just another day on the job eh?
Some of the keywords discussed in class
We were then asked to look at different front pages from around the world to understand the principles of news value:
- Proximity: closeness of physical location or emotional interest based on culture or identity
- Timeliness: happened recently or occurring right now
- Unusual: shock value or out of the ordinary
- Prominence: famous people or celebrities who have a big impact
- Conflict: when two or more people or groups are in a disagreement
- Impact: scale of the impact on the readers
- Human interest: taps into the reader’s emotions
- Currency: story of ongoing interest
