Newsworthiness

Hey! Have you ever wondered what makes a news story newsworthy? Well there are seven qualities that make the news news.

1. Timeliness: The news is always fresh with stories about recent events. Who on earth would want to listen to the news if it was about something five months ago?

2. Proximity: More people are likely to pay attention to the news if it's about something that is close by to them. No one would want to hear about a law that doesn't affect them.

3. Rarity: The rarer the story, the more people are going to be interested. If there was going to be a blue moon in a couple of days that only appeared every two to three years, people might actually want to watch the blue moon.

4. Prominence: Minor news can become more interesting to the reader if it happens to a prominent person. If a celebrity slips an breaks their leg more people are going to pay attention to it.

5. Impact: If the story directly impacts the viewer, that makes the story newsworthy. If a viewer from Texas is watching the news about a law regarding schools in Georgia it would not be newsworthy to the viewer because it doesn't directly impact them.

6. Novelty: The first or last time an event takes place. A viewer might want to see something about a new piece of medical equipment that just hit the market.

7. Human Interest: This can be anything as long as it can be interesting to the viewer. It can be a story about a person living their day-to-day life with a disability.

FOX 5 Atlanta: NASCAR driver Kyle Larson has been suspended on Monday for using a racial slur on a live stream during a virtual race. During a virtual race Larson had seemed to have lost communication. During a check for his microphone, he said, "You can't hear me?" Which was then followed up with the N-word. This makes the story because of the third quality, rarity, because it gets the reader to stop and take a look at the story.

The Washington Post: Riot is Expanding its Esports Footprint With Teamfight Tactics. Is Valorant Next? The story talks about how the company Riot Games has explained that they are trying to push more of their games into the esports scene along with their newest game Valorent which has boomed in popularity in just a couple of days. This is newsworthy because of quality seven: Human Interest. Video games are a very popular form of entertainment which pulls readers in.

CBS Atlanta: Falling Tree Narrowly Misses Atlanta Man's Bedroom: The story talks about how an elderly man woke up to find that a tree has his house almost falling onto his bedroom where ha was sleeping at the time. This is newsworthy because it is recent, only happening early this morning, it happened in the local area.