Gee Whiz! - Week 9

That awkward moment when you see something on the news and your inner Aussie breaks through and the ol’ Gee Whiz exclamation slips out.... Well don’t worry your not an Aussie bogan because according to my Week 9 lecture that is exactly what the news value ‘impact’ is supposed to do.

So yes, this week’s lecture explored News Values. As English author Arthur Evelyn Waugh once said, “News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read. And it's only news until he's read it. After that it's dead.”

 I hear you ask, what are news values? Well they constitute these four things

1.     Impact- (this is where Gee Whiz comes in)

2.     Audience Identification- Basically anything that relates to the rest of the world

3.     Pragmatics- ethics and current affairs and all that jazz

4.      Source influence – where the story comes from e.g. PR people

There are two famous little sayings that go hand in hand with news values

-       If it bleeds it leads

-       If it’s local it leads

It’s obvious why this is the case, us human beings for some reason react more to violence and tragedy than soppy love stories or cute cats being rescued. I guess this is a good thing otherwise humans would be quite apathetic about the well being of one another.

There are many different aspects of a news story to determine if it has ‘news worthiness’. Just to mention a few (there’s 12+), Impact, Negativity, Proximity, Currency, Recency, Continuity and Uniqueness.

So, the next time you say Geewhiz, I cant believe that happened in my street just yesterday when I could have been checking the mailbox, it could happen again any day... you probably wont think to yourself wow I just listed four reasons why what happened is news worthy... but you should. If you like.  I’m going to go now! J