WHAT IS NEWS?

The definition of news depends on the audience. But it must be:

Truthful and transparent: That means you can’t lie or falsify facts. Information must be gathered without prejudice or bias and information should be vetted.

For instance: If you serve on ASNDNU, it would be a conflict of interest for you to write a story about the group. Even if you thought you could be impartial, you present a conflict of interest. Journalists are trusted as unbiased and a means of monitoring power. You can not be trusted. Would you trust a cop to crack down on drugs if they worked as drug dealer?

Relevant: News must have meaning to the audience. It must bear relevance to their lives.

For instance: A story on the ski season in July makes no sense or has no relevancy to what’s happening.

Timely: News has to be recent, otherwise, it’s not news it’s history.

For instance, reporting on who won the World Cup today would have zero time value, unless there was a reason for its relevancy. For instance, a Spain player failed a drug test post tournament.

Utility: It has to be useful to your audience, impact or change their life in some way.

For instance: A story about new wine vintages would have no utility to an Alcoholics Anonymous newsletter.

Interest: Your stories have to be on topics people are going to want to read about.

For instance: A story about how the NDNU pool is cleaned is not interesting. UNLESS, there’s a relevant reason for bringing the topic up, like someone barfed in the pool and the chlorine level was too low to prevent ecoli from growing, sickening everyone who went into the pool.

Audience: News has to be directed to a specific audience and you have to know who they are, what they are interested in.

For instance: A story about the City of Belmont’s restrictions on building new homes would NOT interest an NDNU student. Now, if the story was on the City of Belmont’s restrictions on co-habitation on campus, a student might be interested.

Scenario No. 1

Work as a group to determine what flaw this story idea suffers from and tell me what would make it a story.

Jasmine proposes writing a story about the deer which have inhabited the campus since before Ralston Hall was built.

Scenario 2

Louis, a basketball player, wants to write a story about the team’s new coach, whom he played for his Freshmen year of high school. Louis has mentioned before that he didn’t really get a lot of play time until his junior and senior year.

Scenario 3

You are researching a story on Ralston Hall at the Belmont Library when you notice that the library’s wireless connection allows you to access their internal files through their server. You are able to see employee reviews and social security numbers and salary information for all staff members.

Scenario 4

You hear that a Category 5 hurricane is about to hit the East Coast.