News Values

What is a journalist looking for in a news story? Understanding this can help public relations practitioners craft media pitches and press releases. In 2001, Tony Harcup and Deirdre O’Neill published their seminal research on UK news values. They updated the research in 2016. We discuss the relevance of this to public relations practice.

Transcript

News Values

An important question is, what is a journalist looking for in a news story? Understanding this can help public relations practitioners craft media pitches and press releases.

In 2001, Tony Harcup and Deirdre O’Neill published their seminal research on UK news values (an update of Galtung and Ruge's influential 1965 taxonomy of news values). Based on extensive research, the news values, in order of priority, were:

1. The power elite: Stories concerning influential individuals, organisations or institutions
2. Celebrity: Stories about people who are already famous
3. Entertainment: Stories that people find humorous
4. Surprise: Stories that have an element that surprises people
5. Bad news: Stories with negative overtones, such as conflict or tragedy
6. Good news: Stories with positive overtones, such as rescues and cures
7. Magnitude: Stories perceived as significant because of the number of people involved or the impact
8. Relevance: Stories perceived to be relevant to the audience
9. Follow-up: Stories about subjects that have already been in the news, either very recently or on an anniversary
10. 10. Newspaper agenda: Stories that fit the news organisation's agenda.

Since the research was undertaken, social media has become a prime news channel for many people. In addition, we often prefer audio-visual news content, especially short videos. The algorithms that run social media and news aggregators like Apple News operate as echo chambers, feeding us topics we have liked before or that we pre-select. Exclusive stories are more important nowadays, as competition is fierce when so many media outlets exist. I am sure that for some of the big stories of the last few years, you could name the media outlet which broke that news. Shareability is a newer trend - stories designed for people to share on social media. There is also the negative trend of clickbait - misleading headlines that attract our attention.

In 2016, Harcup and O’Neill again researched UK news values and produced a contemporary, ranked list. The news values this time in ranked order are: 

1. Exclusivity: stories generated first by a named news outlet
2. Bad news
3. Conflict: stories about controversies, arguments, strikes, warfare
4. Surprise
5. Audio-visuals: stories with arresting images, video or audio
6. Shareability: stories likely to be engaged with on social media
7. Entertainment
8. Drama: stories about an unfolding event, such as accidents or court cases
9. Follow-up
10. Relevance
11. Magnitude
12. Celebrity
13. Good news
14. News organisation's agenda.

What is news? Have news values changed dramatically or just evolved since the original 2001 Harcup and O’Neill research? The ranking order has changed, and additional factors have been added. Only ‘the power elite’ is off the revised list. However, rather alarmingly, good news has dropped to 13th place. Overall, Harcup and O’Neill’s original news values have stood the test of time, not just in the study of journalism but in having relevance to public relations practice.

[Image: Photo by Roman Kraft on Unsplash]