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News: content and structure

As any other product, the creation of news needs special techniques and a good
praxis in order for them to have essence and respect the norms of the society in which the
news were created.
News seem to be understood in two different ways. The first one claims that the
nature of the news media is in the freedom of expression and democracy and the second
one finds the core of news media in the development of some businesses that offer
commodity to its market- the audience
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. Why commodity? Because the audience can gain
information about distant events in a short time without making very much effort. Except
information, audiences can also get entertained through news media. But what should be
the content of news media in order for them to be relevant and what should be the
techniques that the journalists should approach?
It is highly discussed the subject of news values or newsworthiness when it comes
to the content that the news should have. Few authors have made classifications of the
most important factors when it comes to what makes news be read by audiences.
Frequency: If an event happens with a higher frequency, it is probably to lose its
interest in front of the journalists and the audiences as well. Rare events usually
raise interest and are more often transformed into news.
Negativity: Bad news is more newsworthy than good news. Usually, bad news get
more attention from the audiences than the good ones because people are getting
more alert when their safety is threatened.
Unexpectedness: If an event is out of the ordinary it will have a greater effect than
something that is an everyday occurrence.

1
Sigurd Allern, Journalistic and commercial news values- News Organizations as Patrons of an Institution
and Market Actors, page 1
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Unambiguity: The implications of an event must be quickly understood in order
for the news to raise interest. The implications of one happening need to be
quickly deduced.
Personalization: Events that can be portrayed as the actions of individuals will be
more attractive than one in which there is no such "human interest."
Meaningfulness: This relates to the sense of identification the audience has with
the topic. "Cultural proximity" is a factor here -- stories concerned with people
who speak the same language, look the same, and share the preoccupations as the
audience receive more coverage than those concerned with people who speak
different languages, look different and have different preoccupations.
Reference to elite nations: Stories that involve global powers receive more
attention since they have a bigger influence on the entire world.
Reference to elite persons: Stories concerned with the rich, powerful, famous and
infamous get more interest.
Conflict: Divergences between people or entities create a dramatic effect which
drags more attention from journalists and audiences.
Consonance: Stories that fit with the media's expectations receive more coverage
than those that defy them (and for which they are thus unprepared). Note this
appears to conflict with unexpectedness above. However, consonance really refers
to the media's readiness to report an item.
Continuity: A story that is already in the news gathers a kind of inertia. This is
partly because the media organizations are already in place to report the story, and
partly because previous reportage may have made the story more accessible to the
public (making it less ambiguous).
Composition: Stories must compete with one another for space in the media. For
instance, editors may seek to provide a balance of different types of coverage, so
that if there is an excess of foreign news for instance, the least important foreign
story may have to make way for an item concerned with the domestic news. In
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this way the prominence given to a story depends not only on its own news values
but also on those of competing stories
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.
Competition: Commercial or professional competition between media may lead
journalists to endorse the news value given to a story by a rival.
Co-optation: A story which is related to a major subject can be found as
newsworthy if the linkage between the two stories is clearly stated.
Prefabrication: A story that is marginal in news terms but written and available
may be selected ahead of a much more newsworthy story that must be researched
and written from the ground up.
Predictability: An event is more likely to be covered if people know about its
existence before it happened. Journalists may have small information about an
event that is going to happen and when he gets the entire information, to write a
story about the subject
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.
These are the main factors that lead stories to being published and read. News need
to raise interest based on different factors. Besides the content, journalists also have to
subsume their news into several techniques of writing stories. The most used method is
the inverted pyramid, which puts the most newsworthy information at the top of the
pyramid and the extra information and details at the bottom of the pyramid.
The questions that need to be answered in an article are who?, what?, when?,
where?, why? and how?. In the journalistic theory and praxis, the inverted pyramid is a
news composition technique, through which the essential information is presented at the
beginning of the article. The other details are decreasing told, depending on their
importance.
The inverted pyramid is composed from the lead, which contains the essential
message and has the role to instigate the readers interest. Usually, the lead need to answer
the who?, what?, when? and where?. Another element of the inverted pyramid is formed
from the sustaining paragraphs which contain a thoroughness of the lead. In these
paragraphs, details are given and they help the integration of the subject in a context and
they contain a lot of secondary facts that create the background of the presented event.

2
Johan Galtung , Mari H. Ruge, The structure of foreign news. The Presentation of the Congo, Cuba and
Cyprus Crisesin Four Norwegian Newspapers, page 70-71
3
Alan Bell, The language of News Media, page 21
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The last element is the final of the article which is almost as important as the lead
because it has to be memorable and it has to anchor the essential information into the
readers mind.
Is it often said that the technique of the inverted pyramid usually helps the editors
which are facing a time crisis. If the article is too long and they have to take out some
information from it but do not have any time to read it, then they just let the ending
paragraphs go. In his book, Mihai Coman is making an analogy between an article
written with this technique and a lizard: you can cut it and it will not die. The same with
the news: it wont be hurt if you cut the paragraphs from the tail
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.
Still, we could say that this comparison is not quite correct because in an article the
ending is as important as the lead, so it would be a loss to cut out the final part. If we do
so, the article would end all of a sudden, with no conclusion. So, the inverted pyramid is
not just a simple pyramid but, is a pyramid with a final part as well. If we cut down the
ending paragraphs were a lot of detail are exposed we need to be sure that we make a
final paragraph in which we draw conclusions.
The real purpose of the inverted pyramid is to capture the attention of the audience
from the first seconds of his reading since people tend to scan the information and not
read it thoroughly.
Basically, the audience does not have the patience to read the entire article in order
to find out more about the topic. Usually, people tend to pay attention to the title, the
photos, the legends of the photos and after that they start reading. If their interest was not
raised form the first seconds, it is very hard to do that afterwards. So, the purpose of the
inverted pyramid technique is to make sure that our audience read the news easily and not
to be sure that we have information from which to cut down.
Beside using the technique of the inverted pyramid, the author, as the source of the
ideas, needs to be integer, objective, informed, authentic, to have a powerful personality,
to be credible and to use his words efficiently in order to send the proper information in
the proper amount of words. The reader needs to be in the center of the writing process.
A text exists only through his readers and that is why it is important to make the text
understandable for the readers.

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Mihai Coman, Journalism Manual.
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Also, the ideas represent what the author wants to tell to his readers and the text is
a complex of thoughts, information and useful recommendations. That is why the ideas
need to be told in the clearest way possible as they are the raw material for the news.
Another important element is the context of the communication, which is represented by
the entire background in which the article is written. The news are understood in a way
which depends on the social and cultural background of the audience. So, when writing
an article it is very important to consider the social and cultural reality of the audience.
But not only the context, also the channel through which the information is transmitted is
important. The perceived message is also influenced by the quality of the channel and by
the appearance of the text. So, the physical appearance influences the way in which the
audience gets a message.
Just as other professions, journalism also has its techniques and norms that need
to be taken into consideration in order for the final product to be qualitative. Since
journalism serves people that need information, the news need to be projected in a such
way that would fit the audience in the best way. News content should be meaningful,
balanced, well structure and able to feed the audiences hunger for information and
entertainment.














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Bibliography

1. Allern Sigurd, Journalistic and commercial news values- News Organizations
as Patrons of an Institution and Market Actors
2. Galtung Johann , Ruge Mari, The structure of foreign news. The Presentation
of the Congo, Cuba and Cyprus Crises in Four Norwegian Newspapers, Sage
Publications, 1965
3. Bell Allan, The language of News Media,
http://www2.media.uoa.gr/lectures/linguistic_archives/mda0405/notes/Bell_Med
ia_and_Language.pdf, consulted on the 16
th
of May, 2014.
4. Coman Mihai, Manual de Jurnalism, Polirom, 2009.