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5 Criteria of Choosing a News Story
Journalists rely on the 5 criteria when choosing a news story. The first criterion is strong impact. Local stories impact the public more than unfamiliar international events. In order to attract attention, journalists inflate news and present them as situations that could happen to anyone. They turn rare international crises into everyday scenarios, personalizing stories and losing the main significance of them.

Violence, conflict, disaster, or scandal is the second criterion. Topics such as murders, wars, shootings, or hurricanes captivate the attention of the audience. Newspapers containing violence outsold other newspaper chains that contained less violence.

The third criterion is familiarity. News stories gain more attention if they have issues pertaining to the public or if they include familiar situations concerning a large audience. Journalists try to turn international events or crises into stories that can relate back to their current audience. People tend to retain a lot of information about celebrities and tend to care about the personal intimacy of other’s lives. They value the traits and attributes of others and may try to relate to them in many ways. News about a celebrity’s or president’s death may resonate on a deeper level, allowing certain events to remain in the memory much longer.

Proximity is the fourth element. People prefer news that is local, close in proximity. People pay close attention to local news more than they do to international or national affairs. Local media outlets do well because they focus most of their stories on local events, about seventy-five percent. There is a strong preference for local news over international and national news.

The fifth element is timely and novel. News should be something interesting that does not occur every day or an event that is not a part of people’s lives. Events such as hurricanes or new store openings capture the attention of many.

Influence of Criteria
The news criteria pressure journalists and news outlets to frequently publish new stories, in order to stay current on events. Reporters attend local events in order to get stories quickly and easily. When events are difficult to report on, journalists resort to interviews or experts of the event or field. The five criteria dictate which events are chosen and which events to spend money on to report. The size of a newspaper also dictates which stories to publish and which ones to skip. Once stories reach news outlets, editors must determine which stories to select.

Editors do not spend much time choosing stories. An average editor must choose stories in seconds. Investigative or complex stories are covered by TV sources and radio. Those types of stories go towards television and radio because they have more time to dedicate to the stories. They can describe the event, background, and causes in depth. The size of the paper and the pressure editors have may cause bias in the audience’s perspective. Stories containing the five criterion almost always make the front page of the news. The frequent representation of those types of stories often leads to skewness from the public.