 Whether you're talking about individuals or organizations or anything else really Most of the decisions that we make in our lifetime come down to the pretty simple Formula a cost-benefit analysis if you will to some degree or another should we Pay our rent or mortgage or should we buy Taylor Swift concert tickets? You know, what's the cost and the benefit of each? What's the cost and benefit of spending money here instead of there or the opportunity cost of? Using our time on this thing and not on this other thing So virtually everything in life is really comes down to some form of cost-benefit analysis whether we like to think it that way or not and most of that most of that Formula is informed by our core values really a what what is it that we value? How much do we value Taylor Swift tickets for me? It's not that much You would have to pay me to go to that concert instead of me paying to go myself So that's not something I'm really going to give up a lot of time or money to really pursue for other people That's very very different though and for me if it were a different band or where something else I was really interested in then it might be more of a choice of what is it that? I want to put my time and energy into it shouldn't come really is a surprise to know that the news Operates in much the same way The news organizations that we think of we tend to think of them as you know It's supposed to be Incredibly objective and really only thinking about you know What's the public benefit or whatever but the truth is there's a lot of factors that go into how the news? Values things and the kind of cost-benefit analysis that they run anytime They come across something that they're asked to put on the air or put in their publication or whatever So in this video, I want to talk a little bit about those sorry those news Values okay a little bit about those news wise. What is it that the news? Organizations value and where do those come from? There really is a kind of established set of values that news organizations, you know legitimate really proper news organizations sort of follow And use as a determining factor for what's going to make it again on the air or in their publication or on their website or whatever We need to start this conversation though really quickly with just a reminder about what is the purpose of? The media what is their purpose? What's the purpose of the media some people will say it's to entertain or to persuade us or to educate us or to inspire us and Those are all things that the media does It kind of has a byproduct of of their of their efforts, right? They do entertain as they can persuade us they can't educate us They can't inspire us all those things can be true, but in truth That's not really the purpose of those media organizations The purpose of those media organizations almost exclusively is to make money Right, that's what they're there for most of them are a business or at the very least have to do something to break even and be able To can pay their people and pay for the technology that they need and things that's not an evil statement I'm not saying that news organizations are evil. That's just a matter of fact Most of them are privately owned Corporations their job is to make money and they do that by entertaining us persuading us Informing us inspiring us so forth But you know in the end we have to remember that they they have a job to do and their purpose is to make money so they're making decisions based on what's going to be the most appealing to their audiences and by extension of that their advertisers Right as they're trying to reach their audiences and so forth So keep in mind that the purpose of the media is to make money right to be successful and and keep their organizational flow Now now that we know that let's talk about news value and we're gonna use this definition Backraft that just says that news value is essentially our news values are Criteria used by media outlets to determine whether or not to cover a story and how much resources it should receive So again news organizations. I can tell you haven't worked in in a news organization You're constantly getting stories. I mean there are slower newsdays and things But you're constantly getting stories and you have X amount of time of airtime, right? Either on the TV or radio or you have X amount of column space in your newspapers and magazines and things and sometimes You know some days it's a matter of can I fill all of this? But most of the time it's a matter of okay, what's gonna make the cut and what's not you have to have some Criteria by which you're gonna say okay, this story is gonna make it in we're gonna push this we're gonna We're gonna inform our audience about this and this one is not So you have to have some criteria some values that you're gonna use some system of values You're gonna use to do that so for the most part there are eight values that news organizations tend to Use as criteria here So we're gonna talk about those news values a little bit and see what they are So the first of those news values is timeliness Meaning is this relevant right now? Is it happening right now? Or is it you know down the road and people aren't really gonna care about it that much right now? Or did it happen in the past? You know we don't want to report on necessarily what happened last week if there's something more Important or more valuable going on right now now that doesn't mean you don't follow up on things You don't look ahead to things but but really is this a timely issues Is something that people need to be aware of right now? Is this something to be informed about right this moment? Then we also need to news organizations think about proximity Proximity just means is it happening near where our audience is at where they live? We care more about those things that are happening across the street then around the world across the you know the other side of the world It's not to say those things aren't important when there's a war in another part of the world or something tragic happens in another part Of the world we care work We can you know consider that but but if there's something at the same time going on in our hometown that really affects us That matter of proximity is gonna you know place more value on that story than the thing that's going on around the world It may not directly connect us It's something we may need to be informed about but you may not have a direct impact on us But something going on in our community and in our you know in our neighborhood is obviously gonna be of greater value So news organizations look at where's our audience at and where's the story happening in proximity to that audience? So we're gonna look at timeliness We're gonna look at proximity as news organizations and these organizations are also gonna look at things like human interest In other words, what's the emotional connection of this story? People connect to stories based on emotion. So when you see those stories about the cute little Cuddly bear that was born at the zoo. That's a human interest story or when you see a story about You know occasionally we'll see a story about An athlete or somebody whose child is sick and they're fighting cancer or doing something like that Or it doesn't have to be an athlete or but it could be just you know Anybody would care about that that has that emotional connection that people we're gonna care about that because we are just people And we are wired to care about those things. So is this this is story have human interest now Let me point out real quickly These things are not all mutually exclusive. It doesn't have to be one or the other ideally You're gonna have a story that fits multiple categories, so If you have a story that is happening right now and it's of great human interest and it's happening in the in the Neighborhood of your audience. Well, that's a home run right those that those are connecting with multiple values But even if they're not you're gonna in a way these different things in there and see okay What's the human interest and emotional connection level of this story? Currency basically just means is this a hot topic? That's why I'm the is it on fire Is this something that it's burning up Twitter burning up Instagram burning up whatever is it to them? You know, even whether it's really just Something that's happening somebody said something and it's caught fire It's gotten viral on social media or something like that or it could be just you know one of those water cooler discussions like That you see that's something to argue about a few years ago. There was this There's this thing going around. I think mostly Facebook and Instagram because it was a few years ago but Is this was is what color is this dress and there's an argument about whether it was like blue and purple or Golden thing and it had to do with science and different things that how you saw it and so as it's and that became a really hot topic Because people were talking about it all the time. It wasn't really Necessary did really impact anybody's life in an immediate way, but it was something that everybody was talking about so Currency once when everybody's talking about it as a news organization You pay attention to that and you want to be kind of talking about what everybody's interested in talking about So does it have that sort of currency to it? prominence by this we mean is this is the the the person or the the place or whatever that's involved in the story Is this a prominent figure is this a celebrity's as somebody who's well known That's why we hear about you know trials of celebrities and we have some celebrity gets arrested or celebrity does something That's really drastic or really good or really bad We hear about that because these are because they're prominent There are people who live their lives in the public and so News stories gonna have more value if the person involved in that or if the location involved You know we hear about a historic building You know a few years ago the the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris caught on fire. That was a significant You know the story in terms of prominence because you know what even though we don't live if you didn't live in Paris Or even if you're not you know, you're not Catholic and so that's not really your cathedral or whatever It's still it's a landmark. It's a beautiful building So it was newsworthy because it involved a location in that instance or it could have been a person or whatever That is prominent that has some celebrity and and that people have an interest in knowing about so What's the prominence of the person or location or or object or whatever? involved in that story What's the impact is this something that's going to impact people directly right is Having a strong immediate impact So when there's a natural disaster then obviously the news Services in that area are going to cover that because it really impacts on that community. That's why when you you know I live in the Midwest. So when there's a nasty storm going on They'll break into TV shows and coverage and talk about what's the risk of tornadoes in this instance, right? Or you know, so you get natural disaster coverage like that because it has immediate impact, right or remember back in 2020 and even a little bit beyond that obviously we had the the COVID pandemic during that time That had an immediate impact on people worldwide But a very significant impact on the way we live our daily lives So that story had great impact and so the news value of that particular story was was through the roof Right. There was no way they couldn't cover it and couldn't talk about it So just the impact that that a story will have on people's daily lives will determine whether or not a news outlet will cover it Novelty we like new stuff. We like stuff. That's odd. That's different. That's fresh, right? That's that may be different a different take on on something But just something that's even some little odd right you get that a lot on Local news stations, for example a lot of times the last story they run will be something weird that happened You know, you had a squirrel water skiing or you got something like that going on That's just unusual or odd. So many grew the biggest pumpkin in the history of the county or something like that That's a novelty. That's an oddity, but it's interesting. It's different. It's fresh It's new and so that's newsworthy because of that and so that is something that news organizations value Because it carries that that freshness and that newness that novelty to it and then finally conflict anytime There's conflict when there's a you know Significant conflict whether that's between individuals or obviously we hear about wars a lot between between nations when they're when we're in our Countries in a conflict. That's obviously a big news story even if it's happening somewhere else in the world Because it's it probably has value we need to know about these things what's causing this conflict Even if it doesn't indirectly impact us in our part of the world first of all it could at any time Right, we know that that could escalate quickly and so we need to be aware of it there But even if we're not we just need to be aware of any time there's conflict plus also Audiences are interested in those types of things they want to hear about those things So that brings value to news organizations who are trying to again reach and appeal to those audiences because they know that those types of stories We'll have that appeal that people will tune in for that They will read those articles they will read those stories about conflict between individuals That's why we get so much coverage of trials even if they're silly celebrity trials I mean how much coverage to the Johnny Depp and Amber heard trial again, even though it was totally No impact on really anybody else Just on them and their managers and people like that But for people like me just everyday people like me no impact and yet it was on the news all the time They were airing airing it live throughout the day and you've heard about it all the time in these news organizations They covered it because people are interested in conflict and it sells it pulls in audiences That's why they do it because again the media is there to make money That's their job and they do that by pulling in audiences that appeal to advertisers that they can then sell ads to really That's the primary basis. They're they're funding so So all of these things so again taken together and they're not in silos They will look at all of these and the more of these it hits the more likely a news organization is to run with that story And to carry that story if you can hit multiple categories So this is significant for us to know not only as as viewers of the news and receivers of this But as people who may potentially Want to use the news for our own purposes right and maybe try and get something into the news We need to understand that this is what they value. So how come we bring some value to them We need to consider these categories and understanding that okay This is how we bring value to the news and help them do their job of of making money by pulling in audiences And so forth, but we've got to do something that appeals in one of these categories It can't just throw them one and throw them a story and hope they pick it up out of the goodness their heart That's not really what they're there for so we need to understand these news Values and understand how we can then appeal to those values to give our story a better shot of getting on There getting in their publication Okay, hopefully this gives you a little better understanding of and not only what the media is and and what their purposes But also what it is they value and again how we can use that information of Them you know gauging that cost benefit and doing a cost-benefit analysis how we can help them see the benefit of what we are trying to offer them and And and how that outweighs the cost to them of carrying that story or using that information If you have questions about news values or Anything along those lines, please feel free to reach out and send me an email I'd be happy to chat with you about it there in the meantime I hope this does give you a fresh understanding of and not only when you view the news What makes it and what doesn't based on those news values? But also how we can use that information then to further our own purposes by Appealing to those news values when we have something we would like shared via the news