Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Blog #3-News Values

Newsworthiness

*The following three stories were featured in the Baltimore Sun on September 9, 2008. I chose these following articles because they contained important news values that made the article worth publishing.

1.) The first story that I chose was titled, “Man, 25 fatally shot in East Baltimore”. There were many elements of news value that I discovered; one of which was timeliness. The article explains that the 25 year old man was shot earlier in the day, which shows that the article was worthy to be printed because of the time of the event. Another news value I discovered was human interest, which relates to the emotional content of the story. The article clearly explains how and where the young man was shot by using several adjectives involving the shooting. This gave the article more of an emotional feel.

2.) The second story that I chose was titled, “Florida Woman fatally struck after jumping from Car”. Here are the following news values that I discovered with in the article.

*Conflict-this story utilized conflict to make the story news worthy by explaining that the woman killed had experienced a quarrel with her boyfriend moments before the accident.

*Proximity-the article was very close to home stating that the accident happened in Baltimore County. That was a very important value to use because most of the Baltimore Sun’s audience resides in Baltimore County

3.) The last article that I chose was titled, “Fire destroys city playground. Here are the following”. Here are the following news values that I discovered.

*Unusualness- this story was out of the ordinary because a playground is a place for children to play. The fire was set by an unknown arsonist, which also intensifies the strange events of the article.

*Prominence- this story consisted of famous or well known people, which is an influential aspect of news. The article used such names as the City Council President Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake and the Mayor Sheila Dixon.

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