Everyday you find a topic in the newspaper and just breeze past it as the headline or accompanying picture wasn’t interesting enough. Maybe you don’t have the same opinion or are stubborn and uninterested. Maybe it’s a matter of lack of evidence. Most often it is in relation to the news values held within the article. Are they interesting? Do they attract your attention? Or are they just completely out of the ordinary and you feel like you need a bit of a laugh today? They all come down to what the article is focusing on and whether the reader finds them relevant enough to spend their time reading or watching it.

News values are the degree of prominence a media outlet gives to a story. It is also the amount of attention that is paid by the audience to the subject. It has become increasingly relevant that as the decades progress, new values emerge. The original values are impact, audience identification, pragmatics and source influence, which is then further broken up into more extensive, lists and have been chopped and changed throughout the years. In 1995, Murray Masterson reduced the various possible values into a ‘Big 6’. These consisted of significance, proximity, conflict, human interest, novelty, and prominence. This list does cover the basics, however, where are all the values that still hold prominence in the list? That is why it is so important to include the various studies and final lists created to fully understand newsworthiness. These create the pecking order for presenting news in any format with importance.

The ideology that ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ is a constant reminder that conflict is one of the most important values included on Masterson’s list. However, it can be broken up into various categories and further the values that can be found in news. That is why there is the inclusion of politics, war, celebrity and sport are all sub-sections and ultimately included in various other versions of news values lists.

By acknowledging the current generations who are gearing up to run the world, it should be considered what news values are relevant to us and which have little effect on the way we view the news. Values like health & lifestyle, rural, environmental and religion are not mentioned on any lists. They are all relevant in this day and age but why are they not included? Are they categorised into other values or are the listed values from studies currently outdated? Truthfully, it is the attention that these values cause that should automatically make them eligible for inclusion as a news value in the 21st century.

One specific news value that needs to be addressed within this changing world is terrorism. Although a controversial topic, it is relevant in many subjects as it is a major topic within the world in most news bulletins. Why is it not included? Possibly no one feels they have authority or are neutral to address such a provocative issue. With all the excuses in the world being available, it is still a topic that needs to be included. It garners attention and debate in the everyday world and relates to numerous other values such as continuity, elite nations, elite people, negativity, drama, impact, magnitude, relevance and many, many more.

The inclusion of several new news values will help to discover and establish which values are relevant to the incoming generations who are attracted to different news stories that interest older people. Generations Y and Z are often misguided and influenced by others opinions, however, by opening up the world to us to allow for our own decisions and interest to develop will increase the safety of this world falling into the hands of dim minded, uneducated people. Make more options available and maybe, just maybe the light will come on and teenagers will be interested in the world again.

-A

... An interesting argument from @NiemanLab: Facebook is reminding us that news values are set by audiences. http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/10/like-them-or-not-the-latest-changes-to-facebook-offer-big-ideas-for-news-orgs/