Monday, February 9, 2026

News Values. Assigned 2/9, due 2/11 - Minor

 We are going to begin our exploration of journalistic writing and style  by examining the reasons a publication might choose to cover an event. Some experts have come up with a variety of reasons for this and from my experience, based on those experts research, I have come up with seven solid reasons to cover a story. Today we are going to learn about those seven, and to completely understand them, I want you to be able to pick out some stories to prove to me that you understand each reason.

Here are the reasons:

1. Timeliness - - the newness of the facts

2. Proximity - - the nearness of a given event to your place of publication

3. Prominence - - the "newsworthiness" of an individual, organization, or place.

4. Impact - - the effect of consequence of an event on the audience, or readers

5. Conflict - - the meeting of two or more opposing forces. These forces can be physical, emotional, or philosophical

6. Human Interest - - the drama that surrounds people involved in an emotional struggle

7. Novelty - - the attraction people have to unusual things and events

Now here is your assignment:

Find seven stories that you believe are driven primarily by one of the news values listed above. You will need to copy and paste links to the stories in your Google Site. Follow the five steps listed below.

Title this Google Site subpage: News Values

1. Pick out a story you think meets one of the news values.
2. On your new subpage - type the name of that news value
3. Write a complete sentence or two explaining why you think the article is driven by that news value.
4. Type the headline of the article
5. Include a clickable link to the article's URL. To insert a clickable link on your Google Site, in the Insert pane, you will find the EMBED function, click that and paste the link. It will automatically create a text box with the link for me to see.

I will be going over these with you later in the period to make sure we are all on the same page. 

Here are some places you can start looking for stories. You are welcome to use other sources as well if you wish.

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/world/index.html

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/

https://www.reuters.com/

Wall Street Journal

The above link will have "Local" stories. You can also use Google News, or search for your favorite local news organization to find stories.

I recommend:

The Austin Monitor
The Austin Chronicle
The Austin-American Statesman

Any reputable news source is fine. 

When you have completed the work above, please write CORRECT two sentence captions for the following photos. 

Remember - you MUST ID with a title, first name and last name everyone in the photo if there is less than 4 people in the image. 

First sentence = what is happening in the photo. Present tense.
Second sentence = background information you cannot get from looking at the photo. Past tense.

Don't forget to write a little kicker headline of less than five words. Spell out all words under 10, use numerals for numbers over 10.





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