As blogging continues to carve out a niche in mass media, it becomes more and more important for bloggers to understand news values and apply those values appropriately to the medium in which they work.
You might be thinking, “I’m not a journalist, what do I care about news values?” Truthfully, you don’t need to be working as a journalist per se, but you can still work to understand and utilize news values to add strength to your authority as a blogger. Considering that the vast majority of blog writers are simply espousing their opinions, knowing what’s important to news readers will make your viewpoint that much more weighty and professional than those who don’t have a clue.
- Impact: How many people’s lives will be affected or influenced in some way by the subject of the story?
- Timeliness: Stories that are more current generally have a higher value that one that is not. Journalists often compete for first publication bragging rights for timely stories and exclusives.
- Prominence: Prominent public figure and/or officials also have a high priority than a person who is relatively unknown.
- Proximity: Local news almost always (emphasis on almost) has higher news value than something taking place far away.
- Uniqueness: Odd news is definitely newsworthy…
- Conflict: This one speaks for itself. War, civil strife, and other such occurrences are always newsworthy.
- Currency: This may seem the same as timeliness but it is slightly different. Sometimes issues reappear in the spotlight and there may be some new element of the story worth covering.
For those with more news focused blogs, I would recommend sticking as close to these values as possible. However, a modified version of these values is probably preferable for most bloggers:
- Candor: Honesty and frankness
- Urgency: What you say is important now, a reader feels the urgency to listen
- Timeliness: Current and relevant to today’s world news
- Pithiness: Brief and to the point, concise
- Controversy: Stir up the pot in a respectful way, give your opinion
- Utility: Offering useful information, resources, links, advice, etc
What is most current and important in your blog topic? Who are the prominent figures? Is there as story buzzing in the news that you can apply to your blog topic? What kind of controversy can you stir up amongst your readers? I’ve said over and over again, blog writers have a great opportunity to establish themselves as new media opinion leaders and candor is extremely important to that process. Of course, controversy and candor are also likely to draw comments from people who both agree and disagree with you. Blog readers often expect there to be a dialogue between themselves and the author so be sure you remember to respond to comments as much as possible.
By applying the right balance of news values appropriately to your blog, you can establish – or solidify and strengthen – your authority and status as an opinion leader. The stronger your authority, the more readers will come to your page and spread the word. Done correctly, your readers could begin to view you as the authority in your topic, and at the very least a top source of news and information.
Comment Preview