News Gathering

1
News Gathering and Reporting
2
DECIDING WHAT NEWS IS

• There are five standards, called news values,
  which help News Producers decide what constitutes
  news
• timeliness
• proximity
• prominence
• consequence
• human interest
• Economic factors also play an increasingly
  important role in deciding what stories get
  covered and to what extent.

3
CATEGORIES OF NEWS AND REPORTING

• News stories can be broken down into three broad
  categories
• Hard news (traditional Page 1 stories)
• written in inverted pyramid format
• starts with the lead, answering who, what, where,
  why, when, and how questions of the news story
• broadcast news uses the square format

4
CATEGORIES OF NEWS AND REPORTING

• 2. Soft news, or feature news
• purpose is to inform, entertain, instruct,
  inspire
• not generally as time dependent as hard news
• 3. Investigative reports
• purpose is to reveal significant information
  about matters of public importance through the
  use of time-intensive, non-routine news-gathering
  methods

5
KEY NEWS PERSONNEL

• EXECUTIVE NEWS DIRECTOR
• Responsible for overall operation
• NEWS PRODUCER
• Designs and assembles the newscast
• Assignment Editor
• Reviews events and assigns stories
• NEWS DIRECTOR
• Puts newscast on the air (calls shots)

6
NEWS FLOW

• There are three main sources of news
• staff reporting
• beat reporters
• general assignment reporters
• wire services
• auxiliary sources (government reports, public
  relation handouts, syndicates, columnists, news
  conferences etc.)

7
News Gathering Technology

• ENG Electronic News Gathering allows portable
  cameras to capture live images at the story scene
  and beam them back to newsroom.
• SNG Satellite News Gathering allows live
  satellite feeds from anywhere on the planet to
  give local newsrooms global coverage ability.
• These technologies allow live coverage but that
  news is also shown raw, unedited and
  unfiltered, and therefore subject to elements of
  trivia, irrelevance, and inaccuracies.

8
The Wire Services

• The purpose of wire services is to provide
  newspapers with reporters and geographical
  coverage that newspapers couldnt otherwise
  afford.
• Wire correspondents cover stories, then file them
  with a local bureau if the story is important
  enough, it gets bumped up to the state level,
  then to a regional bureau, or even to a national
  or global bureau level.
• There are two primary U.S. wire services
• Associated Press (AP)
• United Press International (UPI)

9
The Wire Services

• The AP and UPI do have other competition, most
  notably
• The New York Times News Service
• Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service
• Britains Reuters news service
• Frances Agence-France service
• specialized services available on the Internet,
  such as the Internet Wire and CNet

10
Media Differences in News Coverage
Print news has a leg up on broadcast news in that
print news is shown in space, not time, allowing
papers to provide users with in-depth reporting
and analysis. Broadcast counters that they have
greater immediacy and can provide stories with
both sound and video. Online new sites have an
advantageous mixture of both print and broadcast,
but critics charge that online reporters are
often too undisciplined and untrained.
11
Print, Online, and Broadcast Journalists

• Yet another difference between news reporters in
  these three mediums is public recognition.
• Both print and online reporters remain relatively
  anonymous, identified to the public, if at all,
  only by a byline under their news stories.
• By contrast, TV news anchors are so well known
  that they achieve star status, and their
  appearance and personalities often become as
  important to the public as the stories they cover.

12
NEWS COUNSULTANTS

• News consultants effect is most noticeable in
  the broadcast industry.
• TV station profits dependent on good audience
  ratings.
• Consultants encourage owners to value news
  appearance instead of substance.
• Give the public the types of stories they want,
  rather than good traditional journalism .

13
Similarities in the News Media

• Despite their differences, professional
  journalists in all news media share common goals
  and values. They include
• honesty
• accuracy
• objectivity
• fairness
• balance
• integrity
• Without adhering to these values, journalists
  would surely lose their credibility and the trust
  of the American public.

14
Online Journalism

• Public increasingly turns to online news and
  info.
• News sites such as MSNBC, CNN, and CNET are
  visited most often. Archived, searchable story
  databases are valuable to the public.
• Journalists cite the Internet as the most
  important advance in news gathering tools since
  the telephone.
• Online journalists will need extensive tech
  training in Internet use as well as traditional
  journalism training.