How to assess your paper’s news worth

Posted On November 28, 2023

Every level of the media, from the neighborhood weekly to the 24-hour rolling television news, has journalists who are always understaffed and under pressure to locate stories on short notice. How do you capture their interest? When assessing your paper for exposure, keep the following points in mind:

Pertinence to the Audience and Society

Who do you think will interact with and read your work? The most significant factor in a news piece is its readership. Which community you are targeting will determine how relevant your narrative is. Consider which audiences are most likely to find your work interesting upon review, according to the breaking news network. Is there any interest in it, or will it only spark debate among scientists?

Significance

What impact will this tale have on people’s daily lives? Your research will directly affect life if it is newsworthy enough for the mainstream media to cover. It will have an impact outside of the lab and conference room.

Finding out

A publication announces a novel finding or offers solid evidence of an established idea to be considered newsworthy. A study that merely confirms an existing notion in the public domain won’t garner any interest from the media.

Time Range

A story can spread like digital wildfire in the era of internet blogging, social media, and 24-hour rolling news. If it has already spread via blogs, a print journalist is unlikely to publish it. News is highly temporally dependent; it needs to be fresh on the day. The news item in your paper has a compromised news value if released into the public domain, according to a breaking news network.

Progress

Is your work expanding on an already-published story that has garnered public attention rather than revealing a brand-new discovery? Do you see an old story freshly?

Controversy

What distinguishes your paper from others in the field or your journal? Is there a distinct selling point? Will it raise any eyebrows on your morning commute? In the news, controversy does not signify bizarre; it just means different. According to an ancient media cliché, Man Bites Dog is a lot more attractive headline than Dog Bites Man simply because it deviates from the norm.

Source

From a scientific standpoint, this is probably the factor of news value. All a journalist needs to know is that the paper is written by a qualified academic/researcher and published in a respectable publication. Sending out releases with no news value harms a company’s reputation.

Angle

The big news is usually terrible: war gets more coverage than peace, and bus crashes get more attention than the hundreds of busses that reach their destination. The angle does not have to be spectacular. Indeed, if a narrative deviates even little from the truth, the source will no longer be believed by the journalist or the readership. Remember that good news value does not always imply good news.

Human Concerns

Are the findings something that people can relate to, either personally or emotionally? Will it affect their daily lives? If your story has a human interest component, it may make the headlines.