News Values
How a reporter decides to cover a news item.

What determines news?
Many researchers have tried and come out with many different criteria for choosing news. But the universal values that define news are:
Impact/Consequence
Prominence
Proximity
Human Interest
Timeliness
Rarity

Impact
The impact of an incident or issue is the most important value that a reporter considers
Impact is, how many are affected by the news- the more number of people affected the greater is the newsworthiness of the incident.
Reporters/newspapers therefore run with news stories that have big consequence- budget, price hike, and so on.

Prominence
Prominence refers to the people in the news
The logic being the more important the people the greater will it have a readership
Any statement by the PM is more important than something said by ordinary citizens
Therefore there is more coverage of prominent individuals in the news
Pramod Mahajan’s shooting was covered due to his stature in public life
Human Interest
There are occasions where ordinary people do extraordinary things
The usual rule that only prominent people make news has an exception
The exploits of a little known Budia/Butia is know to the world due to his feat
Human interest is gaining importance as people want more news about their lot

Timeliness
Time is of utmost importance
Those news stories that are recent will definitely be given more importance than older ones
As competition is increasing, newspapers have to concentrate on the latest and not run with stale news
Timeliness is an obvious value that is getting more important as people get the latest news through new media

Rarity
Anything that is out of the ordinary is newsworthy
New angles to an old story is a common way of making stories interesting and different
This value is very broad to include those items that are different, unpredictable, odd and bizarre
The story about the man kissing a king cobra makes news due to this value