What constitutes news value for our community? Some conventional criteria for news value are impact, conflict, loss of life or property, proximity prominence, timeliness, novelty. This is useful, but F Newsmagazine is a different kind of publication — it is  not a daily newspaper edited for a city-wide readership, and it has art students as its primary readership. Also, breaking news fits a daily, but not a monthly. Our website is refreshed weekly, but people look at irregularly.

Go beyond mainstream media!

Remember that most of our readers get their news from headlines and links on the web or read corporate media stories that often lack context, background, and explanation. Such sources typically rely on establishment sources — government, corporate or military officials and the elite experts in their networks. If you take a widely reported story, give the context or angle that corporate news media miss.

Go to alternative media to find critical reporting that covers the news left out of the mainstream — critical reporting on news that matters to women, minorities, the poor — and, of course, artists and students. Look for critical perspectives from independent journalists, organizations, activists, researchers and social scientists. Compare the headlines in NBC News with the headlines in alternative sources (e.g., Democracy Now); compare news selection and framing in US and foreign media (e.g., The Guardian, BBC News, Al Jazeera). Pay attention to the blogs and social media of trusted journalists, academics, or advocacy organizations (e.g., activist, human rights or environmental groups).

Some traditional criteria for “news value”

Unfamiliar: not just what readers may have seen in Google or Yahoo News headlines. Either an unfamiliar story or an overlooked angle of story.
Fits the interests and values of our readers  (see below).
Revealing: the story creates awareness of an important issue. It could be one person’s story that is an example of a larger problem.
Explainers: a story that explains something puzzling (e.g., a poll that suggests why many evangelicals support Trump over Cruz) or politically opaque (Teachers Union’s solution to Chicago’s debt crisis that media don’t mention: a  tax on financial transactions).
Freaky: example, this BBC News story: “Suicide Sex: A new study suggests that some species of marsupials mate with such vigour and intensity that it quite literally kills them.” (BBC). (We thought we knew — or so movies and TV tells us — that sex can kill, but we didn’t think that applied to marsupials.)
Fits our readers’ interests: Since they are students, issues affecting students, especially art students, nationwide, such as student debt and student life in general.

Our readers are also more interested than the Tribune’s readers are in activism, race, gender, inequality, war, the environment, cultural politics, freedom of expression. …

What can a news short look like?

A one to three paragraph story in newswriting style (e.g., factual, objective). But don’t feel you need to conform to some ideal type, or the conventional news short in a daily newspaper (an expanded headline).  Here some examples of stories you might want to write in the form of a brief (credit your source).

It can be a simple report of an event. For example, “‘Adds Insult to Homicide’: Cleveland Wants $500 for Ambulance That Carried Tamir Rice Away.”

A statistic or the results of a study or opinion poll. For example,
“For eBay sellers, it pays to be a man; Study: Women make 20% less on same product.”

An announcement of a coming event our readers will want to know about – a rally, forum, lecture, show.

Recommendation of a statement or publication that you think is newsworthy. Maybe you want to tell people to read something in Hyperallergic or someone’s latest book.  Or even something relevant to our readers that you just read, even if it was published a decade ago … or a classic you have an interesting idea about.

A news media report on an event you think is significant and unfamiliar. E.g., Politico says there aren’t enough white men to elect Trump, but nationwide polls show him only a few points behind Clinton in a two-way contest (Yikes, I haven’t updated this page, have I?). Or, the Tribune published an editorial against building the Lucas museum on the Lakefront. Or if a noted artist is exceptionally cruel to their cat.

Or a summary of an article you think matters. Example: Summary of an article, open letter, or Facebook post about the formation of Artists for Bernie Sanders. Who’s in it? Or, what artists support Hilary and what “artists” support Republicans (besides Chuck Norris?).

Or a quote you want to share with a reader. Example:  “When Anthony Scaramucci indiscreetly told the New Yorker last summer that Bannon was self-fellating (I can’t bring myself to quote him directly), Bannon found out about the Mooch’s expletives in a curious way. He was called by a fact checker at the New Yorker who wanted to know if what the Mooch had said was true. …” —Edward Luce, “Swamp Notes,” Financial Times, January 11, 2018.

Here are a few random examples of news shorts in the media:

Democracynow.org Headlines.  Most of these shorts would not be covered by corporate media.

Fivethirtyeight.com: Significant Digits

Foreignpolicy.org: Security Brief

The Poynter Institute for Media Studies: The Poynter Report

How do you come up with story ideas?

The ideal writer for this kind of story is a media junkie, who spends a lot of time looking at political and cultural news sites daily. You need to develop an efficient method for collecting the stories you want to look at before writing your column:

• Keep a journal, on line or in a pocket notebook.
• Use the sharing function in Safari or another browser to send urls to your email when you read a relevant article, or copy and paste the urls in your notes, or reminders.
• Use your browser’s bookmark function or  a web bibliography app like the free Zotero.org, which lets you save urls with titles, authors, website name, date … etc. You can organize the urls, collecting material for your next column in one folder.
• Use Google alerts if you want a regular feed — for example, “art news” or “Black Lives Matter.”  This is also useful if you have a particular beat — for example, “student debt.”
• Get on email lists of activist or advocacy organizations in an area you think relevant (e.g., immigrant defense).
• Friends: Ask any friend who is a news junkie to send you article links.

Sources

You want a routine for finding stories that will take you through selected websites in an hour or two. Come up with those few sources you check regularly, chosen according to your personal news sense. For many, you can get on a daily or weekly email list that sends headlines and capsule summaries to your inbox.  You can also use a news aggregator like Feedly to get regular updates from the media you follow.

You can find some notes on newswriting and evaluating sources here.