Newspapers and Newsworthiness

A few days ago, Ms Huang taught us about the difference between two types of newspapers, namely broadsheet and tabloid, and the factors of newsworthiness. Now, I will voice my opinions on these two topics.

Firstly, I will compare a broadsheet and a tabloid. A broadsheet, like the name suggests, is generally larger, and a good example of a broadsheet is The Straits Times. A tabloid, on the other hand, is a smaller newspaper, and a good example of a tabloid, albeit with milder content, is the New Paper. A broadsheet generally contains factual incidents, and is more inclined towards reporting facts and details objectively. In contrast, a tabloid is generally used to report more ‘soft news’, like celebrity gossip, and using drama to attract readers in. For example, a broadsheet may report on a murder, reporting on the details of the murder and the convict’s punishment. However, a report on the same murder in a tabloid would probably contain grotesque and vivid descriptions of the murder, so as to make the article more exciting, so to speak, and to attract more readers to continue reading on. For myself, I find myself reading more tabloids, mostly the New Paper, because I find the articles in the New Paper easier to understand, and most of the time, more interesting to read as compared to the common dull facts in the broadsheets distributed in Singapore. However, I do read The Straits Times occasionally, as at the end of the day, if I want to know the plain facts of the incident, The Straits Times is the way to go. In conclusion, I feel that a tabloid is more appealing to young readers like myself as in the current tech-savvy generation, simply reporting on walls after walls of boring text and facts will more often than not turn readers off.

Next, what makes a piece of news newsworthy? Is it the scope of the reported incident? Or is it the person or people involved in the incident? Or rather, is it the emotions stirred by the piece of news? Actually, all three of the above are factors of newsworthiness. According to a few websites that I went to, there are around 12 factors of newsworthiness. They are:

1. Timeliness
2. Proximity
3. Exceptional quality
4. Possible future impact
 5. Prominence
 6. Conflict
 7. The number of people involved or affected
 8. Consequence
 9. Human interest
 10. Pathos
 11. Shock value
 12. Titillation component  

All these factors are all accurate, and I am sure the average man on the street can provide you with news articles that contain these factors at his fingertips. However, I will not go through all of these factors, as I feel that it would not really be useful in my reflections.  For example, the Indian Ocean Tsunami caused a lot of deaths and damage, which in turn invoked many people’s emotions, causing them to sympathise with the victims. Therefore, the tsunami is a newsworthy incident to report on, as it includes factors 7, 8, 10 and 11. In my opinion, what makes people actually want to read the news is actually mostly the severity of the issue at hand. This is because the sad fact remains that news editors constantly use emotions to draw us in to read the article. For example, more often than not, a news editor would rather publicise a mass massacre than a good deed done by someone. I cannot remember the last time that the headlines of any newspaper saying the good deeds of a philanthropist. As the saying goes, “No news is good news”, and this basically encompasses what the news usually consists of.

In conclusion, to put it bluntly, our emotions are taken advantage of as the news editors constantly search for new and hot topics to write in the news, so as to attract more readers to read their newspaper. It seems that their marketing tactic has worked well, as seen from my preference of tabloids to broadsheets, but I hope that when I grow up, I will be able to read The Straits Times more often. Cheers!

P.S. On a side note, apologies for the late posting of this blogpost, as I could not find the time to post this up even after I had completed the post.