Tony HarcuppersName, Deirdre O’NeillpersName (2016date). “What is News?.” Journalism Studiestitle·j.
Object of study — news valuesterm - the criteria by which journalists select stories - and whether a taxonomyterm of them written before social media still describes what is published
Research question — to what extent does HarcuppersName and O'NeillpersName's 2001date list of news valuesterm remain relevant fifteen years on, and what should be added, split or dropped
Contribution — an updated 15-value taxonomyterm of news valuesterm, arrived at by coding 711 stories with the old 10-value list and reporting which of its categories broke under the test - including a value, 'shareabilityterm', that did not exist in 2001date
phenomenon · claim-type · cross-domain-transfer · mechanism · claim-relation · replication-status · limitation — grounded in the full text| phenomenon | a discipline whose central term is defined by its practitioners as 'I know it when I see it', and whose scholars have answered with fifty years of successive taxonomies, each disowned by its own authors — “Asked how they define news, journalists sometimes reply: “I know it when I see it.” Pressed on why something has been deemed newsworthy, a typical response is: “Because it just is!” (Brighton and Foy 2007, 147). Definitions relying on such “gut feeling” (Schultz 2007) arguably obscure as much as they reveal about news selection, prompting academics to offer their own explanations, which can involve devising taxonomies of news values. One of the most influential and frequently cited of these is a paper by Johan Galtung and Mari Ruge (1965), “The Structure of Foreign News”, published more than 50 years ago.” | |
| claim-type | method — “Our methodology was deceptively simple if time-consuming: we read each of the 711 stories and used our 2001 set of news values as a coding sheet, identifying which if any of the various factors we could identify in each story. Deciding which news values were present in any particular story involved a close reading of the text, consideration of the content and an evaluation of the context (was it following up a story that had originally been published elsewhere, for example?); the fact that both of us have worked as journalists in addition to studying and teaching journalism perhaps helped in this process. To ensure consistency each story was read and coded by both researchers, with disparities in coding discussed before arriving at consensus.” | |
| method — evidence | — “This resulted in a data-set of 711 stories, each selected by the newspaper as a news page lead. Each story was then analysed in an effort to identify which, if any, of the Harcup and O’Neill (2001) news values could be detected in the new sample; how news values interact with each other; and whether any amendments, additions or deletions to the list of news values might be considered appropriate.” | |
| object of study — evidence | — “News values are worth studying because they inform the mediated world that is presented to news audiences, providing a shared shorthand operational understanding of what working journalists are required to produce to deadlines. It is the way news values work in practice that results in them being articulated and conveyed to new journalism trainees and journalism students, and they are also used by public relations professionals and others aiming to obtain maximum news coverage of events (or pseudo-events).” | |
| research question — evidence | — “However, in revisiting our 2001 set of news values, we found that some categories were too broadly defined when subjected to empirical testing; some WHAT IS NEWS? 1479 categories need to be unpicked and some new categories seem to warrant inclusion, and these are put forward in the Conclusion.” | |
| contribution — evidence | — “Although there will be exceptions, we have found that potential news stories must generally satisfy one and preferably more of the following requirements to be selected:” | |
| transfer | from peace research (Galtung and Ruge's study of foreign news): the taxonomy of news values used throughout journalism studies originates in a 1965 peace-research paper on the structure of foreign news, and is here re-tested rather than assumed — “One of the most influential and frequently cited of these is a paper by Johan Galtung and Mari Ruge (1965), “The Structure of Foreign News”, published more than 50 years ago.” | transfers[0] |
| transfer | from content analysis (empirical media research): the criteria are put to the test by an empirical content analysis of published news, importing a quantitative method into a literature that had treated the list as given — “Just as that study put Galtung and Ruge’s criteria to the test with an empirical content analysis of published news, this new study explores the extent to which Harcup and O’Neill’s revised list of news values remains relevant given the challenges (and opportunities) faced by journalism today, including the emergence of social media.” | transfers[1] |
| mechanism | THE FIELD'S OWN PRACTITIONERS DECLINE TO DEFINE THE TERM. `Asked how they define news, journalists sometimes reply: I KNOW IT WHEN I SEE IT. Pressed on why something has been deemed newsworthy, a typical response is: Because it just is!` - and the definitions relying on such gut feeling `arguably obscure as much as they reveal` — “Asked how they define news, journalists sometimes reply: “I know it when I see it.” Pressed on why something has been deemed newsworthy, a typical response is: “Because it just is!” (Brighton and Foy 2007, 147). Definitions relying on such “gut feeling” (Schultz 2007) arguably obscure as much as they reveal about news selection, prompting academics to offer their own explanations, which can involve devising taxonomies of news values. One of the most influential and frequently cited of these is a paper by Johan Galtung and Mari Ruge (1965), “The Structure of Foreign News”, published more than 50 years ago.” | mechanisms[0] |
| mechanism | THE LIST IS REVISED BY BEING USED, NOT BY BEING ARGUED WITH. 711 stories were coded against the 2001 categories and `some categories were TOO BROADLY DEFINED WHEN SUBJECTED TO EMPIRICAL TESTING; some categories need to be UNPICKED and some new categories seem to warrant inclusion` — “However, in revisiting our 2001 set of news values, we found that some categories were too broadly defined when subjected to empirical testing; some WHAT IS NEWS? 1479 categories need to be unpicked and some new categories seem to warrant inclusion, and these are put forward in the Conclusion.” | mechanisms[1] |
| mechanism | and each break is named: entertainment splits into entertainment and drama, sport joins it, `unusualness` moves into surprise, and large corporations move into the power elite — “Entertainment encompasses both a dark and light side, which might be better conveyed in two distinct categories. Some of the darker but “entertaining” human-interest stories might perhaps be more accurately labelled as drama. News stories about sport could be added to the entertainment mix alongside show business, while the surprise category ought to contain “unusualness” within its definition. We also noticed that there were many stories involving large corporations and these might be included within the power elite category.” | mechanisms[2] |
| mechanism | `magnitude` is widened because the coding met cases it could not hold - `it ought to include extreme behaviours or occurrences (a man dying in extreme temperatures in an oven, for example, or a particularly unpleasant crime)` — “On investigation it became apparent that the term “magnitude” can mean more than merely involving large numbers; it ought to include extreme behaviours or occurrences (a man dying in extreme temperatures in an oven, for example, or a particularly unpleasant crime).” | mechanisms[3] |
| mechanism | A NEW VALUE IS ADMITTED FOR A PHENOMENON THAT DID NOT EXIST AT THE LAST REVISION - `shareability`, and the paper says outright that it is `hard to define`, offering a practitioner's phrase as the nearest thing: `stuff that makes you laugh and stuff that makes you angry` — “Precisely what qualities give one story more shareability than another are hard to pin down, but Janine Gibson (a former Guardian website editor who in 2015 became editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed UK) has noted that the most shared stories tend to be “stuff that makes you laugh and stuff that makes you angry” (quoted in Newman 2011, 24).” | mechanisms[4] |
| mechanism | THE CATEGORIES ARE NOT ALTERNATIVES. `any taxonomy of news values ought not to be thought of as a list of alternatives. It is clear that one story might tick several boxes` - one story was coded good news and bad news at once, and the paper shows the story — “This finding that a story might simultaneously be good news and bad news illustrates that any taxonomy of news values ought not to be thought of as a list of alternatives. It is clear that one story might tick several boxes, and how certain news values operate in different combinations might usefully be an issue for future research.” | mechanisms[5] |
| mechanism | and the coding's own subjectivity is stated rather than controlled away: `Clearly there is subjectivity involved in such a process - just as there is subjectivity involved in the journalistic process itself - and we would never claim anything different` — “Clearly there is subjectivity involved in such a process—just as there is subjectivity involved in the journalistic process itself—and we would never claim anything different. But we nevertheless believe the sample of stories is large enough to allow for some tentative conclusions to be drawn.” | mechanisms[6] |
| extends | Harcup and O'Neill's own 2001 list of ten news values, itself an updating of Galtung and Ruge's 1965 taxonomy - tested here against 711 stories and revised to fifteen — “1. The power elite: Stories concerning powerful individuals, organisations or institutions. 2. Celebrity: Stories concerning people who are already famous. 3. Entertainment: Stories concerning sex, showbusiness, human interest, animals, an unfolding drama, or offering opportunities for humorous treatment, entertaining photographs or witty headlines. 4. Surprise: Stories that have an element of surprise and/or contrast. 5. Bad news: Stories with particularly negative overtones, such as conflict or tragedy. 6. Good news: Stories with particularly positive overtones, such as rescues and cures. 7. Magnitude: Stories that are perceived as sufficiently significant either in the numbers of people involved or in potential impact. 8. Relevance: Stories about issues, groups and nations perceived to be relevant to the audience. 9. Follow-up: Stories about subjects already in the news. 10. Newspaper agenda: Stories that set or fit the news organisation’s own agenda (Harcup and O’Neill 2001, 278–279).” | claim_relations[0] |
| critiques | the practitioners' account of news selection as gut feeling - 'I know it when I see it' - which the paper says obscures as much as it reveals — “Asked how they define news, journalists sometimes reply: “I know it when I see it.” Pressed on why something has been deemed newsworthy, a typical response is: “Because it just is!” (Brighton and Foy 2007, 147). Definitions relying on such “gut feeling” (Schultz 2007) arguably obscure as much as they reveal about news selection, prompting academics to offer their own explanations, which can involve devising taxonomies of news values. One of the most influential and frequently cited of these is a paper by Johan Galtung and Mari Ruge (1965), “The Structure of Foreign News”, published more than 50 years ago.” | claim_relations[1] |
| concedes | that news values can never be truly objective criteria and are part of an ideologically constructed way of perceiving the world, following Donsbach, Hall, and Herman and Chomsky — “For Donsbach (2004) news values necessarily involved subjective judgements and can never be truly objective criteria, while Hall (1973) suggested that news values themselves are part of an ideologically constructed way of perceiving the world that favours and “naturalises” the perspectives of powerful elites, a view echoed by Herman and Chomsky (1988) in their propaganda model and McChesney (2000).” | claim_relations[2] |
| concedes | that examining published output gives only a partial explanation of news decisions, and may explain news treatment as much as news selection — “As was stressed in the above study, any exploration of news values can only provide a partial explanation of what lies behind journalistic news decisions. Examining news outputs may explain as much about news treatment as news selection (Staab 1990; Harcup and O’Neill 2001) and Staab (1990) argued for a functional model that takes into account the intentions of journalists.” | claim_relations[3] |
| sense | `news` - as practitioners define it: `I know it when I see it`, `Because it just is!`, a gut feeling that obscures as much as it reveals — “Asked how they define news, journalists sometimes reply: “I know it when I see it.” Pressed on why something has been deemed newsworthy, a typical response is: “Because it just is!” (Brighton and Foy 2007, 147). Definitions relying on such “gut feeling” (Schultz 2007) arguably obscure as much as they reveal about news selection, prompting academics to offer their own explanations, which can involve devising taxonomies of news values. One of the most influential and frequently cited of these is a paper by Johan Galtung and Mari Ruge (1965), “The Structure of Foreign News”, published more than 50 years ago.” | senses[0] |
| sense | `news values` - as the field defines them: a taxonomy of selection criteria identifiable in published output, offered as a tool rather than an explanation — “Thus, we reiterate that the above news value taxonomy should be seen as a tool for analysis and further research—designed to provoke discussion and, indeed, contestation— not something to be churned out as if it is the last word on the subject. And, whenever the question arises of why a particular story is seen as newsworthy, there will always remain an element of truth to the reply: “It just is!”” | senses[1] |
| sense | `entertainment` (2001) - one category holding both light and dark human interest; split here into entertainment and drama — “Entertainment encompasses both a dark and light side, which might be better conveyed in two distinct categories. Some of the darker but “entertaining” human-interest stories might perhaps be more accurately labelled as drama. News stories about sport could be added to the entertainment mix alongside show business, while the surprise category ought to contain “unusualness” within its definition. We also noticed that there were many stories involving large corporations and these might be included within the power elite category.” | senses[2] |
| sense | `magnitude` - large numbers of people or potential impact (2001), widened here to include extreme behaviour or occurrence — “On investigation it became apparent that the term “magnitude” can mean more than merely involving large numbers; it ought to include extreme behaviours or occurrences (a man dying in extreme temperatures in an oven, for example, or a particularly unpleasant crime).” | senses[3] |
| sense | `shareability` - likely to generate sharing and comment; `stuff that makes you laugh and stuff that makes you angry` is the closest the paper gets to a definition — “Precisely what qualities give one story more shareability than another are hard to pin down, but Janine Gibson (a former Guardian website editor who in 2015 became editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed UK) has noted that the most shared stories tend to be “stuff that makes you laugh and stuff that makes you angry” (quoted in Newman 2011, 24).” | senses[4] |
| control | double coding - 'each story was read and coded by both researchers, with disparities in coding discussed before arriving at consensus' — partial — “Clearly there is subjectivity involved in such a process—just as there is subjectivity involved in the journalistic process itself—and we would never claim anything different. But we nevertheless believe the sample of stories is large enough to allow for some tentative conclusions to be drawn.” — rules out one reader's idiosyncratic reading of a category standing as the measurement; it does not eliminate a shared idiosyncrasy, and the paper says so in the next sentence — “Our methodology was deceptively simple if time-consuming: we read each of the 711 stories and used our 2001 set of news values as a coding sheet, identifying which if any of the various factors we could identify in each story. Deciding which news values were present in any particular story involved a close reading of the text, consideration of the content and an evaluation of the context (was it following up a story that had originally been published elsewhere, for example?); the fact that both of us have worked as journalists in addition to studying and teaching journalism perhaps helped in this process. To ensure consistency each story was read and coded by both researchers, with disparities in coding discussed before arriving at consensus.” | controls[0] |
| control | widening the sample from 3 titles in 1999 to 10 titles in 2014, spread across four weeks so that no single story dominates the month — held — “In considering 711 page lead stories across 10 newspaper titles (see Tables 1 and 2), our findings show that bad news is the big winner; but good news is still significant, and some stories fall into both categories.” — rules out the finding being an artefact of one market segment or of one week's news cycle - the 1999 study used only the three market leaders — “This resulted in a data-set of 711 stories, each selected by the newspaper as a news page lead. Each story was then analysed in an effort to identify which, if any, of the Harcup and O’Neill (2001) news values could be detected in the new sample; how news values interact with each other; and whether any amendments, additions or deletions to the list of news values might be considered appropriate.” | controls[1] |
| control | coding a second, independent selector - the 25 stories UK audiences shared most on Facebook and Twitter in the same year - with the same instrument — held — “This preliminary examination of how news values operate on social media is necessarily tentative, and it is worth pointing out that many of the people sharing links may not normally be “readers” of the news site in question and may only have come across it via a link in the first place. Users of social media may even be sharing links while expressing disagreement with—or disapproval of—a particular item. Such is today’s journalism landscape.” — rules out the reading that the value ordering is a fact about news rather than about journalists; the audience's ordering differs, and entertainment leads it — “Between the newspaper and social media data-sets, there were some similarities as well as differences; bad news is almost as popular a factor online as in print. However, the most popular stories online are rarely concerned with the power elite. There may be little doubt that digital media can help challenge mainstream news agendas, but the most popular stories do not reflect this democratic ideal.” | controls[2] |
| weight | Harcup and O'Neill's own 2001 list of ten news values, itself an updating of Galtung and Ruge's 1965 taxonomy - tested here against 711 stories and revised to fifteen — 0.95 — “1. The power elite: Stories concerning powerful individuals, organisations or institutions. 2. Celebrity: Stories concerning people who are already famous. 3. Entertainment: Stories concerning sex, showbusiness, human interest, animals, an unfolding drama, or offering opportunities for humorous treatment, entertaining photographs or witty headlines. 4. Surprise: Stories that have an element of surprise and/or contrast. 5. Bad news: Stories with particularly negative overtones, such as conflict or tragedy. 6. Good news: Stories with particularly positive overtones, such as rescues and cures. 7. Magnitude: Stories that are perceived as sufficiently significant either in the numbers of people involved or in potential impact. 8. Relevance: Stories about issues, groups and nations perceived to be relevant to the audience. 9. Follow-up: Stories about subjects already in the news. 10. Newspaper agenda: Stories that set or fit the news organisation’s own agenda (Harcup and O’Neill 2001, 278–279).” | claim_relations[0] |
| weight | the practitioners' account of news selection as gut feeling - 'I know it when I see it' - which the paper says obscures as much as it reveals — 0.9 — “Asked how they define news, journalists sometimes reply: “I know it when I see it.” Pressed on why something has been deemed newsworthy, a typical response is: “Because it just is!” (Brighton and Foy 2007, 147). Definitions relying on such “gut feeling” (Schultz 2007) arguably obscure as much as they reveal about news selection, prompting academics to offer their own explanations, which can involve devising taxonomies of news values. One of the most influential and frequently cited of these is a paper by Johan Galtung and Mari Ruge (1965), “The Structure of Foreign News”, published more than 50 years ago.” | claim_relations[1] |
| weight | that news values can never be truly objective criteria and are part of an ideologically constructed way of perceiving the world, following Donsbach, Hall, and Herman and Chomsky — 0.9 — “For Donsbach (2004) news values necessarily involved subjective judgements and can never be truly objective criteria, while Hall (1973) suggested that news values themselves are part of an ideologically constructed way of perceiving the world that favours and “naturalises” the perspectives of powerful elites, a view echoed by Herman and Chomsky (1988) in their propaganda model and McChesney (2000).” | claim_relations[2] |
| weight | that examining published output gives only a partial explanation of news decisions, and may explain news treatment as much as news selection — 0.85 — “As was stressed in the above study, any exploration of news values can only provide a partial explanation of what lies behind journalistic news decisions. Examining news outputs may explain as much about news treatment as news selection (Staab 1990; Harcup and O’Neill 2001) and Staab (1990) argued for a functional model that takes into account the intentions of journalists.” | claim_relations[3] |
| audit | drama —distinct-from→ entertainment — Audit 2026-09-28: DOUBTFUL - read against its full span and kept, but darker stories 'might perhaps be more accurately labelled as drama'; hedged. — “Entertainment encompasses both a dark and light side, which might be better conveyed in two distinct categories. Some of the darker but “entertaining” human-interest stories might perhaps be more accurately labelled as drama. News stories about sport could be added to the entertainment mix alongside show business, while the surprise category ought to contain “unusualness” within its definition. We also noticed that there were many stories involving large corporations and these might be included within the power elite category.” | concept_edges[0] |
| note | drama —distinct-from→ entertainment — 'Entertainment encompasses both a dark and light side, which might be better conveyed in two distinct categories.' A split reported as a finding of the coding, not proposed in the abstract - the category broke while they were using it. — “Entertainment encompasses both a dark and light side, which might be better conveyed in two distinct categories. Some of the darker but “entertaining” human-interest stories might perhaps be more accurately labelled as drama. News stories about sport could be added to the entertainment mix alongside show business, while the surprise category ought to contain “unusualness” within its definition. We also noticed that there were many stories involving large corporations and these might be included within the power elite category.” | concept_edges[0] |
| relation | drama —distinct-from→ entertainment — the 2001 'entertainment' category held both a light and a dark side, and the darker human-interest stories are better labelled drama — “Entertainment encompasses both a dark and light side, which might be better conveyed in two distinct categories. Some of the darker but “entertaining” human-interest stories might perhaps be more accurately labelled as drama. News stories about sport could be added to the entertainment mix alongside show business, while the surprise category ought to contain “unusualness” within its definition. We also noticed that there were many stories involving large corporations and these might be included within the power elite category.” — “Entertainment encompasses both a dark and light side, which might be better conveyed in two distinct categories. Some of the darker but “entertaining” human-interest stories might perhaps be more accurately labelled as drama.” | concept_edges[0] |
| weight | drama —distinct-from→ entertainment — 0.95 — “Entertainment encompasses both a dark and light side, which might be better conveyed in two distinct categories. Some of the darker but “entertaining” human-interest stories might perhaps be more accurately labelled as drama. News stories about sport could be added to the entertainment mix alongside show business, while the surprise category ought to contain “unusualness” within its definition. We also noticed that there were many stories involving large corporations and these might be included within the power elite category.” | concept_edges[0] |
| outcome | control — partial — “Our methodology was deceptively simple if time-consuming: we read each of the 711 stories and used our 2001 set of news values as a coding sheet, identifying which if any of the various factors we could identify in each story. Deciding which news values were present in any particular story involved a close reading of the text, consideration of the content and an evaluation of the context (was it following up a story that had originally been published elsewhere, for example?); the fact that both of us have worked as journalists in addition to studying and teaching journalism perhaps helped in this process. To ensure consistency each story was read and coded by both researchers, with disparities in coding discussed before arriving at consensus.” — “Clearly there is subjectivity involved in such a process—just as there is subjectivity involved in the journalistic process itself—and we would never claim anything different. But we nevertheless believe the sample of stories is large enough to allow for some tentative conclusions to be drawn.” | controls[0] |
| outcome | control — held — “This resulted in a data-set of 711 stories, each selected by the newspaper as a news page lead. Each story was then analysed in an effort to identify which, if any, of the Harcup and O’Neill (2001) news values could be detected in the new sample; how news values interact with each other; and whether any amendments, additions or deletions to the list of news values might be considered appropriate.” — “In considering 711 page lead stories across 10 newspaper titles (see Tables 1 and 2), our findings show that bad news is the big winner; but good news is still significant, and some stories fall into both categories.” | controls[1] |
| outcome | control — held — “Between the newspaper and social media data-sets, there were some similarities as well as differences; bad news is almost as popular a factor online as in print. However, the most popular stories online are rarely concerned with the power elite. There may be little doubt that digital media can help challenge mainstream news agendas, but the most popular stories do not reflect this democratic ideal.” — “This preliminary examination of how news values operate on social media is necessarily tentative, and it is worth pointing out that many of the people sharing links may not normally be “readers” of the news site in question and may only have come across it via a link in the first place. Users of social media may even be sharing links while expressing disagreement with—or disapproval of—a particular item. Such is today’s journalism landscape.” | controls[2] |
| evidence status note | limitation — PAGE FURNITURE IS SPLICED INTO THE 'evidence' QUOTE - the running head and a page number, 'WHAT IS NEWS? 1483', between 'ideological and' and 'cultural'. The words on either side of it were never continuous on the page; read the quote with it deleted. — “It is important to reiterate that the above criteria can be contested since they are also governed by practical considerations, such as the availability of resources and time, and subjective, often unconscious, influences, such as a mix of the social, educational, ideological and WHAT IS NEWS? 1483 cultural influences on journalists, as well as the environment in which they work, their position in the workplace hierarchy and the type of audience for whom journalists are producing news.” | limitations[2] |
| evidence status note | mechanism — PAGE FURNITURE IS SPLICED INTO THE 'evidence' QUOTE - the running head and a page number, 'WHAT IS NEWS? 1479', between 'testing; some' and 'categories need'. The words on either side of it were never continuous on the page; read the quote with it deleted. — “However, in revisiting our 2001 set of news values, we found that some categories were too broadly defined when subjected to empirical testing; some WHAT IS NEWS? 1479 categories need to be unpicked and some new categories seem to warrant inclusion, and these are put forward in the Conclusion.” | mechanisms[1] |
| evidence status note | research question — PAGE FURNITURE IS SPLICED INTO THE research question evidence QUOTE - the running head and a page number, 'WHAT IS NEWS? 1479', between 'testing; some' and 'categories need'. The words on either side of it were never continuous on the page; read the quote with it deleted. | |
| evidence status note | contribution — THE QUOTE ENDS ON A COLON: the paper goes on with the fifteen news values, one paragraph each, too long to quote here; what this row states is in that list, not in the quoted words. | |
| limitation | Both editions of the list disown themselves. 2001: offered `not as the last word on news values, merely as a contribution towards rendering news selection a more transparent and better-understood process`. 2016: `not something to be churned out as if it is the last word on the subject` — “This was offered, not as the last word on news values, merely as a contribution towards “rendering news selection a more transparent and better-understood process”” | limitations[0] |
| limitation | and the paper concedes the practitioners' answer survives its own taxonomy: `whenever the question arises of why a particular story is seen as newsworthy, there will always remain an element of truth to the reply: 'IT JUST IS!'` — “Thus, we reiterate that the above news value taxonomy should be seen as a tool for analysis and further research—designed to provoke discussion and, indeed, contestation— not something to be churned out as if it is the last word on the subject. And, whenever the question arises of why a particular story is seen as newsworthy, there will always remain an element of truth to the reply: “It just is!”” | limitations[1] |
| limitation | the criteria are contestable by construction - governed by `practical considerations, such as the availability of resources and time, and SUBJECTIVE, OFTEN UNCONSCIOUS, INFLUENCES` including the journalist's position in the workplace hierarchy and the audience being produced for — “It is important to reiterate that the above criteria can be contested since they are also governed by practical considerations, such as the availability of resources and time, and subjective, often unconscious, influences, such as a mix of the social, educational, ideological and WHAT IS NEWS? 1483 cultural influences on journalists, as well as the environment in which they work, their position in the workplace hierarchy and the type of audience for whom journalists are producing news.” | limitations[2] |
| limitation | and the authors put the selector above the criteria: `who is selecting news, for whom, in what medium and by what means ... may well be as important as whatever news values may or may not be inherent in any potential story` — “In other words, who is selecting news, for whom, in what medium and by what means (and available resources), may well be as important as whatever news values may or may not be inherent in any potential story.” | limitations[3] |
| limitation | the social media half rests on 25 stories from two `top 10` and `top 15` lists, and the authors call it `necessarily tentative` - noting that people sharing a link `may not normally be readers of the news site` and may be sharing it in disagreement — “This preliminary examination of how news values operate on social media is necessarily tentative, and it is worth pointing out that many of the people sharing links may not normally be “readers” of the news site in question and may only have come across it via a link in the first place. Users of social media may even be sharing links while expressing disagreement with—or disapproval of—a particular item. Such is today’s journalism landscape.” | limitations[4] |
| limitation | and examining output cannot reach intention - `any exploration of news values can only provide a partial explanation of what lies behind journalistic news decisions`, with Staab's functional model, which takes journalists' intentions into account, named as the thing this design cannot do — “As was stressed in the above study, any exploration of news values can only provide a partial explanation of what lies behind journalistic news decisions. Examining news outputs may explain as much about news treatment as news selection (Staab 1990; Harcup and O’Neill 2001) and Staab (1990) argued for a functional model that takes into account the intentions of journalists.” | limitations[5] |
finding · quantity · variable · definition · key-term — grounded in the full text| finding | — “Asked how they define news, journalists sometimes reply: “I know it when I see it.” Pressed on why something has been deemed newsworthy, a typical response is: “Because it just is!” (Brighton and Foy 2007, 147). Definitions relying on such “gut feeling” (Schultz 2007) arguably obscure as much as they reveal about news selection, prompting academics to offer their own explanations, which can involve devising taxonomies of news values. One of the most influential and frequently cited of these is a paper by Johan Galtung and Mari Ruge (1965), “The Structure of Foreign News”, published more than 50 years ago.” | content_tags.findings[0] |
| finding | — “However, in revisiting our 2001 set of news values, we found that some categories were too broadly defined when subjected to empirical testing; some WHAT IS NEWS? 1479 categories need to be unpicked and some new categories seem to warrant inclusion, and these are put forward in the Conclusion.” | content_tags.findings[1] |
| evidence status note | finding — PAGE FURNITURE IS SPLICED INTO THE 'evidence' QUOTE - the running head and a page number, 'WHAT IS NEWS? 1479', between 'testing; some' and 'categories need'. The words on either side of it were never continuous on the page; read the quote with it deleted. | content_tags.findings[1] |
| finding | — “This finding that a story might simultaneously be good news and bad news illustrates that any taxonomy of news values ought not to be thought of as a list of alternatives. It is clear that one story might tick several boxes, and how certain news values operate in different combinations might usefully be an issue for future research.” | content_tags.findings[2] |
| finding | — “Precisely what qualities give one story more shareability than another are hard to pin down, but Janine Gibson (a former Guardian website editor who in 2015 became editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed UK) has noted that the most shared stories tend to be “stuff that makes you laugh and stuff that makes you angry” (quoted in Newman 2011, 24).” | content_tags.findings[3] |
| finding | — “In other words, who is selecting news, for whom, in what medium and by what means (and available resources), may well be as important as whatever news values may or may not be inherent in any potential story.” | content_tags.findings[4] |
| finding | — “Thus, we reiterate that the above news value taxonomy should be seen as a tool for analysis and further research—designed to provoke discussion and, indeed, contestation— not something to be churned out as if it is the last word on the subject. And, whenever the question arises of why a particular story is seen as newsworthy, there will always remain an element of truth to the reply: “It just is!”” | content_tags.findings[5] |
| quantity | 711 page-lead stories — across 10 UK national and free daily titles, a sample week each spread over November 2014 — “This resulted in a data-set of 711 stories, each selected by the newspaper as a news page lead. Each story was then analysed in an effort to identify which, if any, of the Harcup and O’Neill (2001) news values could be detected in the new sample; how news values interact with each other; and whether any amendments, additions or deletions to the list of news values might be considered appropriate.” | content_tags.quantities[0] |
| quantity | 15 values — up from ten in 2001, by splitting two categories and adding three — “Although there will be exceptions, we have found that potential news stories must generally satisfy one and preferably more of the following requirements to be selected:” | content_tags.quantities[1] |
| evidence status note | quantity — THE QUOTE ENDS ON A COLON: the paper goes on with the fifteen news values, one paragraph each, too long to quote here; what this row states is in that list, not in the quoted words. | content_tags.quantities[1] |
| value source note | quantity — THE VALUE DRAWS ON THE PAPER BEYOND THIS QUOTE: the requirements it counts are the list that follows this sentence ('following requirements to be selected: . Exclusivity'), which the quote does not include. | content_tags.quantities[1] |
| quantity | 25 stories — the top 10 by Facebook interactions and the top 15 by tweets, 2014 — “Although a crude measure, we took the top 10 Facebook stories and the top 15 most tweeted stories as being a snapshot of which news stories most interested those members of the audience using social media in 2014.” | content_tags.quantities[2] |
| variable | news values — “Our methodology was deceptively simple if time-consuming: we read each of the 711 stories and used our 2001 set of news values as a coding sheet, identifying which if any of the various factors we could identify in each story. Deciding which news values were present in any particular story involved a close reading of the text, consideration of the content and an evaluation of the context (was it following up a story that had originally been published elsewhere, for example?); the fact that both of us have worked as journalists in addition to studying and teaching journalism perhaps helped in this process. To ensure consistency each story was read and coded by both researchers, with disparities in coding discussed before arriving at consensus.” | content_tags.variables[0] |
| definition | shareability — “Precisely what qualities give one story more shareability than another are hard to pin down, but Janine Gibson (a former Guardian website editor who in 2015 became editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed UK) has noted that the most shared stories tend to be “stuff that makes you laugh and stuff that makes you angry” (quoted in Newman 2011, 24).” | content_tags.definitions[0] |
| definition | exclusivity — “Finally, there is a strong case to be made for exclusivity to be considered a news value in its own right, given the frequency with which we found newspapers drawing attention to the fact, as in: “a poll by the Times indicates … ” (24 November 2014) or “It follows an investigation by the Independent … ” (29 November 2014).” | content_tags.definitions[1] |
| definition | magnitude — “On investigation it became apparent that the term “magnitude” can mean more than merely involving large numbers; it ought to include extreme behaviours or occurrences (a man dying in extreme temperatures in an oven, for example, or a particularly unpleasant crime).” | content_tags.definitions[2] |
| definition | news values — “1. The power elite: Stories concerning powerful individuals, organisations or institutions. 2. Celebrity: Stories concerning people who are already famous. 3. Entertainment: Stories concerning sex, showbusiness, human interest, animals, an unfolding drama, or offering opportunities for humorous treatment, entertaining photographs or witty headlines. 4. Surprise: Stories that have an element of surprise and/or contrast. 5. Bad news: Stories with particularly negative overtones, such as conflict or tragedy. 6. Good news: Stories with particularly positive overtones, such as rescues and cures. 7. Magnitude: Stories that are perceived as sufficiently significant either in the numbers of people involved or in potential impact. 8. Relevance: Stories about issues, groups and nations perceived to be relevant to the audience. 9. Follow-up: Stories about subjects already in the news. 10. Newspaper agenda: Stories that set or fit the news organisation’s own agenda (Harcup and O’Neill 2001, 278–279).” | content_tags.definitions[3] |
| concept | news values — not defined in this paper's own words; the criteria informing story selection - 'a shared shorthand operational understanding of what working journalists are required to produce to deadlines' — “News values are worth studying because they inform the mediated world that is presented to news audiences, providing a shared shorthand operational understanding of what working journalists are required to produce to deadlines. It is the way news values work in practice that results in them being articulated and conveyed to new journalism trainees and journalism students, and they are also used by public relations professionals and others aiming to obtain maximum news coverage of events (or pseudo-events).” | concepts[0] |
| concept | taxonomy — not defined in this paper's own words; the list form the field answers 'what is news?' with - offered here explicitly as a tool for analysis rather than a settled account — “Thus, we reiterate that the above news value taxonomy should be seen as a tool for analysis and further research—designed to provoke discussion and, indeed, contestation— not something to be churned out as if it is the last word on the subject. And, whenever the question arises of why a particular story is seen as newsworthy, there will always remain an element of truth to the reply: “It just is!”” | concepts[1] |
| concept | gut feeling — not defined in this paper's own words; the practitioners' own account of news selection - 'I know it when I see it', 'Because it just is!' - which the paper says obscures as much as it reveals — “Asked how they define news, journalists sometimes reply: “I know it when I see it.” Pressed on why something has been deemed newsworthy, a typical response is: “Because it just is!” (Brighton and Foy 2007, 147). Definitions relying on such “gut feeling” (Schultz 2007) arguably obscure as much as they reveal about news selection, prompting academics to offer their own explanations, which can involve devising taxonomies of news values. One of the most influential and frequently cited of these is a paper by Johan Galtung and Mari Ruge (1965), “The Structure of Foreign News”, published more than 50 years ago.” | concepts[2] |
| concept | shareability — not defined in this paper's own words; the new value: stories thought likely to generate sharing and comment on social media. Named here, and explicitly hard to define — “Last and probably not least, the findings point towards the importance of a concept we call “shareability”.” | concepts[3] |
| concept | exclusivity — not defined in this paper's own words; stories generated by or available first to the news organisation - promoted to a value in its own right on the frequency with which papers flag it — “Finally, there is a strong case to be made for exclusivity to be considered a news value in its own right, given the frequency with which we found newspapers drawing attention to the fact, as in: “a poll by the Times indicates … ” (24 November 2014) or “It follows an investigation by the Independent … ” (29 November 2014).” | concepts[4] |
| concept | bad news — not defined in this paper's own words; the highest-scoring value in the 2014 sample - 442 of 711 stories - and a category the paper then splits, moving conflict out of it — “In considering 711 page lead stories across 10 newspaper titles (see Tables 1 and 2), our findings show that bad news is the big winner; but good news is still significant, and some stories fall into both categories.” | concepts[5] |
| concept | conflict — not defined in this paper's own words; controversies, arguments, splits, strikes, fights, insurrections and warfare - teased out of 'bad news' because that category was carrying too much — “There is a case for teasing out the broad definition of bad news to add conflict as a separate category, as has been suggested by Phillips (2015). We also found ourselves agreeing with Caple and Bednarek (2015) that strong visuals can be a reason for selecting a story, and that in semiotic terms, a visual can be seen as conveying and emphasising a number of news factors, such as bad news, drama or surprise.” | concepts[6] |
| concept | drama — not defined in this paper's own words; the darker half of what 2001 called entertainment - unfolding events, escapes, accidents, sieges, court cases — “Entertainment encompasses both a dark and light side, which might be better conveyed in two distinct categories. Some of the darker but “entertaining” human-interest stories might perhaps be more accurately labelled as drama. News stories about sport could be added to the entertainment mix alongside show business, while the surprise category ought to contain “unusualness” within its definition. We also noticed that there were many stories involving large corporations and these might be included within the power elite category.” | concepts[7] |
| concept | magnitude — not defined in this paper's own words; widened here past 'large numbers' to include extreme behaviour or occurrence — “On investigation it became apparent that the term “magnitude” can mean more than merely involving large numbers; it ought to include extreme behaviours or occurrences (a man dying in extreme temperatures in an oven, for example, or a particularly unpleasant crime).” | concepts[8] |
| concept | entertainment — not defined in this paper's own words; the most common value among the most-shared social media stories, and the category the paper splits in two — “Rather, the most common news value is entertainment; such stories seem to be shared by online readers because they are fun, and sharing them can brighten the day. This suggests a possible new news value as highlighted by previous studies (Olmstead, Mitchell, and Rosenstiel 2011; Hermida et al. 2012; Phillips 2012; Tien Vu 2014; Welbers et al. 2015): shareability.” | concepts[9] |
| concept | The power elite — not defined in this paper's own words; stories concerning powerful individuals, organisations or institutions - first on the 2001 list, and rare among the stories audiences share — “1. The power elite: Stories concerning powerful individuals, organisations or institutions. 2. Celebrity: Stories concerning people who are already famous. 3.” | concepts[10] |
| concept | subjectivity — not defined in this paper's own words; acknowledged by the authors in their own coding as well as in the journalism they code - the same word for both sides of the measurement — “Clearly there is subjectivity involved in such a process—just as there is subjectivity involved in the journalistic process itself—and we would never claim anything different. But we nevertheless believe the sample of stories is large enough to allow for some tentative conclusions to be drawn.” | concepts[11] |
| concept | coding sheet — not defined in this paper's own words; the 2001 news-value list used as the instrument - each story read and coded by both researchers, disparities discussed to consensus — “Our methodology was deceptively simple if time-consuming: we read each of the 711 stories and used our 2001 set of news values as a coding sheet, identifying which if any of the various factors we could identify in each story. Deciding which news values were present in any particular story involved a close reading of the text, consideration of the content and an evaluation of the context (was it following up a story that had originally been published elsewhere, for example?); the fact that both of us have worked as journalists in addition to studying and teaching journalism perhaps helped in this process. To ensure consistency each story was read and coded by both researchers, with disparities in coding discussed before arriving at consensus.” | concepts[12] |
| a frequency table over a category set the same paper calls unstable | — “In considering 711 page lead stories across 10 newspaper titles (see Tables 1 and 2), our findings show that bad news is the big winner; but good news is still significant, and some stories fall into both categories.” | content_tags.statistics[0] |
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Journalism Studies ISSN: 1461-670X (Print) 1469-9699 (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/rjos20 What is News? News valuesterm revisited (again) Tony HarcuppersName & Deirdre O’NeillpersName To cite this article: Tony HarcuppersName & Deirdre O’NeillpersName (2017) What is News?, Journalism Studies, 18:12, 1470-1488, DOI: 10.1080/1461670X.2016.1150193 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2016.1150193 © 2016 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis Published online: 01 Mar 2016. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 348113 View related articles View Crossmark data Citing articles: 380 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rjos20 WHAT IS NEWS? News valuesterm revisited (again) Tony HarcuppersName and Deirdre O’NeillpersName The deceptively simple question “What is news?” remains pertinent even as we ponder the future of journalism in the digital age. This article examines news valuesterm within mainstream journalism and considers the extent to which news valuesterm may be changing since earlier landmark studies were undertaken. Its starting point is HarcuppersName and O’NeillpersName’s widely cited 2001date updating of Galtung and Ruge’s influential 1965 taxonomyterm of news valuesterm. Just as that study put Galtung and Ruge’s criteria to the test with an empirical content analysis of published news, this new study explores the extent to which HarcuppersName and O’NeillpersName’s revised list of news valuesterm remains relevant given the challenges (and opportunities) faced by journalism today, including the emergence of social media. A review of recent literature contextualises the findings of a fresh content analysis of news valuesterm within a range of UK media 15 years on from the last study. The article concludes by suggesting a revised and updated set of contemporary news valuesterm, whilst acknowledging that no taxonomyterm can ever explain everything. KEYWORDS Galtung and Ruge; HarcuppersName and O’NeillpersName; news valuesterm; newspapers; selection; shareabilityterm; social media; taxonomyterm Introduction Asked how they define news, journalists sometimes reply: “I know it when I see it.” Pressed on why something has been deemed newsworthy, a typical response is: “Because it just is!” (Brighton and Foy 2007, 147). Definitions relying on such “gut feelingterm” (Schultz 2007) arguably obscure as much as they reveal about news selection, prompting academics to offer their own explanations, which can involve devising taxonomies of news valuesterm. One of the most influential and frequently cited of these is a paper by Johan Galtung and Mari Ruge (1965), “The Structure of Foreign News”, published more than 50 years ago. Identifying and recording the news valuesterm found within published pieces of journalism cannot provide a complete explanation of the journalistic process but that does not mean such study is without value. News valuesterm are worth studying because they inform the mediated world that is presented to news audiences, providing a shared shorthand operational understanding of what working journalists are required to produce to deadlines. It is the way news valuesterm work in practice that results in them being articulated and conveyed to new journalism trainees and journalism students, and they are also used by public relations professionals and others aiming to obtain maximum news coverage of events (or pseudo-events). Journalism Studies, 2017 Vol. 18, No. 12, 1470–1488, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2016.1150193 © 2016 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
WHAT IS NEWS? 1471 It was to test the continuing relevance of Galtung and Ruge’s landmark piece of scholarship that we conducted our own study of the news valuesterm that can be identified within published outputs, “What is news? Galtung and Ruge revisited” (HarcuppersName and O’NeillpersName 2001date). As with its more illustrious forerunner, this struck something of a chord, becoming one of the most widely read and cited articles in the history of the journal Journalism Studies. Our study concluded, “although there are exceptions to every rule, we have found that news stories must generally satisfy one or more of the following requirements” if they are to be selected: 1. The power eliteterm: Stories concerning powerful individuals, organisations or institutions. 2. Celebrity: Stories concerning people who are already famous. 3. Entertainmentterm: Stories concerning sex, showbusiness, human interest, animals, an unfolding dramaterm, or offering opportunities for humorous treatment, entertaining photographs or witty headlines. 4. Surprise: Stories that have an element of surprise and/or contrast. 5. Bad newsterm: Stories with particularly negative overtones, such as conflictterm or tragedy. 6. Good news: Stories with particularly positive overtones, such as rescues and cures. 7. Magnitudeterm: Stories that are perceived as sufficiently significant either in the numbers of people involved or in potential impact. 8. Relevance: Stories about issues, groups and nations perceived to be relevant to the audience. 9. Follow-up: Stories about subjects already in the news. 10. Newspaper agenda: Stories that set or fit the news organisation’s own agenda (HarcuppersName and O’NeillpersName 2001date, 278–279). This was offered, not as the last word on news valuesterm, merely as a contribution towards “rendering news selection a more transparent and better-understood process” (HarcuppersName and O’NeillpersName 2001date, 279). As was stressed in the above study, any exploration of news valuesterm can only provide a partial explanation of what lies behind journalistic news decisions. Examining news outputs may explain as much about news treatment as news selection (Staab 1990; HarcuppersName and O’NeillpersName 2001date) and Staab (1990) argued for a functional model that takes into account the intentions of journalists. For Donsbach (2004) news valuesterm necessarily involved subjective judgements and can never be truly objective criteria, while Hall (1973) suggested that news valuesterm themselves are part of an ideologically constructed way of perceiving the world that favours and “naturalises” the perspectives of powerful elites, a view echoed by Herman and Chomsky (1988) in their propaganda model and McChesney (2000). Although this ideological role of news selection (and treatments) is not the subject of either our 2001date study or the new one, the identification of prevalent news valuesterm can be used to inform future research into potential ideological impacts. Therefore, despite limitations, we argue that it remains valuable to unpick the criteria involved in the selection of news since this “is one of the most important areas of journalism studies[. It] goes to the heart of what is included, what is excluded, and why” (O’NeillpersName and HarcuppersName 2009, 162). Further, the journalistic selection process has been described as “probably as important or perhaps sometimes more important than what ‘really happens’”, when it comes to determining whether or not something becomes news (Westerhahl and Johansson 1994, 71). Thus, our list of news valuesterm was offered simply as one tool to aid analysis, discussion and, we hoped, understanding of this significant part of the journalistic process. In this fresh 1472 TONY HARCUPpersName AND DEIRDRE O’NEILLpersName study we also set out to examine the extent to which any taxonomyterm of news valuesterm devised in the age before Twitter, Facebook and other interactive platforms, can be taken as read today. That is one of the key questions to be addressed in our revisiting news valuesterm and attempting to update our list of selection criteria. News Valuesterm: A Literature Review Brighton and Foy (2007, 194) draw attention to the difficulties faced by journalists when asked to explain news: “Reiterating what has been said to both authors on countless occasions during the research process of this book, the response to the question ‘why is this news?’ may well remain: ‘It just is!’” However, this does not mean that journalists are completely unable to articulate why they selected one story over another: Indeed, they [new values] pepper the daily exchanges between journalists in collaborative production procedures … [T]hey are the terse shorthand references to shared understandings about the nature and purpose of news which can be used to ease the rapid and difficult manufacture of bulletins and news programmes. (Golding and Elliott 1979, 114) For their part, scholars have taken different approaches to the theorisation and study of news valuesterm, sometimes focusing on the apparent newsworthiness of an event or news actors to uncover why a story has been selected, but also considering the organisational, cultural and economic factors that may also influence news selection. Galtung and Ruge’s (1965) work was based on hypothesising selection criteria and formed part of a wider study on how foreign events were reported in the Norwegian press. Some scholars use their own experience and/or analysis of news outputs to conceptualise news valuesterm (Golding and Elliott 1979; HarcuppersName and O’NeillpersName 2001date). Others take an overview of previous scholarship to produce a summary of key news valuesterm (Harrison 2006; O’NeillpersName and HarcuppersName 2009; Caple and Bednarek 2013; HarcuppersName 2015), while others use ethnographic observations and interviews (Schultz 2007; Dick 2014). Such studies are aimed at helping us understand the judgements that are made when journalists select news, described as “cognitive” news valuesterm by Caple and Bednarek (2015, 3). Approaching the issue of news valuesterm from observations of Danish TV journalists, Schultz (2007) argues that six news valuesterm dominate: timeliness, relevance, identification, conflictterm, sensation and exclusivityterm. Being first with a story—exclusivityterm—adds value for producers who must attract audiences, and can override other news valuesterm, such as timeliness. For Schultz, a distinction can be drawn between three types of news valueterm: undisputed, taken-for-granted and rarely articulated news valuesterm, which she calls doxic news valuesterm; and explicit news valuesterm: either dominant, undisputed orthodox values, or debatable, dominated (heterodox) news valuesterm (195–196). O’NeillpersName (2012) suggests a hierarchy of news valuesterm may exist, with celebrity dominating, not just in the popular press but also in “quality” UK newspapers. No theory of news valuesterm can explain everything, not least because arbitrary factors including luck, convenience and serendipity can come into play; as when a planned story falls through at the last minute, for example, and a previously discarded one is selected to take its place. News selection is also subject to the influence of journalistic routines such as issues of access and meeting deadlines (Schultz 2007; Phillips 2015); competition for exclusives (Allern 2002; Schultz 2007; Phillips 2015); the influence of proprietors and advertisers WHAT IS NEWS? 1473 (Caple and Bednarek 2015); external influences including the role of public relations professionals and “spin doctors” (Brighton and Foy 2007); the belief systems of journalists as a result of their social environment (Donsbach 2004; Phillips 2015); and the influence of peers within the workplace or “habitus” (Bourdieu and Wacquaint 1992, 133). Shoemaker and Cohen (2006) found that the same newsworthiness model can be applied to news from many countries, while Lavie and Lehman-Wilzig (2003) found little difference between genders in the factors determining journalists’ selection of news. News valuesterm can be seen less as a reflection of what type of information citizens want or need, and more as a reflection of organisational, sociological and cultural norms combined with economic factors (Weaver et al. 2007). This leads Allern (2002) to propose a supplementary set of commercial news valuesterm, whereby sensationalist stories are most likely to be pursued; stories that are costly to pursue are less likely to make it into the news; and news subsidies, such as well-prepared press releases and photo opportunities, are more likely to be taken up by resource-starved and hard-pressed journalists, and translated into news items. This news subsidy by the public relations industry, described as pre-fabrication by Bell (1991), has been observed in “quality” media as well as less well-resourced news organisations (Lewis, Williams, and Franklin 2008). Commercial pressures can also result in the selection of news stories on the basis of their perceived appeal to target audiences rather than by any inherent qualities of newsworthiness or importance (Niblock and Machin 2007, 191; Stromback, Karlsson, and Hopmann 2012, 726). This is particularly pertinent for online news. For example, an analysis of news in the five largest newspapers of the Netherlands established that audience clicks affected news selection (Welbers et al. 2015), a conclusion supported in a study of over 300 editorial gatekeepers in the United States (Tien Vu 2014). Furthermore, who is applying news valuesterm can be as important as what news valuesterm are being applied. Using Bourdieu’s sociological approach, Schultz (2007, 197) argues that the degree of autonomy afforded to a journalist making choices about news will depend on the type of news organisation they work for, the type of journalism they produce, and the level at which they operate. For Bourdieu, journalists can position themselves only within the confines of the social or workplace space that surrounds them (Bourdieu and Wacquaint 1992), and, as such, they hold different levels of editorial capital in the journalistic field (Schultz 2007, 194). Put simply, some journalists are in a more powerful position than others and their decisions about what makes a story newsworthy will win out over other journalists’ decisions. In addition, the newsworthiness of some types of events or issues is open to discussion or interpretation. For example, “hard news” tends to comprise generally undisputed orthodox news valuesterm, while the news valuesterm associated with “soft news” are less dominant and may be more open to contestation (196). In their critique of Galtung and Ruge’s work on news valuesterm, Brighton and Foy (2007) argue that, while “there is still a place for a matrix which sets out the variables” (3), both the times and the media have changed since the 1960s. Their consideration of the impact of broadcast journalism, rolling news and digital media since the original Galtung and Ruge study led them to devise their own set of factors to be taken into consideration when selecting (and analysing) news stories in the twenty-first century: Relevance; Topicality; Composition; Expectation; Unusualness; Worth; and External influences. They add that news valuesterm will vary from medium to medium (29). Discussing the HarcuppersName and O’NeillpersName (2001date) study, Phillips (2015, 18) argues that conflictterm should be part of any taxonomyterm of news valuesterm, rather than being subsumed within the 1474 TONY HARCUPpersName AND DEIRDRE O’NEILLpersName category of bad newsterm. The HarcuppersName and O’NeillpersName (2001date) study acknowledged that content analysis of news outputs fails to make a clear distinction between news selection and news treatment, and this is explored further by Caple and Bednarek (2015, 11) in research that offers a complementary discursive approach to how news valuesterm are constructed through various semiotic resources and practices: “With the digitisation of the production and dissemination of news, news discourse has become a visually enriched product. The lack of research concerning news valuesterm and imagery has been noted by only a handful of researchers.” They highlight how photography and design emphasise news valuesterm such as superlativeness, negativity, personalisation and aesthetic appeal (8–11). Dick’s recent study of news valuesterm that inform interactive infographics found that, as one interviewee put it, “some visualisations of information can work to challenge conventional news valuesterm” (Dick 2014, 499). “What Works Best on Facebook?” In the digital and social media environment, Phillips (2015, 6) notes that while hard news may be shared on Twitter, it is Facebook that drives more traffic (Phillips 2012). This importance of Facebook over Twitter when it comes to driving traffic has been found in numerous studies, including those by Anderson and Caumont (2014), Newman (2011) and Olmstead, Mitchell, and Rosenstiel (2011). The hugely successful Mail Online “creates loyalty by giving readers what it already knows that they want”, found Angela Phillips (2012, 675), and they know it by observing which stories are the most likely to be shared by Facebook. “Most of the stories that attract large numbers of hits are also the jokey stories that people pass on”, adds Phillips. Online news therefore presents journalists with instant feedback about whether their news selection decisions (and methods of presentation) marry with those of significant numbers of readers. A study of news factors operating in the German media by Wendelin, Engelmann, and Neubarth (2015, 12–15) found internet and social media audiences to be less keen than journalists on politics and other stories of “social significance”. In a study of local online news, Schaudt and Carpenter (2009) note that research about readers’ preference for soft or hard news, at least in the United States, is contradictory. Examining the types of articles favoured by readers, they found that readers chose to view soft news about 63 per cent of the time and, unsurprisingly for a local site, the most popular news valueterm was proximity (76 per cent of stories) followed by conflictterm (31 per cent of stories). The rise of digital and online media also demonstrate the role that technology and audiences play in decisions about what makes the news, with user-generated content becoming more important in news production (Domingo et al. 2008). However, Jonsson and Ornebring (2011) note that participatory journalism is more prominent in online tabloid news, and content has relatively little to do with hard news, there being a greater emphasis on popular culture-orientated content or the personal, building brand loyalty. This knowledge influences both selection (Tien Vu 2014; Welbers et al. 2015) and presentation (Thurman and Myllylahti 2009). While it must be acknowledged that user-generated content has affected the news we receive (Domingo et al. 2008), somewhat utopian predictions about open-Web democracy revolutionising news production (Beckett 2008; Gillmor 2004; Rusbridger 2012) have not come to pass. Instead of radically changing the production process, the main role performed by the bulk of the online audience seems to be sharing and disseminating news on WHAT IS NEWS? 1475 social media platforms (Phillips 2012, 675). As Emily Bell (2015) puts it: “The key question for news organisations, tied to the goal of big traffic, is now ‘what works best on Facebook?’” As is evident from this brief literature review, much has been written on news valuesterm since 2001date. However, largely absent from the literature are empirical attempts to subject taxonomies of news valuesterm to the type of study that HarcuppersName and O’NeillpersName set out to conduct on the original Galtung and Ruge (1965) criteria. That is what we aim to do with the study discussed in this article. Methodology Analysis of published outputs cannot tell us everything about journalism, of course, but it can tell us something. Most obviously, it can tell us what has been selected for publication as news. This can be useful because it can help take our knowledge of what is news beyond the anecdotal and the realm of what we may think we know into more systematic analysis of what has actually been selected. This in turn allows for comparisons (between different news organisations or platforms, for example, or over time) and can complement other forms of research such as ethnographic studies, in-depth interviewing or critical discourse analysis. Study of published outputs can also be used in an attempt to apply—and thereby test—scholarly explanations of news valuesterm such as that put forward by Galtung and Ruge. Results of such a study can in turn be used to as a basis for further discussion and exploration about what does (and does not) become news. Our 2001date study, which was conducted in the hope of doing just that, was based on content analysis of page-lead news stories published in the United Kingdom’s three market-leading daily national newspapers (The Sun, Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph) during a sample month in 1999. Despite predictions of its imminent demise, the printed press remains worthy of study in part because of the continuing reach of its journalism: the paid-for titles selected for this study recorded a combined average daily sale of more than six million copies during the sample month (Ponsford 2014), and more than two million copies of the two free titles are distributed every day (Feeney and Beattie 2013; Press Gazette 2014). Circulation on such a scale remains socially significant. In addition, Phillips (2012) points out that online it is still major news organisations that obtain the largest proportion of audience share: while the BBC dominates, it is newspapers, notably the Daily Mail, The Guardian, The Telegraph and The Sun, which also feature in charts of the top news originators. Furthermore, she demonstrates that that “Twitter did not make ‘dead tree editions’ obsolete and it certainly did not render journalists obsolete” (670). Newspapers also continue to break major news stories and retain the capacity to influence other media, as highlighted by research suggesting that broadcasters took cues from newspapers’ agendasetting during coverage of the 2015 UK general election campaign (Cushion and Sambrook 2015). Crucially, the news valuesterm of newspapers remain worth studying because what appears in such publications is by definition the result of journalistic selection in a highly competitive market. For the new study, rather than simply conduct an exact replica of our earlier one 15 years on, we have expanded it to encompass a wider range of titles: The Sun, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mirror, Daily Express, The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, plus free-distribution dailies Metro and London’s Evening Standard. A sample week from November 2014 has been selected for each of the 10 newspapers, with titles spread over four weeks to cover the entire month and avoid results being skewed by one story dominating 1476 TONY HARCUPpersName AND DEIRDRE O’NEILLpersName coverage for days. As with the earlier content analysis, this study is of lead stories published on news pages, excluding sport, finance, features and comment pages. This time only the front and right-hand-side news pages have been considered, because such pages are regarded within the industry as being the prime location for news. Exceptions were allowed when right-hand pages were given over to full-page advertisements (most frequently in the Telegraph), when the left-hand page lead may be chosen for analysis. This resulted in a data-set of 711 stories, each selected by the newspaper as a news page lead. Each story was then analysed in an effort to identify which, if any, of the HarcuppersName and O’NeillpersName (2001date) news valuesterm could be detected in the new sample; how news valuesterm interact with each other; and whether any amendments, additions or deletions to the list of news valuesterm might be considered appropriate. Our methodology was deceptively simple if time-consuming: we read each of the 711 stories and used our 2001date set of news valuesterm as a coding sheetterm, identifying which if any of the various factors we could identify in each story. Deciding which news valuesterm were present in any particular story involved a close reading of the text, consideration of the content and an evaluation of the context (was it following up a story that had originally been published elsewhere, for example?); the fact that both of us have worked as journalists in addition to studying and teaching journalism perhaps helped in this process. To ensure consistency each story was read and coded by both researchers, with disparities in coding discussed before arriving at consensus. Clearly there is subjectivityterm involved in such a process—just as there is subjectivityterm involved in the journalistic process itself—and we would never claim anything different. But we nevertheless believe the sample of stories is large enough to allow for some tentative conclusions to be drawn. As well as expanding the range of newspapers studied, a further addition has been to examine a phenomenon little talked about at the time of our original research, let alone when Galtung and Ruge first published: the role of the audience. In the digital age audiences are also selecting and disseminating stories and this in turn is affecting journalists’ own news selection decisions (Tien Vu 2014; Welbers et al. 2015). Stories are increasingly being disseminated on social media platforms through audience recommendations and “shares” (Olmstead, Mitchell, and Rosenstiel 2011; Hermida et al. 2012; Phillips 2012) in what Phillips terms “sociability”. To explore this area alongside our content analysis of newspapers we also examine which, if any, news valuesterm can be identified in the case of the stories from UK news providers that were shared most frequently on Facebook and Twitter. Consideration of the most popular news items shared on social media during 2014, the same year in which data were collected for newspaper output, will inform discussion of the ways in which phenomena such as “sociability”, or what we call “shareabilityterm”, may now be taken into consideration by journalists when selecting (or preparing) material for publication. Findings: Newspapers In considering 711 page lead stories across 10 newspaper titles (see Tables 1 and 2), our findings show that bad newsterm is the big winner; but good news is still significant, and some stories fall into both categories. One example of a story containing both good and bad newsterm appeared in the Telegraph on 20 November 2014: “Britain Bars US ‘Pick-up artist’ Who Gives £1000 Lessons in Misogyny”. The man is in the news because of his sexist attitudes (bad newsterm), but this article is about banning him from entering the TABLE 1 HarcuppersName and O’NeillpersName’s (2001date) news valuesterm (NV) identified in UK newspapers in 2014 Title of newspaper Power elite (NV1) Redtop tabloids Daily Mirror The Sun Mid-market tabloids Daily Express Daily Mail Quality or “broadsheet” titles Daily Telegraph The Guardian The Independent The Times Free distribution titles Evening Standard Metro Total 216 Celebrity (NV2) 16 25 15 11 8 10 12 12 16 20 145 Entertainmentterm (NV3) 37 39 38 51 20 21 12 38 27 49 332 Surprise (NV4) 19 29 29 29 41 45 31 55 21 46 345 Bad newsterm (NV5) 40 37 36 49 37 45 44 71 31 52 442 Good news (NV6) 6 8 22 8 15 7 22 12 20 17 137 Magnitudeterm (NV7) 7 1 15 17 26 23 15 29 7 25 165 Relevance (NV8) Follow-up (NV9) Newspaper agenda (NV10) 209 221 Number of stories in sample 58 66 63 80 63 73 60 112 61 75 711 WHAT IS NEWS? 1477 1478 TONY HARCUPpersName AND DEIRDRE O’NEILLpersName TABLE 2 The totals, and ranking, of HarcuppersName and O’NeillpersName’s (2001date) news valuesterm (NV) identified in UK newspapers in 2014 HarcuppersName and O’NeillpersName’s news valuesterm as identified in the 2001date study Power elite (NV1) Celebrity (NV2) Entertainmentterm (NV3) Surprise (NV4) Bad newsterm (NV5) Good news (NV6) Magnitudeterm (NV7) Relevance (NV8) Follow-up (NV9) Newspaper agenda (NV10) Total frequency within 711 newspaper page lead news stories in 2014 sample 216 145 332 345 442 137 165 209 221 51 Ranking of frequency of news valueterm identified within 711 newspaper page lead news stories in 2014 sample 5th 8th 3rd 2nd 1st 9th 7th 6th 4th 10th country (welcomed as good news by many people opposed to sexism). Other issues/events that could be interpreted as either good or bad newsterm dependent on the reader’s viewpoint are written and presented emphatically as either positive or negative (seemingly in line with the newspaper’s own agenda), such as: “EU Must Change or We Quit”, the frontpage lead in the Telegraph on 20 November 2014. While all the newspapers favoured bad newsterm, certain titles leaned most heavily towards it, notably the Times (the most bad newsterm, at 71 stories), Mail, Mirror and Guardian, all with around six times as much bad newsterm as good. This finding that a story might simultaneously be good news and bad newsterm illustrates that any taxonomyterm of news valuesterm ought not to be thought of as a list of alternatives. It is clear that one story might tick several boxes, and how certain news valuesterm operate in different combinations might usefully be an issue for future research. Perhaps unsurprisingly, surprise is a significant factor, ranking second to bad newsterm overall. Entertainmentterm was the third biggest news valueterm recorded, but was most prominent in the Mail, followed by Metro, Sun, Express and Times. The Sun had the biggest total of stories recorded as meeting the celebrity criterion. Entertainmentterm and celebrity were both more significant in the popular red-top and mid-market titles, although they were by no means insignificant at the quality end of the market, as has been noted previously (O’NeillpersName 2012). The power eliteterm seemed to be of more significance as a news valueterm in the broadsheet/quality press, possibly because these papers report “serious” news more prominently. The newspaper’s own agenda appeared to come into play more in the mid-market titles than elsewhere, with the Mail and Express between them accounting for more instances (28) than the other eight titles combined (23). Of course, there may also be more subtle agendas at work that might require ethnographic study and interviews with journalists to discern. Overall, we found many similarities between titles in the snapshot sample as well as some differences, with freesheets mostly mirroring a mixture of the results from the midmarkets and red-tops. However, in revisiting our 2001date set of news valuesterm, we found that some categories were too broadly defined when subjected to empirical testing; some WHAT IS NEWS? 1479 categories need to be unpicked and some new categories seem to warrant inclusion, and these are put forward in the Conclusion. Entertainmentterm encompasses both a dark and light side, which might be better conveyed in two distinct categories. Some of the darker but “entertaining” human-interest stories might perhaps be more accurately labelled as dramaterm. News stories about sport could be added to the entertainmentterm mix alongside show business, while the surprise category ought to contain “unusualness” within its definition. We also noticed that there were many stories involving large corporations and these might be included within the power eliteterm category. There is a case for teasing out the broad definition of bad newsterm to add conflictterm as a separate category, as has been suggested by Phillips (2015). We also found ourselves agreeing with Caple and Bednarek (2015) that strong visuals can be a reason for selecting a story, and that in semiotic terms, a visual can be seen as conveying and emphasising a number of news factors, such as bad newsterm, dramaterm or surprise. The importance of visuals and, to a lesser extent, audio became particularly noticeable when considering stories shared on social media (see below). On investigation it became apparent that the term “magnitudeterm” can mean more than merely involving large numbers; it ought to include extreme behaviours or occurrences (a man dying in extreme temperatures in an oven, for example, or a particularly unpleasant crime). Finally, there is a strong case to be made for exclusivityterm to be considered a news valueterm in its own right, given the frequency with which we found newspapers drawing attention to the fact, as in: “a poll by the Times indicates … ” (24 November 2014) or “It follows an investigation by the Independent … ” (29 November 2014). Findings: Social Media Any study of contemporary news valuesterm must now also consider the impact of social media on the traditional division between the roles of journalists as active (producers, selectors, gatekeepers) and of audiences as passive (receivers, consumers). To this end, having considered news selected by journalists, we then examined those stories that were most frequently shared on social media by UK news audiences in the same year. Although the two data-sets have different specifications, they nonetheless allow for some preliminary comparisons of notions of newsworthiness as decided by journalists and audiences, respectively. Facebook was the most common way of sharing, according to research by journalism. co.uk, which produced a chart of the “top 10” most popular news stories from mainstream media outlets, as measured by Facebook shares, likes and comments (see Appendix A). These ranged from a Mail Online story featuring pictures of icicles, whose 586,250 Facebook interactions made it the most popular, to a Mirror article about giant spiders, in 10th place with 315,613 Facebook shares, likes and comments (Albeanu 2015a). The “top 10” stories from the same mainstream news outlets as measured by shares via Twitter suggest that the most shared news items on Facebook were shared many more times than the most shared news stories on Twitter. The most tweeted story was a Mail Online piece about a YouTube video teaching dog-owners how to cook treats for their pets. Also on the list was a Telegraph infographic about Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces (Albeanu 2015b). Both items also featured in a different list of the most tweeted stories of 2014 originating only from national newspaper websites (Searchmetrics 1480 TONY HARCUPpersName AND DEIRDRE O’NEILLpersName 2015). By combining these two Twitter lists and removing any repetition it is possible to identify the “top 15” most tweeted items from news sources in 2014, from the Mail’s “paw-fect recipes” at 76,752 tweets to the Sun’s photospread of a scantily clad “supermodel”, which was tweeted 17,852 times (see Appendix B). Although a crude measure, we took the top 10 Facebook stories and the top 15 most tweeted stories as being a snapshot of which news stories most interested those members of the audience using social media in 2014. To that end, we have attempted to identify which of the HarcuppersName and O’NeillpersName (2001date) news valuesterm can be said to apply to each of these 25 stories, and to rank factors in order of frequency (see Table 3). Between the newspaper and social media data-sets, there were some similarities as well as differences; bad newsterm is almost as popular a factor online as in print. However, the most popular stories online are rarely concerned with the power eliteterm. There may be little doubt that digital media can help challenge mainstream news agendas, but the most popular stories do not reflect this democratic ideal. Rather, the most common news valueterm is entertainmentterm; such stories seem to be shared by online readers because they are fun, and sharing them can brighten the day. This suggests a possible new news valueterm as highlighted by previous studies (Olmstead, Mitchell, and Rosenstiel 2011; Hermida et al. 2012; Phillips 2012; Tien Vu 2014; Welbers et al. 2015): shareabilityterm. Precisely what qualities give one story more shareabilityterm than another are hard to pin down, but Janine Gibson (a former Guardian website editor who in 2015 became editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed UK) has noted that the most shared stories tend to be “stuff that makes you laugh and stuff that makes you angry” (quoted in Newman 2011, 24). The quest for shareable stories is perhaps likely to become an increasingly important consideration within newsrooms (Bell 2015). As is noted in the Reuters Institute 2015 Digital News Report, based on a survey of more than 20,000 people in 12 countries: TABLE 3 The totals, and ranking, of HarcuppersName and O’NeillpersName’s (2001date) news valuesterm (NV) identified in the top stories shared on social media in 2014 HarcuppersName and O’NeillpersName’s news valuesterm as identified in the 2001date study Power elite (NV1) Celebrity (NV2) Entertainmentterm (NV3) Surprise (NV4) Bad newsterm (NV5) Good news (NV6) Magnitudeterm (NV7) Relevance (NV8) Follow-up (NV9) Newspaper agenda (NV10) Frequency within top 10 UK news stories shared on Facebook in 2014 0 1 6 Frequency within top 15 UK news stories shared on Twitter in 2014 3 4 11 Total frequency within these 25 popular news stories shared on social media in 2014 3 5 17 Ranking of frequency of news valueterm identified within these 25 news stories shared on social media in 2014 9th =7th 1st 2nd 3rd =7th 6th 5th 4th 10th WHAT IS NEWS? 1481 The news that is most read, shared, and discussed in social media is produced by professional news organisations … Twitter tends to work better for serious news brands like the BBC and New York Times. Facebook tends to favour more accessible content and brands that focus more on entertainmentterm and lifestyle content such as PlayBuzz, the Huffington Post, and BuzzFeed. (Newman 2015, 81) So, if news selection—and presentation—becomes dominated by pre-emptive thoughts about what works best on Facebook, does that inevitably mean that the news agenda will become increasingly dominated by “soft” entertaining items? The evidence of our admittedly limited study is mixed, suggesting that the public’s news preferences may be more complicated than that. Celebrity does not dominate social media shares as much as might perhaps have been predicted, ranking equal seventh in our sample, with the Mail’s celeb-driven “sidebar of shame” notable by its absence. Other parts of the Mail’s output were represented, however, and it provided the most shared story on both Facebook and on Twitter: both were strong on visuals, with pictures of a frozen Michigan lighthouse capturing many people’s attention on Facebook, while a video on cooking for your pet intriguing Twitter users. It seems fair to conclude that such visual-led items seem to score highly for “shareabilityterm” on both Facebook and Twitter. While such “soft” stories top both social media lists, there is also some evidence to back up Phillips’s view that Twitter can also drive traffic to harder news. For example, one of the most shared stories on Twitter was about the number of Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces, a story that was presented as an infographic demonstrating the deaths over a period of time. The visual nature of this supports Dick’s (2014) finding that something that might not be considered a news story in its own right—because of the lack of a conventional new news angle or “peg”—can emerge as a popular item when data over a period of time is given the infographic treatment. The list of most tweeted stories also included hard news items on the referendum on Scottish independence and about student protests in Venezuela, neither of which achieved similar prominence on Facebook (compare Appendix A and Appendix B). This preliminary examination of how news valuesterm operate on social media is necessarily tentative, and it is worth pointing out that many of the people sharing links may not normally be “readers” of the news site in question and may only have come across it via a link in the first place. Users of social media may even be sharing links while expressing disagreement with—or disapproval of—a particular item. Such is today’s journalism landscape. Conclusion: Towards a Contemporary Set of News Valuesterm Much remains the same, yet much has changed in journalism since HarcuppersName and O’NeillpersName (2001date) was published. The importance of visuals, highlighted by Caple and Bednarek (2015) and Dick (2014), is supported by our analysis of news items in both newspapers and on the most shared lists on social media, leading us to conclude that arresting audio-visuals are certainly worth listing as a news valueterm in their own right. There is also evidence to support the arguments of Phillips (2015) and Schultz (2007), among others, that conflictterm and exclusivityterm are both worthy of consideration in their own right. Last and probably not least, the findings point towards the importance of a concept we call “shareabilityterm”. Shareabilityterm may be hard to define, although Gibson’s “stuff that makes you laugh and stuff that makes you angry” perhaps comes close (Newman 2011, 24), but it appears to 1482 TONY HARCUPpersName AND DEIRDRE O’NEILLpersName be an increasingly important consideration in the selection process (Olmstead, Mitchell, and Rosenstiel 2011; Hermida et al. 2012; Phillips 2012; Tien Vu 2014; Welbers et al. 2015). Future research could usefully explore the extent to which these factors can be identified in the output of news media across a range of platforms and in different political-economic contexts. In particular, there is a need for empirical research into whether or not news organisations’ desire to have their output widely shared on social media may be impacting on selection decisions; and, if so, with what consequences? We offer this updating of HarcuppersName and O’NeillpersName (2001date), which was in turn an attempt to update Galtung and Ruge (1965), in the hope that it will prompt more research into news rather than less. The findings of our new study lead us to propose for discussion an updated set of contemporary news valuesterm that, in various combinations, seem to be identifiable within published news stories. Although there will be exceptions, we have found that potential news stories must generally satisfy one and preferably more of the following requirements to be selected: . Exclusivityterm: Stories generated by, or available first to, the news organisation as a result of interviews, letters, investigations, surveys, polls, and so on. . Bad newsterm: Stories with particularly negative overtones such as death, injury, defeat and loss (of a job, for example). . Conflictterm: Stories concerning conflictterm such as controversies, arguments, splits, strikes, fights, insurrections and warfare. . Surprise: Stories that have an element of surprise, contrast and/or the unusual about them. . Audio-visuals: Stories that have arresting photographs, video, audio and/or which can be illustrated with infographics. . Shareabilityterm: Stories that are thought likely to generate sharing and comments via Facebook, Twitter and other forms of social media. . Entertainmentterm: Soft stories concerning sex, showbusiness, sport, lighter human interest, animals, or offering opportunities for humorous treatment, witty headlines or lists. . Dramaterm: Stories concerning an unfolding dramaterm such as escapes, accidents, searches, sieges, rescues, battles or court cases. . Follow-up: Stories about subjects already in the news. . The power eliteterm: Stories concerning powerful individuals, organisations, institutions or corporations. . Relevance: Stories about groups or nations perceived to be influential with, or culturally or historically familiar to, the audience. . Magnitudeterm: Stories perceived as sufficiently significant in the large numbers of people involved or in potential impact, or involving a degree of extreme behaviour or extreme occurrence. . Celebrity: Stories concerning people who are already famous. . Good news: Stories with particularly positive overtones such as recoveries, breakthroughs, cures, wins and celebrations. . News organisation’s agenda: Stories that set or fit the news organisation’s own agenda, whether ideological, commercial or as part of a specific campaign. It is important to reiterate that the above criteria can be contested since they are also governed by practical considerations, such as the availability of resources and time, and subjective, often unconscious, influences, such as a mix of the social, educational, ideological and WHAT IS NEWS? 1483 cultural influences on journalists, as well as the environment in which they work, their position in the workplace hierarchy and the type of audience for whom journalists are producing news. These can cause fluctuations, with certain news valuesterm rising up the hierarchy in different situations, which may explain why events with similar intrinsic news valuesterm are not always given the same prominence. Also for online news, the pressure to obtain clicks and shares will also influence decisions about what news to select, as well as news treatment (Thurman and Myllylahti 2009; Phillips 2012; Bell 2015). In other words, who is selecting news, for whom, in what medium and by what means (and available resources), may well be as important as whatever news valuesterm may or may not be inherent in any potential story. Thus, we reiterate that the above news valueterm taxonomyterm should be seen as a tool for analysis and further research—designed to provoke discussion and, indeed, contestation— not something to be churned out as if it is the last word on the subject. And, whenever the question arises of why a particular story is seen as newsworthy, there will always remain an element of truth to the reply: “It just is!” DISCLOSURE STATEMENT No potential conflictterm of interest was reported by the authors.