WHAT IS NEWS? 2

By Frank Luther Matt


Many professors, publicists, and press-men have tried their hands at definitions of the word news, and sometimes with amusing results. There was, for example, the ingenious fellow who observed that the word was an anagram, made up of initials of the four major points of the compass-north, east, west, and south-and that it must therefore be defined as happenings in all directions. This naive theory of the origin of the word has actually had a considerable acceptance, and was set forth in an early edition of Haydn's dictionary.

Of course, the word originally meant simply new things, novelties; but recent reports of events were new things, and in the sixteenth century newes came into common use for tidings. Thus we have it in Lord Bemers' translation of Froissart's Chronicles in 1523: when the Duke of Lancaster heard some bad reports from France, "he was right pensyue and sore troubled with those news." At that time newes meant recent reports of events or situations, and that is still the primary or generic-meaning of the word today.

In the interest of sound thinking about the news, it is well to keep in mind this basic meaning. News is always a report. The event itself is not news. When we say the election of a President is "big news," we are speaking figuratively; we are employing what the rhetoricians call synecdoche, that is, reference to the material instead of the thing from which it is made. The American news agencies commonly make up lists each December of what they call the "biggest stories of the year," when what they mean is the most news­worthy events of the year. Such figures of speech are defensible and serviceable, but they should not cause us to forget that news itself is not an event or condition or idea, but the report of such a matter.

The one quality of the report which is necessary in order to make it "news" is timeliness. In other words, news must be new. As we shall see, this truism embodied in the generic definition persists as an essential in the working definitions of news as it is understood by editors and reporters on modern newspapers. For editors eventually took over the news and defined it for themselves and their readers.

We did not need anything more than the simple, generic definition so long as news was anybody's business, and everybody's; but when professional newsmen appeared in the seventeenth century, people began to think of "newes" in terms of what Nicholas Bourne, Nathaniel Butter, and William Archer printed in London, or George V Eseler and Broer Jonson in Amsterdam. The first English newspaper was called Corante, or Weekly Newes. For more than a hundred years, it was common usage to refer to a news-sheet as "the newes," so that a man might refer to his "copy of the news," meaning his copy of the current newspaper. Thus the popular concept of what news was came more and more to be formed upon what news was printed.

With this development, the editor assumed a special suzerainty over the news. He decided what was news and what was not. This was not as arbitrary or as absolute an authority as it seemed. The editor was, professionally, in charge of the news, but his control over it was limited sharply by several factors.

Space in the newspaper is always restricted. The first American newspaper, Publick Occurrences, contained 5300 words, all told; it could all be printed in half a page of a modem newspaper. But the modern metropolitan newspaper of sixty-four large pages is no more able to publish any considerable proportion of the news reports from all the states all the Union and all the countries of the world than was Ben Harris' tiny sheet. The slogan of the New York Times, "All the News That's Fit to Print," is more a sentiment than a fact. The slogan originated in the years when Ochs set his newspaper off sharply from the "yellow journalism" of morbid sensationalism which flowered so nauseously during the competition between the World and Journal at the turn of the century. The Times had two slogans: "It Does Not Soil the Breakfast Cloth" and "All the News That's Fit to Print." The emphasis was on the matter of fitness, not comprehensiveness. The modern news field is so vast that an editor's first task is one of selection. He becomes a specialist in news values. But he is less a dictator than a compromiser of interests.

Second only to space limitations are those imposed by the availability of news reports. News was meager in the early years of the American press, not because important events did not occur, but because the papers had no adequate reports. Mathew Carey in 1785 wrote in his Pennsylvania Evening Herald that “the European news is all, all equally flat, equally insipid. Hard indeed is the lot of the poor Printer! Obliged to furnish out his bill of fare, at all events; he must run through piles of papers, glean an article or two amidst heaps of trash, and yet be liable to the charge of stupidity and dullness.”

This was in the years when papers received as "exchanges" were an editor's chief reliance. Modern communication has developed only in the last hundred years. But even now, with extraordinarily efficient news-gathering agencies at work, the iron curtains, wars, censorships, and the recalcitrance of sources of information set up many barriers to the free circulation of news.

Moreover, much of the news that is procurable is not usable because it is not of high interest to a given paper's audience. Thus the internal affairs of Chile or a meeting of the Arkansas legislature would reach the columns of the Baltimore Sun only in rare instances. They may be important to many thousands of people, but the telegraph editor of the Sun has to decide whether they are interesting to his readers.

This imposes the third limitation on news--that of reader interest or disinterest. An editor is, in a considerable degree, the servant of his readers. He is not their slave, and (as we shall try to make clear later) he has responsibilities as a guide and public teacher; but he has to select news, in the main, which he believes his readers want. Unless he can satisfy their desires fairly well, his paper will soon be out of business and he will be out of a job. A good editor is supposed to have a "sixth sense" for news-that is, for knowing what will interest his readers. Some of them have such a sense because they are, by back­grounds and training, a part of the group for which they work, and themselves participate in the ideas, feelings, and interests of their audience. Others of them, through intense study and long experience, have learned to know and understand their readers. Still others have what they think of as an instinct for news; they guess, and if they are lucky they guess right.

These editors with a sixth sense for news have been loath, in some cases, to accept modem methods of measuring readers' interests. Helped on by the advertisers, however, such methods have achieved wide acceptance. George Gallup, working out his doctorate at the State University of Iowa, devised a system whereby interviewers, armed with copies of a given issue of a newspaper, obtained statements from readers of that issue as to exactly what they had read and what they had skipped over, then it was only a clerical task to correlate the information obtained and figure out just what items and what types of news were actually being read. Given a proper sample of readers as respondents, and careful techniques in interviewing, this is a valuable means of supplanting editorial guesswork with facts, though, of course, it does not tell what people might have read if they had been offered something else. Used on many papers (142 in the Continuing Studies by 1952) order several years, it has provided useful guidance.

And there are still further limitations on the work of the editors of the news. There are certain controls, pressures, and prejudices, sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle and devious. These will be discussed more fully later, but they must be mentioned here in order to complete our description of the practical background which the newspaperman has when he attempts to define "news." Many of these controls and pressures are not at all sinister. All are a part of the intricately complex pattern in which the editor must work.

When the newsman, then, who is professionally in charge of the gathering, the processing, and the distribution of the news, defines this thing with which he deals, he is thinking of what he prints. He is not thinking of all recent reports throughout the habitable globe, or of the fama of Virgil's famous passage, or of anything unsuited to his columns; the reports which he recognizes as news are severely limited by the actual conditions of the newspaper.

Thus we have such definitions as that of W. C. Jarnagin, onetime editor of the Des Moines Capital: "News is anything that happens in which people are interested." "News is whatever your readers want to know about," wrote a former editor of the Kansas City Star. "Anything that enough people want to read is news, provided it does not violate the canons of good taste or the laws of libel," wrote J. J. Schindler, of the St. Paul Dispatch, in Collier's famous symposium, of March 18, 1911. These are the authentic voices of busy news editors. Or hear Arthur MacEwen, whom W. R. Hearst made editor of the San Francisco Examiner when he first took it over: "News is anything that makes a reader say, 'Gee whiz!' “And finally, note the perfect editorial-type definition: "News is whatever a good editor chooses to print."

One expects a definition to be neat and carefully circumscribed. But in view of the extreme diversity of those human beings who edit newspapers, this kind of definition is anything but tidy. Gerald W. Johnson, at the end of his excellent essay, What Is News, published by Knopf in 1926, wrote: The news in which an intelligent [newspaper] man will find most satisfaction is the sort of news which, while it may contribute little to his financial well-being, will test his professional capacity in its presentation; and the severest test of that capacity comes in stripping away the ambiguities and obscurities that have enshrouded some important truth and making it understood by a world in which ignorance, carelessness, and stupidity are far more common than keen delight in the battle of ideas. That, though, is a definition of the best news. In general practice, news is what is in the newspapers; and newspapers are what newspapermen make them. It is a depressing reflection, rather a terrible reflection. But it is true.

Mr. Johnson was confessedly writing as a newspaperman. Tidy or not, his is the pragmatic definition of news, though we have to keep in mind always that the newspaperman himself is not a dictator, but works under the limitations which have just been reviewed.

What goes on in the editor's head as he tries to evaluate the reports that come in to him, as he makes his choices and processes his material? What criteria does he use in this evaluation? There is general agreement that the "importance" of news (that is, its import­ance for use in the newspaper) is commonly measured by at least four tests: timeliness, prominence, proximity, and probable consequence.

Timeliness is always one of the editor's chief measuring-sticks. The most recent development or detail of a running story must always take priority. Yesterday's news is no longer "important." This repeats an essential of the simple generic definition of news.

The prominence of the persons involved in a report affords another test. Anything the President of the United States does makes "important" news. The reputation of a movie star may be factitious, but Hollywood personalities and names become so well known that their activities often make "must" stories for the newspapers. Most of us are hero-worshipers at heart, and we want to know how the great ones live. It is true that the newspaper plays a large part in developing a prominence which it must then exploit, as that of a Lindbergh, a Di Maggio, a Capone; but there must have been a dynamic activity, which made the personality newsworthy in the first place. Nor can we shrug off the validity of the popular feeling that prominence equals importance; the potency of prominence for good or ill is not to be denied.

Proximity is a third criterion. The news of a paper's home city is of first importance to that paper's audience, and even the largest American newspapers are to a considerable extent local. In spite of modern developments in fast transportation and communication, we have no national newspapers in the United States as they have in some other countries, notably in England. Such a paper is by no means impossible for the future, in view of inventions and technologies presently on the horizon; but thus far the vast scope of our country has prevented such a development. Anyway, readers are primarily interested in their neigh­bors and their own affairs. Isolationism may be on the wane, but it will be a long time before a massacre in Allahabad will interest the readers of the Memphis Commercial Appeal as much as would a bond issue for a new water system in Memphis.

The fourth test which the editor uses to determine what news is important for his paper is probable consequence--the expected or possible effect on his readers of a given event or condition. A congressional debate on a new law, the spread of a polio epidemic, a market crash: such events make front-page news, of course. A war over­seas in which our nation is engaged, or likely to be engaged, changes the meaning of "proximity": its probable consequences bring it close to all readers.

Editors are, in general, with due allowances for slight divergences in emphasis, pretty surely guided by these four criteria-timeliness, prominence, proximity, and probable consequence. If a story ranks high in these four qualities, it is regarded as important to the reader, and therefore "big news" and a "must" for the newspaper. That the qualities are not actually equal in real importance seems fairly obvious, but that is a question we must postpone for the moment.

Here we must go on to point out that the editor has a second set of tests by which he evaluates the multitudinous happenings of the day. These are tests by types of subject matter which are known to be interesting, and they are founded on well-known feelings and curiosities of the reader. A sex story, for example, will ordinarily draw quick interest. An incident dealing with a large sum of money is likely to attract interest, especially if it is dramatized or associated with persons. Other sure-fire matters in the news are bitter or violent conflict, suspense, disaster, horror, unusualness, appeal to sympathy or pity, romance, "human interest" bits of common life, children, animals. These are interest provoking factors commonly named in such an enumeration, but we might prolong the list until we have named all the objects of popular curiosity. Indeed, these "elements of reader interest," as MacDougall cast them, might well be arranged in a schedule based on the fundamental human emotions.

Journalism founded on a rule-of-thumb such as the foregoing list suggests is subject to many abuses. Before we criticize news reporting based on such concepts of popular interest, however, let us remind ourselves that (a) it is a proper function of the newsman to serve his public, (b) if he does not do so he will be forced by economic means to give place to someone who will, and (c) by and large, and in the long run, the people are likely to be right and sound in their interests, emotions, and desires. The high-brow berates demos too glibly. It is too easy, for example, for the sophisticate to condemn the use of the romance motif as "corny," for the altruist to lambaste the money theme in news as sordid, or for the tender-minded to object to the element of horror in many reports. It is too easy for H. A. Overstreet to allow his aversions to lead him into such a generalization as; "The newspaper has found its vested interest in catastrophe" (The Mature Mind, page 108). Of course catastrophes, of which war is the greatest, must be recorded in the newspapers. Reports of mine disasters, destructive fires, and railroad and airplane wrecks point toward investigations and reforms. Popular interest in such things is certainly not wholly morbid, and often useful. Shrillness of faultfinding dies down when we study the basis of such news and try to understand its roots in human needs.

Scolding subsides, perhaps; but there is still plenty of room left for sober and serious thinking about what the newsman is doing with the news in the mid-twentieth century. We have seen how, long ago, naturally and perforce, he took over the definition of news and the news pattern. He has defined it on the run, under the strain of quick decisions, on the edge of a deadline, in the midst of action and noise and multiple pressures. He has made it, day by day, what it is, and has then rationalized the process. Mostly by trial and error, he has approximated the wishes and needs of his public.

The great danger in such a process is that there should be too little sound and philo­sophical thinking about the aims and responsibilities of journalism by the men who are making it. The reporter has too often taken over from his teachers in the newsroom the idea that certain elements of interest, such as we have listed above, form an informal code--the unwritten but accepted rules of the "newspaper game," without much thinking or much wise guidance. He finds a game with such rules exciting and absorbing, and has little opportunity or inclination, in the midst of action and the pressures of competition, to give thought to his obligation of professional service to society.

The lowest and yellowest journalism is that which accepts newspaper work as a game in which a set of obvious "elements of interest" are the counters, and sees no significances in news beyond those immediate emotional appeals. A money-sex story is always a "good" story to the ill-trained and short-sighted reporter who works in such a tradition, especially if there is also an element of unusualness and perhaps some suspense. Indeed a story involving all these factors--a sex-romance built around an heiress to a vast fortune, with a violent contest for her dubious favors through the use of unusual weapons by the suitors, with the outcome of it all in suspense, and with appeals to sym­pathy, a dash of horror, and something about a pet animal--such a story would seem to such a reporter to deserve an eight-column, front-page banner. Fantastic manipulation of "elements of interest," such as this, have not been lacking in certain sections of the American press. Jazz it up; fake it; make it exciting at whatever cost! Anything to make the reader say, "Gee whiz!" Such myopic and overemphatic use of a. small group of themes believed to be exciting to the reader is disgraceful, and makes thoughtful readers question the extent to which aiming at popular interests may be justified.

It comes down to a question of important in news. There is an obvious importance in the "elements of interest" which the editor is quick to see and to seize upon; their proper use is legitimate and necessary. Though crude overplay of them is silly and outrageous, they always have been and doubtless always will be recognized and used by good newsmen.

But there is another kind of importance in news which is not so immediately obvious. This other kind we shall call, here and in later pages, "significant importance."

It will be helpful in this connection to note Wilbur Schramm's doctrine of immediate and delayed rewards in reading the news, which is itself based on the work. L. Thorndike and other psychologists. Schramm says that readers and listeners take their news of crime, accidents and disasters, sports, and human interest for immediate "pleasure reward"; while news of public affairs, economic and social problems, science. and education is generally read for a delayed reward of general preparedness and information.

For example, the reader of sports stories, which are based on interest in conflict, receives an immediate reward in the stimulation of his emotions, though he knows that the Dodgers' victory yesterday has no more than an ephemeral interest for him, though he may forget the very name of Ezzard Charles next year, and though the clowning of the wrestlers on the TV screen means less in his life than the good dinner he has just eaten. But he finds such news easy and diverting, and he forms a taste for it. His attitude is somewhat the same toward most crime stories, news of disasters, Hollywood sex scandals, and so on-the news that centers upon the elements of interest which we have been dis­cussing. These stories bring out his personal partisanship, his shared experience, a quick stimulation of his emotions; he likes them, and therefore the editor of his newspaper and the director of his newscasts know that they are "important."

But there are other kinds of news which are based less on exciting conditions and events. They may involve conflict, as nearly everything in the world does, but not yet open and violent conflict. They deal with matters which may ultimately have vital and tremendous consequences to every reader, but which at the present moment do not seem highly interesting because the situation has not "broken," to use the newsman's team. They have not yet reached the stage of what Walter Lippmann, in his book Public Opinion, calls "overt news"; they have not yet come clearly out into the open arena of conflict between recognized leaders, of bitter fight, shock of battle, and frenzied propaganda. And yet these stories may even now be recognizably behind the "overt news," looming up as background, and far more significantly important than most of the thousand little happenings and private scandals and baseball scores that fill so many newspaper columns.

It will be recognized by the patient reader of this chapter (whom we hopefully conceive of as possessing an analytical turn of mind) that this delayed-reward news stands a much better chance of getting into the newspaper or on the air through the first set of editorial tests which we discussed-timeliness, prominence, proximity, and probable consequence-than it does through the criteria of the "elements of interest." Indeed, the test of probable consequence is virtually a measurement of significant importance. Of course, the two categories of immediate-reward news and delayed-reward news are not as sharply defined or mutually exclusive as they may at first seem. But, in general, it must be perceived that the editor works under a double standard: he has to decide what news he will print, on the one hand, because his readers demand it for the easy reading which brings immediate responses, and what he will select, on the other hand, because he thinks it may, in the long run, affect the lives and fortunes of his readers. He has to apportion his news space between the important and the significantly important.

Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times, speaking on "The Responsibilities of Maturity" at the University of Missouri in 1950, said: “We have two choices. We can report, and define, and explain, in honest perspective, the great issues which are now before the nation and the world; or we can ignore and minimize these issues and divert our readers to less important, but no doubt more enter­taining, matters. My vote goes for the paper that informs.”

This is a problem of which thinking newsmen are well aware. They have come to use the terms "hard news" and "soft news." "Hard news" refers to the less exciting and more analytical stories of public affairs, economics, social problems, science, etc.; and "soft news" is that which any editor immediately recognizes as interesting to andhis readers therefore "important" for his paper. The two terms represent the double standard of news evaluation with which editors must cope.

The chief fault and failure of American journalism today-and this applies to all media of information-is the disproportionate space and emphasis given to the obviously interesting news of immediate reward ("soft news") at the expense of the significantly important news of situations and events which have not yet reached the stage of being exciting for the casual reader ("hard news"). The divided responsibility for this failure is not easy to place with fairness to all; it is basically that of the reader, but publishers, editors, and news-gatherers cannot escape their share of it.

This is a matter for later chapters, and must await a fuller discussion of the nature of news. Let us now proceed to examine certain great concepts of news which have developed in the journalism of the past, and see how and in what degree they have become fixed in the modem pattern.


ADDITIONAL READING


"What is News?" (2006, July). In Handbook of Independent Journalism. Retrieved February 9, 2008, from http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/journalism/whatis.htm.