A Comparison of Newsworthiness: Book & Article

Write about what you have learnt about newsworthiness. Are the factors that make a story newsworthy the same factors that would arouse your interest in a story?

There are a total of 12 factors that affect the newsworthiness of an article:

1.) Timeliness
2.) Proximity
3.) Exceptional Quality
4.) Possible Future Impact
5.) Prominence
6.) Conflict
7.) Number of People Involved/Affected
8.) Consequence
9.) Human Interest
10.) Pathos
11.) Shock Value
12.) Titillation Component

I feel that not all factors that make a newspaper article newsworthy the same factors that would arouse one’s interest in as story. However, there are maybe only 4 factors involved: Possible Future Impact, Conflict, Consequence and Human Interest. Firstly, a possible future impact would most probably be a book having the theme of science fiction. In science fiction books, we think and explore some of the events or technology that would happen in the future, one example would be cloning, from the book “Never Let Me Go” by Kazuo Ishiguro. The changes in technology would have an impact on our lives, because this technology will gradually be part of us in our lives. Next, conflict and consequence go together in a story. In a story, most likely fiction, something it must have to attract readers would be a conflict. A good or bad conflict determines the success of the book, a good one will arouse the interest of the readers and they will continue reading the book to find out the end, in which consequence are involved. Consequences can be good or bad, but are usually bad, it is a pretty biased part in a story, based on one’s thinking, but it has to be there to put an end to the story. Lastly, human interest would refer to the themes of a book. This is especially for readers who have a certain preference for the type of books that they read. For example, some themes are romance, mystery, adventure and the list goes on.