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Before any one can hope to write for a newspaper he must know something about news values—something about the essence of interest that makes one story worth a column and cuts down another, of equal importance from other points of view, to a stickful. He must recognize the relative value of facts so that he can distinguish the significant part of his story and feature it accordingly. The question is a delicate one and yet a very reasonable and logical one. The ideal of a newspaper, according to present-day ethics, is to print news. The daily press is no longer a golden treasury of contemporary literature, not even, perhaps, an exponent of political principles. Its primary purpose is to report contemporary history—to keep us informed concerning the events that are taking place each day in the world about us.

To this idea is added another. A newspaper must be interesting. In these days of many newspapers few readers are satisfied with merely being informed; they want to be informed in a way that interests them. To this demand every one connected with a newspaper office tries to cater. It is the defense of the sensational yellow journals and it is the reason for everything in the daily press. There is so much to read that people will not read things that do not interest them, and the paper that succeeds is the paper that interests the greatest number of readers. Circulation cannot be built up by printing uninteresting stuff that the majority of readers are not interested in, and circulation is necessary to success.

This desire to interest readers is behind the whole question of news values. News is primarily the account of the latest events, but, more than that, it is the account of the latest events that interest readers who are not connected with these events. Further than that, it is the account of the latest events that interest the greatest number of readers. Susie Brown may have sprained her ankle. The fact is absorbingly interesting to Susie; it is even rather interesting to her family and friends, even to her enemies. If she is well known in the little town in which she lives her accident may be interesting enough to the townspeople for the local weekly to print a complete account of it. However, the event is interesting only to people who know Susie, and after all they do not comprise a very large number. Hence her accident has no news value outside the local weekly. On the other hand, had Susie sprained her ankle in some very peculiar manner, the accident might be of interest to people who do not know Susie. Suppose that she had tripped on her gown as she was ascending the steps of the altar to be married. Such an accident would be very unusual, almost unheard of. People in general are interested in unusual things, and many, many readers would be interested in reading about Susie's unusual accident although they did not know Susie or even the town in which she lives. Such a story would be the report of a late event that would interest many people; hence it would have a certain amount of news value. Of course, the reader loses sight of Susie in reading of her accident—it might as well have been Mary Jones—but that is because Susie has no news value in herself. That is another matter.

1. Classes of Readers.—Realizing that his story must be of interest to the greatest number of people, the reporter must remember the sort of people for whom he is writing. That complicates the whole matter. If he were writing for a single class of readers he could easily give them the news that would interest them. But he is not; he is writing for many classes of people, for all classes of people. And he must interest them all. He is writing for the business man in his office, for the wife in the home, for the ignorant, for the highly educated, for the rich and the poor, for the old and the young, for doctors, lawyers, bankers, laborers, ministers, and women. All of them buy his paper to hear the latest news told in a way that interests them, and he has to cater to each and to all of them. If he were simply writing for business men he would give them many columns of financial news, but that would not interest tired laborers. An extended account of the doings of a Presbyterian convention would not attract the great class of men with sporting inclinations, and a story of a very pretty exhibition of scientific boxing would not appeal to the wife at home. They all buy the paper, and they all want to be interested, and the paper must, therefore, print stories that interest at least the majority of them. That is the question of news values. The news must be the account of the latest events that interest the greatest number of readers of all classes.

This search for the universally-interesting news is the reason behind the sensational papers. Although the interests of any individual differ in almost every aspect from the interests of his neighbor, there is one sort of news that interests them both, that interests every human being. That is the news that appeals to the emotions, to the heart. It is the news that deals with human life—human nature—human interest news the papers call it. In it every human being is interested. However trivial may be the event, if it can be described in a way that will make the reader feel the point of view of the human beings who suffered or struggled or died or who were made happy in the event, every other human being will read it with interest. Human sympathy makes one want to feel joy and pain from the standpoint of others. Naturally that sort of news is always read; naturally the paper that devotes itself to such news is always read and is always successful as far as circulation and profits go. The papers that have that ideal of news behind them and forsake every other ideal for it are called sensational papers. Whether they are good or not is another question.

With this idea of what news values means and the idea that news is worth while only when it interests the largest number of people of all classes, we may try to look for the things that make news interesting to the greatest number of people of all classes. The reporter must know not only what news is, but what makes it news. He must be able to see the things in a story that will interest the greatest number of people of all classes. These are many and intricate.

2. Timeliness.—In the first place, news must be new. A story must have timeliness. Our readers want to know what happened to-day, for yesterday and last week are past and gone. They want to be up to the minute in their information on current events. Therefore a story that is worth printing to-day will not be worth printing to-morrow or, at most, on the day after to-morrow. Events must be chronicled just as soon as they happen. Furthermore, the story itself must show that it is new. It must tell the reader at once that the event which it is chronicling happened to-day or last night—at least since the last edition of the paper. That is why the reporter must never fail to put the time in the introduction of his story. Editors grow gray-headed trying to keep up with the swift passing of events, and they are always very careful to tell their readers that the events which they are chronicling are the latest events. That is the reason why every editor hates the word "yesterday" and tries to get "to-day" or "this morning" into the lead of every story. Hence, to the newspaper, everything that happened since midnight last night is labeled "this morning," and everything that happened since six o'clock yesterday afternoon is labeled "last night." Anything before that hour must be labeled "yesterday," but it goes in as "late yesterday afternoon," if it possibly can. Hence the first principle of news values is timeliness—news is news only because it just happened and can be spoken of as one of the events of "to-day" or of "late yesterday."

3. Distance.—Distance is another factor in news values. In spite of fast trains and electric telegraphs human beings are clannish and local in their interests. They are interested mainly in things and persons that they know, and news from outside their ken must be of unusual significance to attract them. They like to read about things that they have seen and persons that they know, because they are slow to exert their imaginations enough to appreciate things that they do not know personally. Hence every newspaper is primarily local, even though it is a metropolitan daily, and news from a distance plays a very subordinate part. It has been said that New York papers cannot see beyond the Alleghanies; it is equally true that most papers cannot see more than a hundred miles from the printing office, except in the case of national news. Any newspaper's range of news sources goes out from the editorial room in concentric circles. Purely personal news must come from within the range of the paper's general circulation, because people do not care to read purely personal news about persons whom they do not know. Other news is limited ordinarily to the region with which the paper's readers are personally acquainted—the state, perhaps—because subscribers unconsciously wish to hear about places with which they are personally acquainted. Any news that comes from outside this larger circle must be nation-wide or very unusual in its interest. A story that may be worth a column in El Paso, Texas, would not be worth printing in New York because El Paso is hardly more than a name to most New York newspaper readers. In the same way, the biggest stories in New York are not worth anything in Texas, because Texas readers are not personally interested in New York—they cannot say, "Yes, I know that building; I walked down that street the other day; oh, you can't tell me anything about the subway." News is primarily local, and the first thing a correspondent must learn is how to distinguish the stories that are purely local in their interest from those that would be worth printing a hundred miles away in a paper read by people who do not know the places or persons involved in the story. Colonel Smith may be a very big frog in the little puddle of Smith's Corners, and his doings may be big news to the weeklies all over his county, but he has to do something very unusual before his name is worth a line in a paper two counties away. He is nothing but a name to people who do not know him or know of him, and therefore they are not interested in him. Every correspondent must watch for the stories that have something more than a local interest, some element of news in them that will carry them over the obstacle of distance and make them interesting to any reader.

It would be impossible to analyze news values to the extent of telling every conceivable element of interest that will overcome the obstacle of distance. Yet there are certain elements that always make a newspaper story interesting to any one.

4. Loss of life.—One of these is the loss of human life. For some strange reason every human being is interested in the thought of death. Just as soon as a story mentions death it is worth printing, and if it has a number of deaths to tell about it is worth printing anywhere. Any fire, any railroad wreck, or any other disaster in which a number of persons are killed or injured makes a story that is worth sending anywhere. There seems to be a joy for the reader in the mere number of fatalities. A story that can begin with "Ten people were killed," or "Seven men met their death," attracts a reader's interest at once. As a very natural result, and justly, too, newspapers have been broadly accused of exaggeration for the sake of a large number. But at present many papers are inclined to underestimate rather than overestimate, perhaps to avoid this accusation. In a number of instances in the past year, among them the Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York, the first figures were smaller than the official count printed later. That does not mean, however, that newspapers do not want stories involving loss of life. Any story which involves a large number of fatalities will carry a long distance, if for no other reason.

5. Big Names.—Another element of news values is the interest in prominent people. The mere mention of a man or a woman who is known widely attracts attention. Although Colonel Smith of Smith's Corners has to do something very unusual to get his name in any paper outside his county, the slightest thing that President Taft does is printed in every paper in the country. It is simply because of our interest in the man himself. Some names give a story news value because the names are widely known politically or financially, some names because they are simply notorious. But any name that is recognized at once, for any reason, gives a story news value.

6. Property Loss.—Akin to man's love for any account that involves large loss of human life, is his love of any story that tells about a huge loss of property. The mere figures seem to have a charm; any story that can begin with awesome figures, like "Two million dollars," "One hundred automobiles," "Ten city blocks," has news value. Hence any story that involves a large loss that can be expressed in figures has the power to carry a great distance.

7. Unusualness.—It is safe to say that newspaper readers are interested in anything unusual. It does not matter whether it is a thing, a person, an action, a misfortune; so long as it is strange and out of the range of ordinary lives, it is interesting. Many, if not most, newspaper stories have nothing but the element of strangeness in them to give them news value, but if they are sufficiently strange and unusual they may be copied all over the country. An unusual origin or an unusual rescue will give an unimportant fire great news value. And so with every other kind of story.

8. Human Interest.—Along with the element of the strange and unusual, goes the human interest element. Any story that will make us laugh or make us cry has news value. Hundreds of magazines are issued monthly with nothing in them but fictitious stories that are intended to arouse our emotions, and newspapers are beginning to realize that they can interest their readers in the same way. No life is so prosaic that it is not full of incidents that make one laugh or cry, and when these stories can be told in a way that will make any reader feel the same emotions, they have news value that will carry them a long distance. Obviously their success depends very largely upon the way they are told.

9. Personal Appeal.—Another element that may give a story news value is that of personal appeal or application to the reader's own daily life. Men are primarily egoistic and selfish and nothing interests them more than things that affect them personally. They can read complacently and without interest of the misfortunes and joys of others, but just as soon as anything affects their own daily lives, even a little, they want to hear about it. Perhaps the price of butter has gone up a few cents or the gas company has reduced its rates from eighty cents to seventy-seven. Every reader is interested at once, for the news affects his own daily life. Sometimes this personal appeal is due merely to the reader's familiarity with the persons or places mentioned in the story; sometimes it is due to the story's application to his business life, his social or religious activities, or to any phase of his daily existence. That is the reason why political news interests every one, for we all feel that the management of the government has an influence on our own lives. The story of any political maneuver—especially if it is one that may be looked upon as bad or good—carries farther than any other story. Show that your story tells of something that has even the slightest effect on the lives of a large number of people and it needs no other element to give it news value.

10. Local Reasons.—These factors and many others give news stories a news value that will carry them a long distance and make them interesting in communities far from their source. Many local reasons may enhance the value of a story for local papers. A paper's policy or some campaign that it is waging may give an otherwise unimportant event a tremendous significance. If an unimportant person is slightly injured while leaving a trolley car the story is hardly worth a line of type. But if such an item should come to a newspaper while it is carrying on a campaign against the local street railway company, the story would probably be written and printed in great detail. Any slight occurrence that may be in line with a paper's political beliefs would receive an amount of space far out of proportion with its ordinary news worth. News value is a very changeable and indefinite thing, and there are countless reasons why any given story should be of interest to a large number of readers. And the possibility of interesting a large number of readers is the basis of news value.

11. The Feature.—In connection with the study of news values the question of feature is important. In editorial offices one is constantly hearing the word "feature," and reporters are constantly admonished to "play up the feature" of their stories. Feature is the word that editors use to signify the essence of news value. Every story that is printed is printed because of some fact in it that makes it interesting—gives it news value. The element in the story that makes it interesting and worth printing is the feature. The feature may be some prominent name, a large list of fatalities, a significant amount of property destroyed, or merely the unusualness of the incident. This feature is the element that makes the story news; therefore it is used to attract attention to the story. Every newspaper story displays like a placard in its headlines the reason why it was printed—the element in it that makes it interesting. "Playing up the feature" is simply the act of bringing this feature to the front so that it will attract attention to the story. Just how this is done we shall see later. But when, as a reporter, you are looking for a feature to play up in your lead, remember that the feature to be played up is the thing in the story that gives the story news value. And few stories have more than one claim to news value, more than one feature.

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