Ronald W. Sitton

Assistant Professor, Arkansas State University

History serves as a guide to those who pay attention, providing paths to avoid and others to pave. In the best cases, we learn from others’ mistakes and build upon their successes. When it comes to research, having generalizable results allow us to continually build upon progress with hopes of eventually adding to construction of the information superhighway. So why, then, would we attempt to reinvent a wheel shown to be adaptable to all types of roads?

Such is the case found when determining What is News? More than a century of work on this topic clearly indicates a consistent set of determinants labeled “news values,” i.e., timeliness, proximity, prominence, unusualness, impact, human interest, and conflict.[1] But using the term “value” muddies understanding, as a prima facie reading of the term tempts most outside of the journalism industry to discuss the value of news, while those inside the industry view the term from a monetary perspective, i.e., what entices an audience to consume the product and thus keep the news operation in business. The journalistic practice of using news values socially constructs the news.

The term news value can be used beyond industry. Teaching budding journalists the advantage of using news values as determinants to more quickly and consistently produce news ensures graduates can immediately produce quality content for the news operation they join. Teaching the public why journalists choose some stories and ignore others—in short, being more transparent about the process—based on news determinants can help reaffirm the public’s belief in the media as a valuable service to public life. It reaffirms the commitment made to the industry by inclusion in the Constitutional amendments that the government believes journalism is a necessity to keeping the citizenry informed such that it can make reasoned decisions in its self-government efforts.

Beyond journalism, understanding the process of making news can help researchers in other disciplines when focusing on issue portrayals that enter media. Framing is basically the idea of elevating some elements of an issue in discussion while deemphasizing other elements of an issue, in essence producing an “organization of experience” for the audience.[2] Some look for bias in what media shows, while others realize it’s news values that often determine whether a story will even be considered. So, it makes sense to consider how news values determined historical news coverage.

Research in the framing vein has consistently produced disparate results that, while providing frames specific to the issue at hand, seldom provide frames that can be generalized to similar topics. Some researchers suggest more attention should be paid to the construction of news in order to better understand how frames move through the news cycle.[3] While it may be tempting to focus on the here-and-now in attempt to tease out these frames, it makes more sense to return to the roots of news production to see 1) historical definitions of the value of news; 2) historical applications of news values as determinants in news; and 3) historical versus modern conceptions of news values as determinants.

Historical definitions of the value of news. Journalism textbooks provide definitions on the value of news as taught to collegiate journalists prior to entering the profession. A comparison of definitions in historical vs. modern textbooks should indicate whether the educational framing of that value has changed in the last century and, if so, how. Governmental proclamations or quotes from leaders can indicate how the government views the value of news. Public opinion could be determined from polling over American values. Industry professionals then and now can provide the industry perspective.

Historical applications of news values as determinants of news. Journalists wrote news stories centuries before academics used the term news values to indicate what elements/determinants would produce publishable material. When did news values become the preferred terminology in determinant discussion? Lists of news values vary from single digits to 20+ depending on the source. Some older journalism textbooks never mention news values but describe them all the same.

Historical v. modern conceptions of news values. Those learning the ways into the journalism profession have more maps at their disposal than at any time in history as they can access newer textbooks, historical textbooks online, and a vast array of commentary about news production through websites and blogs. Current research goes so far as to provide “new” conceptions of news values.[4] From a teaching perspective, it’s difficult enough getting students to ingrain seven determinants in their head, let alone the 20-plus that they’ll find on Wikipedia. Is there overlap between what we’ve known to work compared to that which commentators claim currently works? Are there truly new determinants that should be taught?

Previous framing research has focused on the words used throughout media coverage as evidence of frames,[5] which has a certain type of value, i.e., it allows researchers to see what words consistently get used when framing issues as well as seeing what stakeholder terminology makes it into the news and whether those terms get adapted in long-term coverage. Computerized content analysis can cull these terms from a vast amount of text, while word clouds can provide visual representations of those terms that dominate the discussion.[6] However, two problems can immediately be identified. First, words like value contain multiple meanings, which requires researchers to dig into the texts to observe the context of a term’s use. It’s thus still a subjective determination even though one attempts an objective use of tools.

Secondly, computerized content analysis works great on digital texts. But historical researchers seldom have digital texts to investigate. Although the last 30 years have provided many more than were previously accessible, many historical texts exist digitally as photographs, which makes computerized text analysis impossible. Thankfully, more and more are being turned into searchable pdfs. Yet for the researcher encountering photographs of the text, it’s easier to make word clouds out of headlines that can easily be digitized compared to full articles. At the smallest level, fewer mistakes will be made copying a headline into a word document than in attempting to transcribe a full article. The more texts transcribed, the more errors that will appear. In truth, it’s easier to read old materials and explain what was evident!

Some may claim this would be one of the best reasons to focus on current materials rather than returning to historical texts. Yet the field would overlook a century ofresearch and spend an inordinate amount of time reinventing the proverbial wheel. Granted, replication is an important part of the scientific process, and this is NOT a suggestion to avoid it. Rather a plan for a road forward could clarify what might best be kept and what should be discarded in future construction.

From a journalism educator perspective, such research would be beneficial when teaching the fundamentals of how to produce newsworthy, publishable material by providing the signposts explaining which roads to follow. News values help determine what stories are worthy of investigation, what sources should be interviewed, what questions should be asked or not asked, and which audiences will be targeted, all prior to producing a story. News values then help the content producer determine what information should be included or excluded, which quotes should be used as evidence, what secondary evidence should be provided, and what multimedia components should be included to best explain the issue in an online world.

From a research perspective, news values could help framing researchers find common roads with generalizable results, i.e., news values as determinants provide categories of frames. When researching coverage of any issue, breaking the stories into the common values journalists use to produce news should decrease subjectivity and increase generalizability of findings. This would allow more efficient and more effective construction of framing research. In other words, it would provide a smoother ride on the information superhighway by providing a foundation built upon settled ground. Looking back to plan the way forward may be the road less traveled, but the road is always open, and a map – if not the map – already exists.

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[1] Perry Parks, “Textbook News Values: Stable Concepts, Changing Choices.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 96, no. 3 (2019), 784-810.

[2] Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis: An essay on the organization of experience (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974), 13.

[3] See Sophie Lecheler and Claes De Vreese, News Framing Effects. (Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon New York, Ny Routledge, 2019, 5, and Michael A Cacciatore, Dietram A. Scheufele, and Shanto Iyengar, “The End of Framing as we Know it … and the Future of Media Effects.” Mass Communication and Society, 19 no. 1 (2026), 7-23.

[4] Tony Harcup, and Deirdre O’Neill, “What is News? News values revisited (again),” Journalism Studies, 18 no. 12 (2017), 1470-1488.

[5] Mark M. Miller and Bonnie P. Riechert, “The Spiral of Opportunity and Frame Resonance: Mapping the issue cycle in news and public discourse”, in Framing Public Life: Perspectives on media and our understanding of the social world (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2001), 107 – 121.

[6] Ronald W Sitton, “Historical Framing in the New York Times: A plant’s tale.” Southwestern Mass Communication Journal 40 no. 1 (2024), 4.