Time, place, community impact factor into what is news

Why are some things news one day but maybe not another day? Why do some stories make the front page one week, but not another week?

Mark White is Editor of The News Journal.

All of these are pretty good questions and ones that we get questions about and sometimes complaints about, periodically, including a couple inquires recently.

While the answers to specific questions may vary depending a number of factors,  let me offer a general analogy that I think explains this pretty well.

News and the temperature have at least one thing in common, which is both of them can be a relative thing.

Think about it.

Pretty much no matter where you are, a 100 degree day is going to seem really hot, and a zero degree day is going to seem really cold, but what about a 50 degree day?

Whether a 50 degree day seems hot or cold kind of depends on your perspective and the time of year.

For instance, if you have 50 degree day in July, people will be bundled up in coats and hoodies complaining about how cold and miserable it is.

On the other hand, if you have a 50 degree day in January, then people are generally going to be talking about what a wonderful day it is.

In other words, some temperatures are always going to seem hot, some are always going to seem cold, but other temperature can be a kind of a relative thing when it comes to whether you think it is hot or cold outside.

The news is also a relative thing in some regards, depending on whether it is a national, statewide or local media outlet reporting on it, and what else is happening news wise at a given time.

For instance, some things are always going to be big news for a national news outlet, such as a former U.S. president getting indicted for a crime. This story will get a mention by some statewide news outlets, but probably won’t be the lead story. In regards to local news stories, you probably won’t see much about it, unless maybe it’s the president’s home town or something.

What about something like the recent Nashville school shooting? For Nashville media outlets, it is going to be major news along with statewide media outlets in Tennessee. It will make national news but probably to a lesser extent most days.

Would it be major news for a media outlet in some place like Utah? Probably not. It might get a mention but chances are a Tennessee shooting wouldn’t be a major story covered by media outlets in Utah or Alaska most days.

How about something on the 2023 May Day candidates being announced? You’re not going to see anything about that on CNN, the NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt, or on Bill Bryant’s evening newscast of WKYT.

However, in a local media outlet, such as the News Journal, you are going to see the pictures of the queen candidates and tiny queen candidates appear in our newspaper. For a local media outlet like ours, this kind of thing is news.

(In case anyone is wondering, the pictures of all the candidates appeared in last week’s issue and a story listing all of the candidate’s names, their parent’s names and their sponsoring store appears on our website at www.thenewsjournal.net.)

In regards to questions about why some things may make the front page one week while a similar story won’t make the front page the next week, it often just depends on various factors, such as what else is happening in the news that week, did the event in the particular story just happen yesterday or was it several days ago, and other such factors.

Why did a picture that got submitted to the newspaper about something run one week, but a similar picture didn’t make the newspaper the next week? Sometimes it involves what else is happening, other times it involves whether we have space in the newspaper to fit it in that week, and sometimes the picture quality is such that it just wouldn’t look good when printed in the newspaper. Other times you have two equally good pictures and only have room to run one and you flip a coin to see which one makes the paper.

In other words, in a nutshell what is news sometimes depends on the media outlet covering it and what else is happening during a particular news cycle.