A Blogging Experiment

Newsworthy events are all around us. Turning these events into news is a simple matter of identification and delivery. Newsworthy material comes from asking the right questions about the situation that occur around us everyday. Those factors include the timeliness of the story, the proximity to the news outlet, the possible future impact of the issue, the number of people involved or affected and the prominence of the people and things in the story.

Timeliness - News is perishable and stale news is not interesting. Information that is currently relevant or has some immediate impact on the readers is newsworthy. A consumer who picks up the evening paper or watch the news would want to be told of what happen earlier on the same day.

Prominence - News that cover on important people and attention seeking matters. It can be activities from the president, other head of the state and sports/entertainment figures who have tremendous media attention, even infamous or criminals are good coverages that consumers want to know. An example, A Terrorist escapes from Whitely detention centre, a Singaporean Malay who limbs on the left and he is none other than Mas Selamat who have been a prominent figure in Singapore covering headlines in all local newspaper.

Proximity - News coverage that are close to our hometown would be good news for consumers rather than countries that are foreign to us. A recent riot attack in Malaysia is charging southwards and fears speculate that the riot might break into Singapore, news like this are newsworthy and worth looking through again and understand what is it that caused such a riot. A news that covers on a plane crash in panama with 50 killed and 110 passengers injured have no significant interest to the local people.

Consequence - Information about the development that will significantly impact on some or not all of the readers. Singapore will cap it's CPF to a minimum of $20,000 before anyone above the age of 21 can actually use their CPF to do investment eg. unit trust fund. This message alerted many Singaporeans to push out their money from their CPF and statistic shows that 50% more Singaporeans have invested in unit trust funds recently before the implemention kicks in.

Human Interest - A story that is quirky, colorful or otherwise dramatic about a human character or condition. The extraordinary act should be identified by consumers that the person is once ordinary with a big heart to do something out of the norm. A man who recently won 1st prize in the lottery decided to give a man half his winning who he have only met once which was the day he bought the lottery ticket, this becomes newsworthy.