A variety of elements determine the newsworthiness of an announcement. As many newspapers and magazines continue to see a decline in readership, they are increasingly looking to achieve relevance with their audience and are striving to publish articles that have a high news value and can capture the interest of their readers.

In order to determine the value of your company’s news, we believe it’s important to look at the merits of the story and evaluate the following elements:

Timing – The word news means exactly that – things which are new. Topics which are current are good news. If it happened today, it’s news. If the same thing happened last week, it’s no longer interesting to many journalists and consumers.
Conflict – Conflict can elevate the newsworthy elements of a story. These can be high profile conflicts or less-evident conflicts.
Significance – Is the story significant? The number of people affected by the story is important. A company that’s preparing to lay off 20,000 people is more significant than a company laying off a dozen.
Proximity/Relevance – Stories that affect local businesses or local residents may be more newsworthy to local outlets – the same story may not have as much relevance to national publications. However, proximity doesn’t always have to mean geographical distance. Stories from countries with which we have a particular bond or similarity can have the same effect.
Prominence – Famous people get more coverage just because they’re famous. If you break your arm, it won’t make the news. However, if the Queen of England breaks her arm, it’s big news.
Human Interest – Human interest stories are a bit of a special case. They often disregard the main rules of newsworthiness; for example, they don’t date as quickly, they need not affect a large number of people, and it doesn’t necessarily matter the story takes place. Human interest stories appeal to emotion. They aim to evoke responses such as amusement or sadness. Television news programs often place a humorous or quirky story at the end of the show to finish on a feel-good note, and newspapers often have an area dedicated to these stories.

Recently, Starbucks announced it will be cutting approximately 6,700 jobs and closing 300 underperforming stores. This announcement is very newsworthy because of the significance of the number of job losses. It is also timely given the recent news about the economic downturn and its effect on companies. It also includes the element of proximity as it affects Seattle residents and employees as well as employees across the nation. Lastly, job loss affects not only the person who is losing their job but also their families. Given the nature of the topic, this announcement also has an element of human interest. Hearing about job loss sparks emotions like empathy and anxiety as people begin to worry about their own job security.

On the other hand, announcements about new hires such as this one from Business Wire, are not very newsworthy because they don’t affect a large amount of people and don’t have an element of prominence, unless the person being hired is a very well known business leader. Although it is not uncommon for businesses to release such announcements, it’s important to note that these are not the most newsworthy announcements and can’t be expected to garner significant coverage.

It’s important to keep these elements in mind when you are evaluating the value of news for your organization. This will ultimately help your company maximize media opportunities and convey your message to the places and audiences that matter most.