Below is an element-by-element overview of the entire "Be the Editor" lesson. To the left of longer elements, you will find short summaries of those elements. In each assessment element, a yellow highlight indicates a correct answer. Whenever relevant, we also include teacher tipsđź’ˇand definitions of important words from NLP's word wall đź’¬*.*
Be the Editor: Deciding the Day's News
Welcome to The Signal!
In the "What is News?" Lesson, you learned about the Big Four: Timely, Important, Interesting, Unique and how to use them to evaluate the newsworthiness of a story.
Now you will apply that same news judgment in your new job as editor of The Signal, but this time you will be deciding which of the day’s stories deserve top placement on your website’s home page.
Build your home page. It’s your job to narrow the list of available news stories to those that you think are the most newsworthy. You will have to make some tough decisions about what to include and what to leave out.
Read the headlines. Click on the headlines to read the story summaries. Keep the Big Four in mind while you read.
Select five. From the list view, click the check mark to the right of each headline to select that story. You can also click the X to the right of a story to move it to the bottom, out of consideration. Remember, you can only choose five.
Prioritize! Next, drag your five stories so they appear in order of newsworthiness. In newsrooms, the top story is called the “lead”; it will get the most prominent placement on your news page.