<aside> ⌛ Estimated student time on platform: 45 minutes (+ blending)

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<aside> 1️⃣ Difficulty level: 1.5 (for middle school, high school and higher education)

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<aside> 🗣 Lesson host: Paul Saltzman, Chicago Sun-Times

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<aside> ✔️ Assessments: 12 total (all teacher-evaluable)

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<aside> 🗒️ Standards: This lesson has Common Core, ISTE, C3 and state-specific alignments. Find your standards in the Checkology alignments dropdown menu to learn more.

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Learning objectives:

• I can explain what newsworthiness is and name the four major factors that determine it.
• I can develop my own sense of news judgment by evaluating the newsworthiness of a series of examples.

Essential questions:

• What does it mean for an issue or an event to be “newsworthy”?
• What makes an issue or event “news”? Who decides?
• What factors should be used to determine which issues and events get covered by journalists?

Background:

Newsworthiness is a key news literacy concept. It helps students understand that what appears as “the news” on any given day is the result of a series of judgments and conversations in newsrooms across the country and around the world. Helping students understand the major factors that drive news judgment — how important, interesting, unique and timely an event or issue is — is vital to helping them understand and think critically about the news they encounter in their daily lives. Requiring them to make news judgments of their own can help them to appreciate how difficult such decisions can be and to learn how to evaluate and respond to the judgment of professional journalists.

News judgment frequently plays a role in criticism of news media; politicians, activists and the general public often complain about the placement of a story or issue in print or on a news organization’s website (or even whether the story or issue appears at all). Thus, the acquisition of “newsworthiness” as a concept and news judgment as a skill allows students to do more than just criticize; it enables them to enter the conversation about so-called agenda-setting and to engage with such criticisms when and where they encounter them. You should make a point of noting to students that while many people make assertions about what news media do or do not cover, it’s always important to verify whether those assertions are true by surveying and reviewing actual coverage.

<aside> 🔙 Back to lesson home page

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Full lesson guide: What is News?

From the field: What is News?