Newsworthiness and story prominence: How the presence of news factors relates to upfront position and length of news stories

Abstract

The presence of news factors in journalistic products has been abundantly researched, but investigations into their actual impact on the news production process are scarce. This study provides a large-scale analysis of why news factors matter: Whether, how, and which news factors affect the prominence of news items and does this differ per outlet type? A manual content analysis of print, online, and television news demonstrates that a larger total number of news factors in a story positively predict an item’s length and likelihood of front-page publication or likelihood of being a newscast’s opening item. News factors ‘conflict’ and ‘eliteness’ have the strongest impact, mixed evidence was found for ‘proximity’ and ‘personification’, whereas relationships with ‘negativity’, ‘influence and relevance’, and ‘continuity’ were mostly insignificant. Fewer differences than expected emerged between outlet types (popular vs quality press). Especially for television news, outlet type (public vs commercial broadcaster) hardly mattered.