So you want to cover the news. But what is the news? And how do you determine an event or issue’s newsworthiness?

In short, newsworthiness is whatever an audience wants. And what people will read, view, or watch is determined by what they care about, what they want to know, what will help them in their daily lives, what will speak to them in some way about things they care about.

Traditional journalists have a set of criteria they use to evaluate the newsworthiness of a particular story: timeliness, proximity, impact, unusualness of the event, conflict, prominence of the people involved, necessity, and currency. Newsworthiness is not necessarily determined by an event or issue having all of these attributes. In fact, it might only have one, but you’ll decide that makes it important enough to cover.

Let’s go through each of the criteria for newsworthiness, focusing on the ways citizen journalists might use them:

Timeliness

Timeliness means that something has happened recently - the more recently something happened, the more newsworthy it is. Thus, something that happened this morning is more timely - and more newsworthy - than something that happened last week. Timeliness has come to mean something much different in the age of the Web, when people expect to have their news updated each second. A news item can quickly become out of date with the posting of someone else that offers more recent information. It’s therefore vital that the news you post on your blog - or submit to news organizations - be as timely and as frequently updated as possible.

Proximity

The fact is, people care about things that happen nearby more than they do things that happen far away. The proximity of something is a large factor in determining its newsworthiness. Proximity is generally considered geographical - something that happens in one’s town, county, or state, for instance. But it can also be emotional - something that happens in a distant place but has an effect on people locally, such as a soldier who grew up in your hometown and was killed in Iraq. What counts as “local” has also been changing with the development of the Web. As a citizen journalist, you have the opportunity to cover hyperlocal news - news not just about your town, but about your neighborhood, your workplace, your street. In fact, you are in a better position to cover such news than many professional reporters, since you live in these communities and you know what’s happening in them.

Impact

The more people affected by an event or issue, the more newsworthy it is. How much does something impact people? And how many people does it impact? Even when you’re covering hyperlocal, neighborhood news, you’ll want to think about impact when you consider what to cover and how to cover it. A lost cat, in other words, might impact only one family in the neighborhood, but a broken water main could affect everyone. The broken water main, then, would be considered more newsworthy. On the other hand, a house fire might affect just one family, but it would affect them so significantly - would have so much impact on them - that you might consider that newsworthy even though it might not affect the whole neighborhood.

Unusualness

Whenever something happens out of the ordinary, it’s got news value. People, towns, and cities all have a sense of routine, dailiness, and normality - and anything that disrupts that routine is potentially newsworthy. Thus, to take the example above, a broken water main would be newsworthy not just because of its potential impact but also because of its unusualness. Keep your eyes out for other unusual events; they happen all the time, and they’re almost always interesting to your audience.

Conflict

People like to hear about a good fight, and for that reason conflict is one of the criteria for newsworthiness. This can be as significant as a war, or as relatively minor as a conflict between neighbors. Conflicts come up in court, in town council meetings, at school board meetings, and on soccer fields. And wherever they come up, there’s a potential news story.

Prominence

This criteria refers to how well known someone is. The more prominent a person is, the more newsworthy their actions and words will tend to be. Prominence is relative to the community involved; prominent people might be anyone from the President of the United States to the mayor of a small village. So it’s important to know the prominent people in your community, and to keep an eye on them. What are they doing? What are they saying? Most likely, your readers or viewers will want to know.

Necessity

Perhaps you, as a citizen journalist, think the public really needs to know about your city’s new tax code, or the fact that a factory has been fined repeatedly by the Environmental Protection Agency. These sorts of stories come under the criteria of “necessity.” Such stories often involve other criteria for newsworthiness, but they might just come from your sense that the public needs to know, and you need to investigate.

Currency

Currency refers to an ongoing issue - such as a long court case, or poverty, or domestic violence - that suddenly comes into the public spotlight because of a new event - a judge’s decision, or a family evicted, or a person killed. Journalists say, in this case, that the issue has gained “currency.” Look around your community and come up with a list of ongoing issues, long-standing but important topics. Keep this list on hand, and look for current events that might warrant bringing these issues to light again.

As a citizen journalist, you’re not required to satisfy any of these criteria for newsworthiness. The fact is, though, you’ll have more readers, viewers, or listeners if you think about the newsworthiness of the stories you cover. There’s no magic equation with these criteria; not all stories meet all of them, though most good stories tend to meet at least one.

The more you think in terms of newsworthiness, the more you’ll be on the road to building an audience for your work.