News, to many people, is concerned with facts and figures and being prepared for tomorrow. Perhaps this is one of the reasons so much of our media has become focused on the economy. But news and the news media in general, as well as newspapers in particular, have a great social impact. For example, a recent story about a school in Tennessee that was considering bringing guns to school started getting circulated online and went viral within hours. Millions of people viewed the story and the social impact it had was tremendous.
Examples of Current Events. An example of current events being covered by media is the New York Times publishing an article about the terrorist attack in San Bernadino, California. This story went viral within hours and thousands of listeners were tuning into the New York Times to listen to the update.
Human Interest. Examples of news stories that fall into the category of human interest are stories about people, places or things that are of interest to the majority of the population. News readers get something they find not only interesting but also necessary and relevant to their lives. This is where the medium of journalism enters the picture.
Personal Impression. Social and business networking makes possible a level of communication that most people never thought possible in everyday life. News readers get a personal reflection of how a person’s day went when a news story about someone they know and love makes the rounds and is read by thousands of people.
Unique News Value. There is a very large segment of the population that would not watch or read anything about politics unless it was negative news. But the news can also make news value. A story about, for example, an invention or the latest fashion or new product that is likely to make news makes readers wonder how they missed this story when it first broke. It might be that some other, more mundane story was more interesting to them. This news value makes it stand out from the rest.
The way news readers react to the same news can vary depending on different readers. The type of reader may be different and the way they respond to a story can be different depending on those differences. What the same story may affect differently may affect how readers interpret the same story and how that story may influence their own news buying habits.