Who decides what is the most important element in a story?
In journalism classes, we learn about six news values that should be included in a news story (not all of them must be present).
When discussing Thursday’s story “Village scuffle injures athlete,” the editorial board of the Daily News found most of these elements in this story.
Usually, we use one or two of these elements in the lead, or beginning, of the story based on the importance of the news value. However, in this story, all of it was important, leading us to the question “What was the most important element in this story?”
What do we focus on: the fight, the people involved or the location? How do we include all of it in the lead?
During the editorial board meeting, the editor-in-chief said it best when he asked “What is the headline?”
We decided it was all important, but after harping on the lead for more than an hour, we decided on “A Ball State administrator’s son was arrested Tuesday following a fight behind a Village bar where he fired a gun, and his friend struck a university basketball player’s head with a tire iron, police said.” (You can read the whole story here)
We broke some style rules, but overall it relayed our message fairly well.
Submitted by Jessica Kerman, online editor and news reporter