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
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March 16th, 2006 at 12:04 am
I wished someone would have been able to get Buckley to explain his “other reasons” for booting the player in this situation. He took a tire iron to the head defending a friend and ended up missing his senior night because of it. The way this situation was handled is a big reason I fully support Buckley’s removal from the job of leading the team. Seems odd to punish a kid for something you learned about in the press, and then hide behind a veil of privacy when asked for other reasons.
I can see how this article would have been hard to frame. That would have been an interesting EdBoard meeting to attend.
April 7th, 2006 at 12:55 pm
Great article. I am just sad I dont know how to reply properly, though, since I want to show my appreciation like many other.