Copyright Goodheart-Willcox Co., Inc. 36 Journalism: Publishing Across Media your campus has the greater news value because it has proximity, which means the event occurred close to your geographic location. On occasion you can make distant stories local by fi nding a local angle, which is something about the story that is of interest primarily to your audience. When an earthquake and tsunami hit Japan in 2011, The Broadview, a publication from the Convent of the Sacred Heart in San Francisco, found the local angle by writing about the disaster’s effects on one of its seven sister schools in Japan. An international story became local (Figure 2.2). Caution: If you cannot fi nd or develop a local angle, do not repackage what is already widely available from other sources. You are not a news aggregator—a person, agency or website that collects news stories for wide distribution but does no reporting and does not create original content. Without a new and local perspective, such aggregates or summaries make for very weak journalism. Timeliness Strong stories are about to happen, just happened, or are happening as you publish, broadcast or stream they have timeliness. How recent is the event? Is the event in the very near future? The closer it is to the date or time you publish or broadcast, the more timely it is and the more prominence it should be given. Your news cycle (the period between editions, broadcasts or digital posting of stories) will control what is timely for your publication. If you publish online, an earthquake report may be timely, as was this report in The Paly Voice, which was published before the professional press (Figure 2.3). If your publication does not come out for two more Figure 2.2 A story that takes place somewhere far away can be made relevant for your publication by finding a local angle. In this case, a distant disaster was used to remind the audience of disaster preparedness at home—just one way of giving the story proximity. Courtesy of The Broadview, Convent of the Sacred Heart High School