Copyright Goodheart-Willcox Co., Inc. 40 Journalism: Publishing Across Media Oddity Oddity, the quality of being unusual, can by itself make something newsworthy. If you have many immigrant students in your community, a feature story on a brother and sister from Nicaragua would not have great news value. If, however, your community has few immigrants, a story about the close relationship between a newly arrived brother and sister would have news value because of the oddity. A student who rides a unicycle to school may make a good story because of both oddity and proximity. Oddity may allow journalists to use a humorous tone, such as this article from National Public Radio. The “Morning Edition” show begins each day with a slightly odd story, a feature called Diversions. “A school in Ashland, Montana is looking for lunch. It seems to have wandered off. The school maintains a herd of bison. They provide meat for student lunches, but the animals are gone. The school’s executive director says they may have run through a fence during the Memorial Day weekend thunderstorm. People in the area should be on the lookout for shaggy brown creatures with horns that taste great on a bun with ketchup and mustard.” Confl ict Confl ict Humans are interested in all kinds of confl icts—disagreements, arguments, contests, fi ghts and rivalries. Suppose the school board is debating whether the auditorium tower should be torn down or repaired. People feel very strongly about the tower, but the budget is already stretched thin. Or suppose twin brothers wrestle each other on the junior varsity team. The confl icts make these stories Sports stories in particular have built-in confl icts and so capture our attention with words such as rivalry, contest, battle and victory (Figure 2.7). After sports, politics probably provides the most opportunities to portray confl icts, both polite and vicious. While every confl ict has at least two sides, many have more than two sides. Even seemingly trivial matters assume greater news value when journalists report the Figure 2.6 If your students are involved in cleaning up a distant disaster, the far away story becomes local. sh ve is b v nnewsworthy. Figure 2.7 Sports events provide a source of conflict, which can attract readers’ attention, to any story. What conflicts at your school might you write about? How many sides are involved in the conflict? Courtesy of The Flyer Lewis University