Copyright Goodheart-Willcox Co., Inc. Chapter Two News Values and Story Ideas 41 position of all sides involved. The empty planters in front of your school may not have much news value, but if one group wants to take them out because they are ugly, another wants to fi ll them in with concrete to use as benches, but still another thinks that would only attract skateboarders looking for a place to grind, you have a major confl ict or controversy. What if yet another group wants to replant them with white roses, but others want drought-resistant plants to conserve water? If those empty planters are a source of controversy or confl ict, they have news value. The news value of a story is stronger if your audience can express its opinion on the controversy. Provide links to an online survey where registered users of your site may vote, post comments or write to the editor. Even though the vote probably is not binding, asking people their opinions will engage your audience and strengthen your publication. Human Interest News stories with strong human interest cover people—usually ordinary people but almost always members of your community—and their problems, concerns, interests, backgrounds and achievements so that the reader’s interest and perhaps emotion become involved. A human interest story may cover the student whose ballet career is threatened by a knee injury or the junior who runs his own computer repair business after school and on weekends. It could be about the senior arrested for protesting cruelty to lab animals, the sophomore who hopes his mother will soon be allowed to immigrate to this country after a 10-year separation from her son or the freshman who posts YouTube videos demonstrating dance moves. Every member of your community has a story, probably more than one. Good reporting and good writing create strong human interest stories, which often give a human face to news events (Figure 2.8). 1. Locate and then print out, summarize or clip seven stories from a variety of sections in the professional press. Each story should illustrate at least one of the seven news values. Identify the news value(s) in each story. 2. Going Deeper. Identify the major news values in four stories from one edition of any of your local or student media. Your Turn 1 L Figure 2.8 Human interest stories provide insight into your community and create a local angle for your story. Courtesy of The Eagle’s Eye, W. Charles Akins High School