News Peg

A mash-up of framing and the qualities of news is the “news peg.” That is the reason the story is being written now. The story hangs on the peg, the reason. It gives your audience reasons to pay attention to the story.

According to dictionary.com, the news peg forms the basis of or justification for the story or it can be a reference in the story to the newsworthy event that underlies or justifies it. What would be the news peg for The Daily Titan to cover Coachella? That’s easy: Many CSUF students will be attending the festival.

Here’s an example of news peg, which is also an example of yet another kind of news quality: the anniversary story. The news media loves the anniversary story. One year ago today, something Really Important happened. Five years later, another story on the same event. It can be historical (D-Day or Pearl Harbor). It can be tragic (9-11 or Space Shuttle Challenger). It can be fun (50th anniversary of The Beatles appearing on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Go ask your grandparents what this means).

A version of the news peg is “localize.” Take a non-local story and make it local. Earthquake strikes Japan. Local news media covers the story. But looking at the six qualities of news, that quake does not rise to the level of news for Southern California. No, but we do have earthquakes in SoCal. We do have a huge population of Japanese students at CSUF and in Orange County. That demographic and the fact we live in quake country makes it a worthwhile story. Suddenly it becomes a “local” story. Wildfires in Northern California? News media down here covered it too. Could such destructive fires strike down here? What are we doing about preventing it? Any local fire departments sending crews north to help fight the blazes?

By developing a nose for new, listening to your gut, you start sensing the possibilities of stories that can be produced and published.

Start now. Walk around campus. What do you see? Can you see story possibilities?