Newsworthiness is a term used to describe the quality of a story that makes it worthy of being reported by journalists. Journalists weigh news values when determining whether or not to cover an event or announcement. Here are the values that are considered when developing an outreach strategy:

1. Impact: The most important element of newsworthiness is whether or not the news item being communicated impacts a news outlets audience. For example, a cost-effective solution to a common problem that affects many people is more newsworthy than a solution that affects only a few people.

2. Timeliness: News means things that are new, so topics that are current are good news. Consumers are used to receiving the latest updates, and there is so much news about that old news is quickly discarded. A story with only average interest needs to be told quickly if it is to be told at all. If it happened today, its news. If the same thing happened last week, its no longer interesting.

3. Proximity: Stories that happen near to us have more significance. The closer the story to home, the more newsworthy it is. For someone living in a particular city, news about that city is more relevant than news about another city.

4. Prominence: Stories about famous people or organizations are more newsworthy than stories about unknown people or organizations.

5. Conflict: Stories that involve conflict or controversy are more newsworthy than stories that do not. This is because conflict is inherently interesting to people.

6. Human Interest: Stories that speak to our shared experience, emphasizing uniquely human elements such as personal growth or an unexpected act of kindness, are more newsworthy than stories that lack these elements. Human interest elements can add news value to other stories that might appear to be lacking in the other values.

7. Novelty/Oddity: Stories that are unusual or bizarre are more newsworthy than stories that are not. This is because people are naturally drawn to things that are out of the ordinary.

8. Significance: The number of people affected by the story is important. A plane crash in which hundreds of people died is more significant than a crash killing a dozen.

Every news outlet has a different protocol for selecting which stories to run, but some shared, traditional values can also determine the “newsworthiness” of a story. The more of these news values a story satisfies, the more likely it is to be considered newsworthy.