A Nose for News

After grading my students' final projects (media kits), one thing was clear-- there was still a misunderstanding of what makes a news release newsworthy. Now, this is something I see as fairly common for the PR-inclined. They are drawn to publicity and and promotion, not so much news. This is why the news release becomes something that can be difficult to master.

While my students are in a journalism program and learn the fundamentals of news (they even said on a end-of-class survey that they felt like they had a good idea of what news is), there seems to be a disconnect when it comes to creating newsworthy releases. I'm wondering what's going on here. In an age where news and entertainment are often blurred, how do I best communicate to my students what is news? I go over in class with them what news values are and even do examples of different releases that do and don't fit those criteria. What else would be helpful?

Next semester I teach writing for public relations, I think I am going to make them find a news article each week and ask them how PR was involved in creating that story. But is that too broad? Some news happens without any assistance from PR types. Open to suggestions.