ABSTRACT
This chapter presents various aspects of news: what news is, what makes events newsworthy and how to enhance the news value of an organization's activities. It addresses legal concepts that affect public relations writing, particularly defamation and privacy. News interest involves information about a local community, whatever that means to the particular medium. It is enhanced when information deals with unusual incidents. News interest is magnified when information deals with famous people. Hard news, breaking news, soft news and specialized news are categories of news. The chapter then explores some general activities that public relations practitioners can use to generate news for their clients and their organizations. Newswires distribute information from corporations, financial institutions and other organizations with interests that extend over a wide geographic area. The fax is another way to distribute news releases, a method that some editors prefer over the mailed release.
