Is There Convergency of News Values Between British Quality Press Abd Tabloid Press

INTRODUCTION

Traditionally, the identity of news values between broadsheet and tabloid newspapers should be discrepant. Targeting on the audiences who have different social status and tastes, the content of broadsheets' news is more informative while the tabloids' is more entertaining and sensational. But with the evident intensification of press competition, by the twentieth century, a widespread set of debates among journalism academics about whether the quality of news production is being dumbed down starts (Conboy, 2005, pp15-17). In order to examine the authenticity of this hypothesis, they conduct a large quantity of text research to analyze news media portrayal on important events like discontinuous wars, serious natural calamities, international summits and other significant movements. Through systematic and critical analysis, they find a slightly shift of the common values on what worthy news is among the media professionals who are working for a number of quality newspapers, which is also known as the tabloidization of the press coverage.

This proposal attempts to introduce a research project verifying whether there's a convergence in terms of news values between the British mainstream quality and tabloid newspapers. News coverage about the past Prince William's wedding from the guardian [a famous broadsheet paper] and the Sun [a typical representative of tabloid] in the UK will be picked as a labeled event for a comparative study in the research. In the following sections of this article, the author is firstly going to review the existing literature, scholarship and theses related to this field, and then provide a clear statement as well as an explanation of the proposed research questions. An interpretation of the research methods and a brief pilot study for the actual project will also be included in the final part of the article.

LITERATURE REVIEW

According to Kepplinger (2010)'s article, journalistic notion "news values" was firstly come up with by Lippmann (1961). Östgaard (1965) and Galtung and Ruge (1965) theorizes this notion four years later. In the next 30 years, both Rosengren (1970, 1977), Schulz (1976), Staab (1990) and Shoemaker (1996) contribute to the development of the theories and methodologies of news values. Donsbach (1991) and Eilders (1997) extend and broaden the range of news values theory. Based on Kepplinger and Ehmig (2006)'s "two-component" theory, the news values of news coverage "can be calculated and the predictions compared with empirical findings."

During the explorative period of the identity of news values, different scholars hold different assumptions and thoughts. Östgaard, Galtung and Ruge, and Schulz's theories are arisen from the complexity of reality. Shoemaker's theory is based on "biological and cultural conditions for the survival of the societies". Rosengren's theory focuses on "the economic relevance of the source of information on foreign countries to its relevance." But many authors ignored the problem about whether news media outputs have actually mirrored an "objective" and "adequate" reality and guarantee the objectivity of news reporting. For filling this gap, Galtung and Ruge insists on researching news media bias among practical journalism sphere in developed western countries when they are covering events and other issues about developing countries.

In two-component theory, news values are considered to be affected by divergent news selection criteria. News factors like "Physical damage" and "Prominence" are supposed to have higher news values for tabloids while news stories about "relevance" and "status" are regarded as newsworthy for the broadsheets. This theory also pointed out that a certain "news factor" can be decomposed into a variety of "news values" for reporters who are working in different news environments and media outlets.

From early 1960s in the 20th century to the first decade of the 21st century, scholars like Caltung and Ruge (1965), Schulz (1976), Staab (1990) as well as Shoemarker and Cohen (2006) conduct their researches successively in an attempt to measure "the influence of news factors on the newsworthiness of news". For the research methods, they utilize both qualitative and quantitative content analysis of media portrayal and representation, a comparison of "real-world" indicators with about indicated events", experimental studies with news stories "in which news factors are systematic varied", "input-output" studies in newsrooms and mathematical [regression] analysis to prove the news values of news stories can be "predicted" and "measured" by identifying news factors hiding in them.

Except for academic research, the definition and characteristics of news values have also been widely discussed by scholars such as Wilson (1996), Randall (2000), Mencher (2003), Leiter et.al (2003), Harcup (2004), Ryan and Tankard (2005), Machin and Niblock (2006) and Niblock (2006) in their books and book chapters.

Niblock (2006) divides news values into two categories, which are "Intrinsic news values" and "Extrinsic news values". Intrinsic news values includes "Impact", "Newness", "Exclusivity", "Unusual people", "Conflict", "Unpredictable", "Talking points", "Geography/proximity" and "Accessibility". In her theory, these nine values are inherent and in-built characteristics of an event without the impact of anthropic factor and other effects. Extrinsic news values contain "Brand identity", "Competition" and "Production values". These three values are closely related to news professionals' experience when they are doing news selections. Niblock think the reason that journalists are fascinated to report the negative side of the society is that they want to use the measure of newsworthiness as a tool to "encapsulate" as many of the news values as possible into a story.

Ryan and Tankard claims that news values are a guideline that the media professionals, news editor and public relations professionals utilize to help themselves to construct their stories in inverted pyramid news writing order, putting the most important and valuable information in the news leads. For news editors in particular, news values are working as a tool or an "indicator" for them to judge whether a news story is worth publishing or to be put in the limited conspicuous space in a newspaper.

In Leiter et al's book,