One of the most famous maxims in journalism is: ‘If it bleeds, it leads.’ In other words, stories involving violence, tragedy, or the threat of harm tend to dominate headlines because they attract attention… and attention drives ratings. While newsworthiness depends on many factors, death and destruction tick more boxes than stories about everyday life. News doesn’t just happen – it’s made. The modern news cycle runs twenty-four seven, 365 days a year. Reporters and editors can’t simply wait for the next big event; they have airtime, feeds, and column inches to fill. At the same time, they can’t fabricate stories. This is where news values come in. Almost anything can become news if it meets certain criteria: relevance, rarity, human interest, conflict or controversy, and the potential for ongoing coverage.

Finding out why some events dominate the headlines while others barely register was the work of Johan Galtung and Mari Holmboe Ruge. Their landmark 1973 study identified the key factors that shape what gets selected, and what gets sidelined, in the news. In this section you’ll discover how the news is made, what choices go into prioritising what you read first, and how headlines are engineered to not only grab your attention but lead your opinion as well. Begin your study of the news by reading a small selection of the articles below, reporting back what you’ve discovered:

• The Media and Journalism (IB Textbook)
• Eight Values That Will Make Your Content Newsworthy (Digital Third Coast online article)
• Why News Junkies Are So Glum About Politics (from The Atlantic)
• What makes a story newsworthy? (lecture by journalism professor Mark Grabowski)
• If It Bleeds, It Leads (TV Tropes article)
• Media Sensationalism (article by Glenn Halbrooks)
• Is Sensationalism in the News Bad? (Thoughtco article by Tony Rogers)

Reading Challenge

This is a longer and more challenging text, but spending time on this piece, and discussing it with your teacher, will help you master this topic:

• What is News? (extract from Melvin Mencher’s News Reporting and Writing)

Areas of Exploration Guiding Conceptual Question

Why do some texts follow the ‘rules’ of their text type or genre while other texts change from publication to publication or from story to story? How have some genres evolved over time? Learning to recognise the generic conventions of texts will help you understand how – and why – some writers break the rules. Near the end of this resource, you’ll learn why newspaper front pages contain conventional features from which they hardly ever deviate. Learning these features and being able to explain the effects they create will help you with your Paper 1 analyses as well:

• How do texts adhere to and deviate from conventions associated with genre or text type?

Discussion Points

After you’ve got your head around the material in this section, pair up, pick a question, spend five minutes thinking and noting down your thoughts – then discuss your ideas with a friend and report back to the class:

1. Some people believe that the days of tuning in to the news to be straightforwardly informed about current events are gone. If this is true, what is the purpose of the news? What features of the news tell you that its purpose is not straightforward informative reporting?
2. What are the implications of ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ on individuals and society? What – if any – do you think is the consequence of filling news time with sensationalist, dramatic, violent or graphic stories and images?
3. Does the news reflect an accurate image of society? If you were an alien who could only study human societies using news broadcasts that had leaked across the cosmos, what conclusions would you draw about life on Earth?

1. Newsworthiness

“If it bleeds, it leads”

Media Maxim

The most influential figures in the study of news selection are Johan Galtung and Mari Holmboe Ruge, whose groundbreaking 1973 research laid the foundation for understanding why certain stories make headlines while others fade into obscurity. Their work introduced the concept of News Values, a set of criteria that editors and journalists (consciously and unconsciously) use to decide what counts as ‘news.’ Galtung, a Norwegian sociologist (1930–2024), is widely regarded as the founder of peace and conflict studies. His career spanned decades of research into media, international relations, and social structures, and he wrote extensively on how news reporting shapes public perception. Ruge (1935–2018), also Norwegian, was a researcher in media and communication studies. Her collaboration with Galtung produced one of the most influential frameworks in journalism theory, highlighting the cultural and structural forces behind news selection. Together, they identified 12 key factors that increase the likelihood of an event being reported, criteria that remain central to media studies today.

Activity: Think Like a News Editor

Galtung and Ruge’s original twelve news values were groundbreaking in 1973, but the media landscape has changed since then. Today, journalists often refer to a simplified framework that captures the essence of those values while making them easier to apply. Instead of technical terms like consonance or threshold, we now talk about concepts such as impact, timeliness, proximity, prominence, conflict, human interest, and novelty. These reflect the same principles but in language that’s clearer and more relevant to modern audiences, and making space for newer concerns like social media shareability and visual appeal.

To see how these values shape what we consider ‘news,’ use the Simplified News Values resource (embedded below), try out the News Sort Activity. First, match each headline to one or more of the news values that you’ve learned about. Then select which stories you would publish if you were in charge of a newspaper for a day. Decide what is going on the front page, what you’ll bury inside – and what doesn’t make the news at all. This will help you think like an editor and understand why some stories dominate headlines while others barely make a ripple in our ever-present news cycles:

• Simplified News Values (PPT)
• News Sort Activity (PDF)

2. Sleaze and Scandal: Sensationalism in the News

“Sensational stories are the junk food of our news diet… You know it’s bad for you but it’s delicious.”

Tony Rogers, former journalist and media writer

In the world of print journalism, the two most widely seen formats for newspapers are broadsheet and tabloid. Broadsheet newspapers appeared in Britain in the 18th century when the government taxed newspapers based on their number of pages. By increasing the size of the pages, newspapers could reduce the number of sheets in each edition – an ingenious way to lessen the amount of tax they had to pay!

One of the first tabloids in the U.S. was The New York Sun, started in 1833. It cost only a penny and was easy to carry – the idea of making a newspaper smaller and more convenient appealed to the working class who had to carry the newspaper to work. Early tabloids were more irreverent in their writing style than their broadsheet brethren, and crime reporting combined with lurid illustrations were a hit with readers. This trend continues today: a broadsheet will refer to a police officer, while a tabloid might use the term cop. And while a broadsheet might give plenty of precious column inches to serious news, a tabloid likes to target sensational stories or celebrity gossip, with a penchant for sleaze, sordid sex, and tales of immorality, perversion and crime. Find out more about the world of tabloid journalism, and learn how to recognise the signs of sensationalism, by reviewing this presentation:

• Sleaze and Sensationalism (PPT)

Activity: Comparing Tabloid and Broadsheet News Reporting

When we look at the same news story in a tabloid and a broadsheet, the differences go far beyond the headline. Both types of newspapers report on current events, but they do so with very different priorities and styles. Broadsheets tend to focus on delivering detailed, factual information in a formal tone, while tabloids often aim to entertain and grab attention through dramatic language and eye-catching presentation.

Choose a pair of linked stories from the list below (or find your own story). Compare the presentation of news in a tabloid publication vs a broadsheet. Gather notes on the headlines, use of visuals, quoted sources, choice of words in the story, overall tone, and any presentational features you might spot. Come to a conclusion as to how – and why – the same event can be reported in different ways, affecting your interpretation of the news:

3. Literary Journalism

“The New Journalism … depended upon a depth of information that had never been demanded in newspaper work. Only through the most searching forms of reporting was it possible.”

Tom Wolfe

In a time of headlines designed to shock, literary journalism offers a counterpoint. Sometimes called ‘Narrative Journalism’, this kind of reporting combines factual information with the depth, nuance, and storytelling techniques of literature. Where tabloid sensationalism thrives on distortion and emotional manipulation, literary journalism insists on accuracy and empathy. It does not rush to exploit drama; instead, it spends time setting the scene, giving readers the backstory, and introducing you to people who’s voices speak their own truths.

Tom Wolfe, an American author and journalist, was one of the leading figures behind a movement known as New Journalism, which emerged in the 1960s. Dissatisfied with the limitations of traditional reporting, Wolfe argued that journalism could adopt the techniques of fiction without compromising factual accuracy to create vivid, immersive narratives, laying the foundation for literary journalism. The defining characteristics of Wolfe’s style were: 1. Instead of summarising events, he reconstructed them as a series of scenes like a novelist; 2. Using actual dialogue to reveal character and personality, making subjects feel alive and allowing readers to connect with them as real people; 3. Adopting a subjective perspective (such as first person or third person limited) to convey thoughts, feelings, and motivations; 4. Recording small, telling details (such as clothing, gestures, or surroundings) that signal a person’s social status, values, and worldview.

Activity:

Below are some brilliant examples of literary journalism: each writer blends storytelling techniques (such as point of view, descriptive detail, dialogue, scene-setting) with factual accuracy to create powerful articles. Begin by selecting one article that you would like to read. As you do so, keep track of the ways the writer uses narrative elements while remaining faithful to the facts. Then, write an answer to the question: How does the journalist preserve truth while writing a compelling article? In your response: aim to cover two narrative techniques used in the article; explain how the article maintains factual accuracy; support your analysis with specific reference to the text through quotation and paraphrase.

Learner Portfolio:

Grab your typewriters and prepare to think like a tabloid journalist, For this Learner Portfolio task, create a tabloid-style news article based on an event from one of the literary texts you’ve read for the course (or another literary work you might like to choose). Report the event in a sensational, dramatic way, mimicking the tone and techniques of popular tabloid journalism. Begin with an attention-grabbing headline (bonus points for using slammers, alliteration, or clever puns). Include an image that reinforces the angle of your story, presenting the subject in either a highly favourable or unfavourable light. Weave in embedded interviews and comments from various sources such as characters from the text, eyewitnesses, or even fictional experts. Use well-chosen sensational and emotive language, exaggerating details and amplifying drama to capture the reader’s attention. Draw on techniques such as hyperbole, loaded words, and rhetorical questions to create a piece that feels authentic to the tabloid style. Your aim is not just to retell the event, but to transform it into a headline-grabbing story that could force its way into the news cycle.

Here are two tabloid articles written by students in response to this prompt: one about breaking news in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and the other responding to gossip from the High Plateau in Broken April. Based on the literary works you’ve studied, what events can you make into an article fit for publication in the news?

Body of Work: Molly Crabapple’s Illustrated Journalism

“…a punk Joan Didion, a young Patti Smith with paint on her hands.”

Ron Rosenbaum, writing at Smithsonian Magazine

Molly Crabapple (born 1983) is a New York–based multidisciplinary artist, writer, and activist renowned for her illustrated journalism, where she uses her pen and brush as critical tools for storytelling. Her work has appeared in major publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, VICE, The Guardian, and The New York Review of Books. Molly has carved out a unique space in journalism by using illustration as her primary tool for reportage. Her work often takes her to places where cameras dominate the narrative, but she chooses the slower, more intimate medium of drawing to capture stories with depth and empathy. As Molly says in the interview embedded above, cameras can be censored, but her artist’s eye allows her to retain images that she can bring to life after the event, ensuring that truth survives even when power wants to suppress it.

She first gained widespread attention during the Occupy Wall Street protests, where her sketches documented the energy and tension of the movement. Later, she became one of the few artists granted access to Guantánamo Bay, producing haunting images of a site shrouded in secrecy. Her illustrated journalism has taken her to conflict zones and sites of humanitarian crises. She has worked alongside Doctors Without Borders in Syria and Iraq, drawing refugee camps and the devastation of war. In Puerto Rico, she chronicled the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, focusing on the resilience of communities amid systemic neglect. She has also reported on labour exploitation in Abu Dhabi, protests in Greece, and life in Palestinian villages.

Her unique blend of art, activism, and journalism has earned her a reputation as a modern-day gonzo journalist, wielding her brush with the same intensity and empathy as the great documentary photographers, albeit in a slower, more reflective medium. Her graphic memoir Drawing Blood (2015), illustrated books like Week in Hell and Shell Game, and contributions to galleries and literary publications all underline her commitment to using art as a form of investigative journalism. Across all her work, including this selection that you can print and annotate to help you study, Molly uses art not just to document events but to challenge power, include marginalised voices, and create a visual record that ensures truth can survive even when those in power would rather it didn’t.

Towards Assessment: Individual Oral

Supported by an extract from one non-literary text and one from a literary work, students will offer a prepared response of 10 minutes, followed by 5 minutes of questions by the teacher, to the following prompt: Examine the ways in which the global issue of your choice is presented through the content and form of two of the texts that you have studied. (40 marks)

One of Moly Crabapple’s images would make a perfect extract to bring to your Individual Oral. As an investigative journalist who uses her sketchbook as a camera, Molly brings to light all kinds of Global Issues across her Body of Work. From the human cost of conflict, to systemic neglect and injustice, to the fight for fairness seen in protests from LA to Libya, investigating an issue in the Field of Inquiry of Politics, Power and Justice would bear rich fruit. Below are one or two suggestions as to a Global Issue that would work alongside a literary work. You can use one of these ideas, but should always be mindful of your pursuing your own interests and following the direction of your own thoughts, discussions and programme of study when devising your assessment tasks:

Towards Assessment: Higher Level Essay

Students submit an essay on one non-literary text or a collection of non-literary texts by one same author, or a literary text or work studied during the course. The essay must be 1,200-1,500 words in length. (20 marks).

If you are an HL student, you might consider using this text to write your HL Essay. Here are one or two examples of lines of inquiry suitable for this text – but remember to follow your own interests and the direction of your own class discussion to generate your own line of inquiry. It is not appropriate for students to submit responses to an essay question that has been assigned:

• How does Molly Crabtree use elements of artistic style to craft meanings additional to traditional photography in her illustrated reportage?
• How are portrayals of human figures used to express resistance against systemic injustice in Molly Crabtree’s illustrated journalism?

Paper 1 Text Type Focus: newspaper articles

Further Reading

• How do journalists find news? (BBC behind the scenes explainer)
• Criteria to Judge Newsworthiness (Galtung and Ruge handout)
• Tabloid Journalism (How Stuff Works article)
• Journalism 101: how to write a lead (video lecture by Prof. Mark Grabowski)
• The Writer’s Art (extract from Melvin Mencher’s News Report and Writing)
• The Language of News Media (extract from Media and Language by Allan Bell)
• Jon Talks About the Media (Washington Post podcast)
• Are Tabloid Newspapers Becoming More Like Broadsheets – And Vice Versa? (article at European Journalism Observatory)
• The Power of the Human Interest Story (Zazzle Media blogpost)
• The War on Memory (article at The Funambulist by Molly Crabapple)
• How the News is Made (behind the scenes short film)
• Wolfe and the New Journalism (article at Chicago Public Library)
• Classic Works of New Journalism (blog by Ted Gioia)
• Favourite Longform Stories 2017 – 2024 (blogpost by Barry Yeoman)
• Narrative Non-Fiction (Writers and Editors messageboard)