News Producing: All About News Judgment
When selecting stories for the newscast or website, I put priority on stories that are focused on USC, local to Los Angeles, and relevant to college students. The elements that make stories interesting are controversy and newness, while the elements that make stories important are timeliness and the ability to impact a wide audience. For example, health stories impact a lot of people, like this week's nail polish toxins story, as most women have used nail polish and could be interested in this news.
Another important editorial decision with news judgment is deciding how much time, video, and sound to dedicate to a story. I always think, is this important enough to get sound? How much time? Is there enough video for a VSV or should it just be a VO/SOT? For example, this week, we knew the Dodgers opening day story would be one of the biggest events to cover. The story was allotted multiple lines to include Madeline's package, the VSV about the Dodger's free bus from Union Station, as well as Nick's recap of the game. Because this was a big, local story with many angles, we knew it would deserve many lines in the rundown.
Deciding where and when to include breaking news is also an important part of news judgment. This week, for example, the news broke about Santorum suspending his campaign early on in the day. This was a huge national story and automatically became our lead. I think news judgment is one of the most important skills a producer can have, as breaking news can be sporadic, unexpected, and overwhelming. The ability to quickly deduce a story's relevance to the audience is a crucial part of being a producer.
