- Summary
- Contents
The SAGE Key Concepts series provides students with accessible and authoritative knowledge of the essential topics in a variety of disciplines. Cross-referenced throughout, the format encourages critical evaluation through understanding. Written by experienced and respected academics, the books are indispensable study aids and guides to comprehension.
Key Concepts in Public Relations:
- Provides a comprehensive, easy-to-use overview to the field
- Covers over 150 central concepts in PR
- Paves the way for students to tackle primary texts
- Grounds students in both practice and theory
- Takes it further with recommended reading
Introduction
News
Harcup suggests that if people were asked to define news, most responses would include a mention of novelty; news must be new. News is information about a recent event that the hearer did not know about previously (Harcup 2004). To cite a journalistic adage, ‘there's nothing older than yesterday's news’. But news must also be about the unusual rather than the everyday. To cite a second journalistic rule of thumb, ‘Dog bites man is NOT news, but man bites dog IS news’. News also typically tends to emphasise the negative aspects of life: tragedies, natural disasters, train and plane crashes, factory closures and redundancies rather than factory openings and the new jobs they bring. To cite a final adage attributed to journalist Ian Jacks, ...
