Gutenberg’s death in the Balkans: news values in Kosovo and Albania

Figures & data

Table 1. Evolution of news values over time.

Galtung and Ruge (1965, p. 70)	Harcup and O’Neill (2001, p. 279)	Harcup and O’Neill (2017, p. 1482)
1. Frequency. An event that unfolds at the same or similar frequency as the news medium is more likely to be selected as news.	1. The power elite: Stories concerning powerful individuals, organizations, or institutions.	1. Exclusivity: Stories generated by, or available first to, the news organization because of interviews, investigations, surveys, etc.
2. Threshold. Events have to pass a threshold before being recorded at all.	2. Celebrity: Stories concerning people who are already famous.	2. Bad news: Stories with particularly negative overtones, such as death, injury, defeat, and loss (of a job, for example).
3. Unambiguity. The less ambiguity, the more likely the event is to become news.	3. Entertainment: Stories concerning sex, showbusiness, human interest, animals, an unfolding drama, etc.	3. Conflict: Stories concerning conflict, such as controversies, arguments, splits, strikes, fights etc.
4. Meaningfulness. The culturally similar is likely to be selected because it is within the news selector’s frame of reference.	4. Surprise: Stories that have an element of surprise and/or contrast.	4. Surprise: Stories that have an element of surprise, contrast, and/or the unusual about them.
5. Consonance. The news selector may predict (or indeed want) something to happen.	5. Bad news: Stories with particularly negative overtones, such as conflict or tragedy.	5. Audio-visuals: Stories that have arresting photographs, video, audio, etc.

Galtung, J., & Ruge, M. H. (1965). The structure of foreign news: The structure of foreign news: The presentation of the Congo, Cuba and Cyprus crises in four Norwegian newspapers. Journal of Peace Research, 2(1), 64–90. https://doi.org/10.1177/002234336500200104

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Harcup, T., & O’Neill, D. (2001). What is news? Galtung and Ruge revisited. Journalism Studies, 2(2), 261–280. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616700120042114

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Harcup, T., & O’Neill, D. (2017). What is news? Journalism Studies, 18(12), 1470–1488. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2016.1150193

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