How many kinds of news stories are there?

March 26, 2005 11:22 AM

Do editors choose and assign feature news coverage based on archetypal stories, and, if so, how many types are there?

I recall hearing that there are basically N kinds of news stories--particularly features--that make it into press and TV broadcasts. They include things like "young person on the way up," "famous person's fall from grace," "surprising comeback" and so on. If memory serves, there were 6-10 of these types of stories. Anyhow, I recall hearing that these archetypes comprise the frames in which editors will often choose to place the majority items that get covered. (Implying, perhaps erroneously, that items which aren't conducive to this treatment are less likely to receive coverage.)

A) Is this anywhere near accurate, and B) can any J-school vets (or smarter Google hackers than I) pull up a good reference on what these notional, archetypal stories might be (true or otherwise)?

posted by merlinmann to media & arts (11 comments total)

A) No. It's a confusion of cause and effect, I think. Yes, a lot of stories that run happen to fit those moulds, but they aren't commissioned because they do -- they are commissioned because such and such a story is interesting and newsworthy.

In the aggregate there are a lot of stories about "young person on the way up" because a function of media is to tell you what's new. There's lots of famous people falling from grace because those stories get a lot of interest. Surprising comeback? "Surprising" is almost certain to be newsworthy.
posted by bonaldi at 12:13 PM on March 26, 2005

Somewhat off-topic but perhaps interesting depending on the nature of your actual information quest: listings of archetypal stories in literature with many lists of different lengths. The Straight Dope cites this list and adds the conclusion that "it depends" is a closer answer because of the shifting nature of taxonomy. My experience with my friends who are journalists indicates much more reliance on current-events/human-interest type designations much more than any of the more esoteric "types." My sample size is small, however.
posted by jessamyn at 12:24 PM on March 26, 2005

This is only based on college newspaper experience, but no, not really.
However, it is sort of human nature to follow the structures that are already there, especially given that newspaper journalism is all about conveying information as quickly and efficiently as possible. Efficiently means sticking with forms that people are familiar with/comfortable with and that they are comfortable writing in quickly.

That said, that knowledge of what people like probably makes editors and writers look for stories that fit within pre-existing molds.

Also, features aren't necessarily assigned. Short news briefs usually are, but feature articles can just as likely be pitched to the editors by writers.

Genres in fiction kind of work the same way, actually.
posted by SoftRain at 12:32 PM on March 26, 2005

I'm a newspaper reporter, and I've never heard of these archetypes. I know that at my newspaper we're asked to re-write when we fall into the trap of using cliches.

Like SoftRain points out, feature stories aren't usually assigned. More likely, a reporter will come across an interesting story while on his or her beat and pitch it to the editor. Sometimes someone with a story to tell (or who knows someone with a story to tell) will call the paper and pitch it to a reporter or an editor.

I work on the city desk (ie, hard news) of a small paper, and we focus most of our reporting on the community we cover, using the wire to cover national and international news. At bigger papers with time and resources to go beyond the community, archetypes may come into play more. I doubt it, though, based on my experiences in the industry so far.
posted by croutonsupafreak at 1:17 PM on March 26, 2005

Well, there are evergreens, no?--stories about the hungry on Thanksgiving, or Xmas charity towards a poor family each year, or Memorial Day traffic/car/highway stories, or college acceptance letter time, shark stories every summer, etc.
posted by amberglow at 1:29 PM on March 26, 2005

This is great, all. Love the insider dope. Thanks.

Yeah, I guess I wasn't thinking there was exactly a big chart on the wall at the NYT or anything. :-) I suspect that the piece I'm recalling was media criticism rather than some proscriptive J-school lesson (or conscious editorial policy). (Wishing my lacy memory were sturdier here.)

@jessamyn: The Polti and Tobias stuff is really close, for sure, but I think something specific to journalism is out there someplace. I'll keep scouring.
posted by merlinmann at 1:34 PM on March 26, 2005

is this the sort of thing you were looking for? It's from the methodological notes to a larger work: Central Ideas in the Development of American Journalism: A Narrative History where the author describes an idea of "macrostories" and shows American Journalistic history as a progression from the macrostory of one of corruption to one of oppression. [note: Worldmag is a Christian publication and definitely uses Christianity as a framework for many of these ideas, as does this article on a simlar topic]

Narrative framework (known to language patricians as "archetypal framework" and to plebians as "story formula") is something that every reporter learns on the job, if not before. Almost every thoughtful journalist has stories of how the lesson is taught.... The implications of "narrative framework" for concepts of journalistic objectivity were discussed intelligently by NYU professor Mitchell Stephens in his book published in 1988, A History of News. Stephens wrote that "journalists' supposed objectivity" is:

compromised by the narrative frameworks they impose on their stories-their decision, for example, on which combination of formulas a particular crime might be made to fit: woeful victim ("his life savings"), noble victim ("a former Boy Scout"), tearful relatives ("their only child"), twist of fate ("had his car not been in the shop"), awful irony ("scoffed at fear of crime"), despicable criminal ("despite the victim's pleas"), psychologically scarred criminal ("abandoned by his parents"), shocked acquaintances ("seemed such a quiet boy"), the wages of poverty ("unemployed for seven months"), the scourge of drugs ("to support his habit"), or the breakdown of societal values ("the fourth such crime in this month"). Most events provide sufficient facts to support a multiplicity of possible formulas; journalists choose among them. [Mitchell Stephens, A History of News (New York, 1988), p. 264.]

I also found reading News, Myth and Social Order: The Myth of the Flood in The New York Times talks around the issue of archtypal themes while focusing on one that the writer wants to write an essay about. The bibliography is impressive, however

The indexers and chroniclers attest: No society exists without myth. Our society is no different. And scholars have worked for decades to argue that news stories can be understood as the modern recurrence of myth. News, they say, is the latest echo of stories uttered long ago. Like myth-tellers of every age, journalists draw from the archetypal stories of humankind to describe and make sense of the world. These myths are more than the story structures and journalism conventions noted by Darnton, Schudson, Eason and others who have studied narrative forms in the news.[8] They are sacred, societal stories with shared values and beliefs, with lessons and themes, with exemplary models that instruct and inform. [8. Robert Darnton, "Writing News and Telling Stories," Daedalus 104:175-94 (Spring 1975); David L. Eason, "Telling Stories and Making Sense," Journal of Popular Culture 15:125- 29 (Fall 1981); Michael Schudson, "The Politics of Narrative Form: The Emergence of News Conventions in Print and Television," Daedalus 111:97-112 (Fall 1982).]

At the end of the day though, it seems like this is the book you are looking for Daily News, Eternal Stories : the Mythological Role of Journalism by Jack Lule [author's web site here, another similar article/interview here and here]

Jack Lule's "Daily News, Eternal Stories: The Mythological Role of Journalism" examines the difference between news as "information" and news as "story" with characters, plot and theme. For Lule, myth does not mean untrue tales, but rather great stories emphasizing "archetypal figures and forms" and "exemplary models" that play crucial social roles for humankind. In this definition, such figures, forms and models represent shared values and help people better understand the complexities, good and bad, of human life.

Here's the table of contents to that book, which I think is as close to a list as you will get, note that "the flood" is one of the myths specifically mentioned in the article above.
posted by jessamyn at 2:42 PM on March 26, 2005

Speaking as an editor at a big newspaper, I can say that nobody sits around trying to fit story ideas into specific archetypes. It's just not a conscious part of the daily news process. But as amberglow points out, there are plenty of predictable cliche-filled stories (pre-Christmas shopping, first snowstorm of the year, back to school pieces and what have you). I think these archetypal stories are more a product of laziness, lack of creativity and blind institutionalized habit than a deliberate effort to fit into some sort of formula. For me, the best articles are the ones that defy categories.
posted by TBoneMcCool at 3:07 PM on March 26, 2005

Everybody knows that MAN BITES DOG is a headline, and DOG BITES MAN is not.

And that "good" news -- "marriage continues for 17th straight year", "neighborhood muddles along without notable racial, class, or cultural tension", "house protects family" -- just isn't written about because it isn't intrinsically interesting, i.e., news. The Onion prospers because we've become familiar with the media setlist, and they mock what is all too common, play around with ironic reversals ("Area Man Loses Spare Change"), and confront taboos (Man Walks on Motherfucking Moon and Holy Fucking Shit: Attack on America).

And we know that certain stories don't get a lot of coverage despite being news, and often very important news. Largely, of course, because the market doesn't clamor for those stories.

We certainly know that celebrity in jeopardy is a ready seller. We know that a dying woman will fill front pages, but a retirement plan debate won't. We know that pretty white girls, when kidnapped, get better coverage than black girls. As much to do with who buys newspapers as anything, of course, but worth considering.

merlinmann: This isn't a question for Metafilter, really; this is a graduate thesis in comparative literature (my submajor!) looking at the cultural uses of narrative, i.e. structured storytelling. Jessamyn has given you some great starting points. There certainly isn't any definitive list, though, and any list would probably evolve. In August 2001 "Arab men entering US with fraudulent visas" probably wasn't a story that would be published anywhere. Too sketchy; too suspiciously racist. In 1995 "White militants threat to US government" wasn't the kind of thing you'd see anywhere. There were stories about angry white militants, but they were pegged as kooks. Then, once the media learns about a narrative -- they'll bleed it to death, because the inherent reality behind that narrative makes it sellable. They're still probably missing important narratives out there.

It is very clear, as humans, that we only have an interest in telling each other certain kinds of stories; but the list isn't permanent, and it's part of cultural progress and change that what kinds of stories we tell change. Look at the evolution of the sitcom from the stilted vaudeville of the 50s, to the dada-influenced gagfests of the 60s, to the naturalism of the 70s, to the last "great" sitcom Friends and the general presumed death of the form. I grew up on the sitcom; today's teens barely know it, and simply aren't interested in 22-minute playlets of self-effacing and zinger humor.

Today, what we often have is "reality" television in which lots and lots of film is edited down into a coherent narrative, usually exaggerating certain facets of what was recorded. The narratives of The Real World and Survivor, Cops, and, God help us, The Apprentice and The Bachelor all have certain things in common, and can be analyzed in aggregate. We don't want "reality" at least not as it "really" is; we want potted melodrama, and they give it to us.

Wikipedia is woefully incomplete in these areas: narratology should be a good starting point, but barely suffices to scratch the surface. Along the way you should probably look into The Golden Bough, Jungian Archetypes, and Joseph Campbell. Since you're looking at the news media, a side trip to Chomsky & Herman would be valuable.
posted by dhartung at 11:38 PM on March 26, 2005

I always wanted to see a story about a cat that attacks someone called Daniel. "Mog Bites Dan".

Sorry.
posted by Decani at 6:59 AM on March 27, 2005

What TboneMcCool said. The daily sked at any newspaper is so much more organic and reactive than people think. And most stories come from the reporters rather than getting ordered up by editors.

What always interests me is how there is an innate sense inside the biz of what is news. Watch any group of local newscasts at 11 p.m. - they will have mostly the same stories, in the same order, despite being the product of completely different teams of people in different newsrooms with different resources. TBone is right too about the best stories often being the ones that break the mould.
posted by CunningLinguist at 7:11 AM on March 28, 2005