What is news and why?
Journalism textbooks teach several factors that can determine whether something is newsworthy. But some of those factors overlap, and their importance could be debated.
Those factors include the timeliness of a story, its proximity to the news outlet, the possible future impact of the issue, the number of people involved or affected and the prominence of the people and things in the story.
Journalists who teach future journalists those concepts at the state's only two accredited schools of journalism, West Virginia University's Perley Isaac Reed School of Journalism and Marshall University's W. Page Pitt School of Journalism and Mass Communications, offered a few answers regarding the state's biggest stories this year.
Ralph Hanson, WVU associate professor, said he ranks stories by how much it affects him personally. He thought the state's biggest story this year, which towers above any other stories, was the Sago Mine disaster because it was a local story, a state story, a national story and also a trend story.
"There's just a huge number of reasons why," Hanson said. "It's a no-brainer to me."
Hanson's second-ranked story is Don Blankenship's influence on state politics. Hanson said the Massey Energy executive spent more on this year's campaigns than all 45 Senate candidates and almost as much as the 250 House candidates and was unsuccessful. Hanson said the story affected him at home because incumbent Delegate Cindy Frich, R-Monongalia, had Blankenship's support and was defeated.
"I think it was not because people were disenchanted with her," he said. 'This is a bit of a trend story, a national story, because people are fed up with what they perceive as corruption, outside special interests. I think it's a local level of what's happened."
The funding for education in the state is whal Hanson ranked third because he has children in middle school and high school, and believes education funding drives everything else in the state. He also ranked the Iraq war fourth and equitable health care access fifth for many of the same reasons.
Corley Dennison, dean of Marshall's School of Journalism and Mass Communications, ranked the mine disasters first, saying they affected a lot of people in a lot of different ways.
"First, let me say the value of a news story is a relative thing. Something that could be your biggest news story one day might be buried in the back the next day, depending on what else happened," Dennison said. "The second thing is something I've heard called 'affect' news."
Dennison said news organizations have shifted in recent years to give people what they want, especially with the increasing number of news outlets and the competition among them.
"It used to be you had your newspaper in the morning and your network news at 6:30 at night, maybe the radio in between. Now there's so many choices," he said. "News media have become so ratings-conscious and subscriber-conscious that they make an effort to give stories people want to read."
Dennison ranked the November elections second because of many statewide interest points and the Warner Bros, film "We Are Marshall" third because of the national attention it garnered and the huge boost it gave Huntington.
Dennison agreed with sports stories ranking among the state's biggest news stories because of the "affect" factor.
"A lot of people followed the Mountaineers, and it's a matter of pride in the state," he said. "People are emotionally attached to the team."
Hanson said many observers often discuss media bias in terms of being either liberal or conservative. But he said he believes media, because of a different form of bias, report on what affects people in power rather than what affects ordinary people.
"I teach commentary writing sometimes, and I try to really work with my students to get them to cover everyday-life issues," he said. "I think we're used to, with big topics, pre-digested ideas out there for us, and I tell my students they're the dreaded talking points."
Hanson said if he were near Marshall University, he would have put the movie on his list, and acknowledged that different areas of West Virginia are interested in different things.
Dennison said he thought the Sago Mine story would be among the nation's biggest news stories for this year, and he added that West Virginia generally isn't big enough of a state to catch the attention of New York- and Los Angeles-based media.
Both professors said they had no concerns in training future journalists. Hanson pointed out that students have a bigger focus on news, having watched the Sept. 11 tragedy unfold on television while they were in school.
Dennison said students in his most recent ethics class displayed surprisingly traditional news values.
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