What is a news item?
News stories can help spread information about your activities, and strengthen the relationships with different stakeholder groups. A news story can be anything that highlights your operations while simultaneously informing your audience of something they had no prior knowledge of.
The news process
Creating a news story includes several steps:
- Information gathering
- Production
- Distribution
- Recycling
We will help you with all the steps. Read on if you are curious about the news process and want to learn more.
1. Finding the news story
Everyone in your organisation can contribute to identifying news.
News must be perceived as new, engaging or unexpected by the target audience. Other than that, news can be pretty much anything that strengthens the relationships with different stakeholder groups and highlights the operation. The operation should preferably be highlighted in a beneficial way, but it can also be about highlighting challenges in a way that feels authentic.
News can be about:
- All forms of interesting results
- New projects
- New collaborations
- (Recent) participation in larger events or contexts
- Research grants
- New employees
- New courses or study programs
- New publications
- Awards
2. News evaluation
Will the topic of your news affect a lot of people? Is it about something new? Will people be able to relate to it easily? Can it be connected to current societal challenges or events in the outside world? If the answer is yes, your news item is likely to have high “news value” and the potential to be widely disseminated.
3. Target audience perspective
It is important that you present your message in such a way that the intended target group can, and wants to, absorb it.
News angle
A matter closely associated with news evaluation is the question of who the news is aimed at. Whether it is a small group of experts or the general public, you need to find a fitting angle that will both intrest your target audience and confirm to them why they should have a relationship with your operation.
Language
You should express yourself in a way that makes your message interesting and understandable to your target audience. They will reject your message if it is percieved as too predictable or too complex. Consider who you wish to talk to. Is it a school class of 11-year-olds or colleagues within the same research field as you? Is it decision makers who need to be convinced about a new policy? Is it the general public? Potential partners?
What should your audience be doing?
It is also good to consider what you want to achieve with your communication, i.e., what you want the target audience to do after reading your news article. Should they get in touch? Speak highly of you? Act in a different way? This also affects how you angle your news.
4. Dissemination
The target audience affects not only how you choose to communicate your news, but also the choice of channels for dissemination. There are two primary questions that are important to answer to identify the right channels for dissemination:
- Is the news broad or niche? News is considered broad if there is a great public interest around it. Niche news has a narrower target audience, perhaps consisting of experts in a specific area.
- Is the news internal or external? Internal news mainly concerns employees within KTH. External news may also interest partners, potential students and the general public. Both internal and external news can be either broad or niche.
What applies to collaboration?
For those who work with collaboration, news from the operation is almost always external. At the same time, they can often be niche. The news can therefore often be published both in your own channels (websites, newsletters, social media) and spread in various channels to partners, scientific communities and sometimes also in the school’s news feed.
News from collaborative operations can, however, be of greater public interest, especially when it comes to communication about various research results, societal impact or a project concerning a popular topic. These news articles can therefore be posted in news feeds at KTH or sent out to various media outlets.
Inform the content group at the central communication department: redaktion@kth.se
5. Recycle it!
A published news article, blog post, LinkedIn post, brochure or campaign site is often the result of several hours of work. Perhaps individuals have taken the time to answer questions for an interview. Only using your material once is therefore a waste.
Instead your news can be adapted for different target audiences and channels. For example, a news article can be used in differnt news feeds at KTH, published in partners' channels and perhaps turned into a short film that can be used in social media.
It is a good thing if the target audience is exposed to the news in several different channels.