• DOI:10.1177/107769904902600301
• Corpus ID: 157511120

The Nature of News

@article{Schramm1949TheNO,
  title={The Nature of News},
  author={Wilbur Lang Schramm},
  journal={Journalism \& Mass Communication Quarterly},
  year={1949},
  volume={26},
  pages={259 - 269}
}

• W. Schramm
• Published 1 September 1949
• Education
• Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly

~ NEWS EXISTS IN THE MINDS OF men. It is not an event; it is something perceived after the event. It is not identical with the event; it is an attempt to reconstruct the essential framework of the event-essential being defined against a frame of reference which is calculated to make the event meaningful to the reader. It is an aspect of communication, and has the familiar characteristics of that process. The first news report of an event is put together from a gestalt of eyewitness accounts, secondhand accounts, tertiary comments and explanations, and :the reporter's own knowledge and predispositions. The report is then coded for transmission, usually by persons who have had no connection with the actual event. It is coded by modifying its length, form, emphasis, and interpretation, to meet the mechanical demands of transmission and presentation, the anticipated needs and preferences of the audience, and the somewhat better known wishes and demands of the buyers of the news. Then the news is trusted to ink or sound waves or light waves, and ultimately comes to an audience, where it competes with the rest of the environment for favor. A typical member of the audience selects from the mass of news offered him perhaps one-fourth of the news in a daily paper, perhaps one-half of the items in a newscast he happens to hear. These items of news are perceived by each individual as a part of another gestalthis environment and its competing stimuli, the state of his organism at the moment, and his stored information and attitudes. Perception completed, symbol formed, the news then goes into storage with a cluster of related bits of information and attitudes, and becomes the basis for attitude change and action. No aspect of communication is so impressive as the enormous number of choices and discards which have to be made between the formation of the symbol in the mind of the communicator and the appearance of a related symbol in the mind of the receiver. This selection occurs in every step of the process, but communication by mass media aggravates in a peculiar manner the problem of selection by the audience. The typical American adult