There are about a million things that happen every day. Somehow the news picks six of them. Who's choosing, and how?
Think about your day. A bunch of stuff happened. Now multiply that by everyone in the country. Now add every other country. That's the pile the six o'clock news is choosing from.
Six stories. Maybe eight. That's what makes the cut.
So who picks?
The short answer: editors. Every newsroom has one (or several) and their whole job is to decide what runs, in what order, and for how long. They start the day with a long list and end it with a short one.
The longer answer is more interesting. Editors aren't just guessing. They're balancing:
- What's important (a new law, a disaster, an election result) - What's new (something we didn't know yesterday) - What people will actually watch (sorry, but it's true - if nobody watches, the news doesn't exist next year) - What pictures they have (TV news lives or dies on whether there's footage) - What everyone else is leading with (nobody wants to be the only channel that missed the big story)
That last one is sneaky. It means the news kind of agrees with itself. If three channels lead with the same story, the fourth one feels weird not to.
The Newsroom Simulator lab I just built is basically this whole problem in a game. You get six stories, two front-page slots, a clock. Try it - it'll change how you watch the news for about a week.
The thing I want kids to know: the news isn't a list of everything that happened. It's a list of what someone decided was worth your attention. That person is usually doing a good job. Sometimes they're not. Either way, knowing it's a choice helps.