The Nature of News in Four Dimensions

A time-worn saying amongjournalists is that "If a man bites a dog, it's news."This mythical man-and-dog analogy, a t a more sophisticated level, suggests the idea that news is conflict. Furthermore, this onedimensional definition may influence subtly what readers expect of their newspapers. I Decades of research still leave the perplexing question: "What is news?" Perennially, the answer seems to lie just beyond the horizon. This elusiveness seems due to lack of theoretical frameworks applicable to all news, regardless of topic. Thus, the baffling complexity of even one gatekeeper's output, or reader's selection therefrom defies parsimonious description, with few exceptions. Even the most fundamental exploration, however, reveals the notion that newslike public opinion-is a multidimensional process that everyone knows, rhetorically, yet doesn't understand, operationally.2