Story: dancer leaves, no-one dies

John Sergeant announced today that he is leaving Strictly Come Dancing.

The former political commentator is to leave the TV dance show voluntarily. His departure will have little real impact on the world.

So why is it that major news sources rank this story so highly? It is currently in number two or three slot on many British news websites, even the serious ones.




News editors decide the ranking of stories based on news value. They balance a number of criteria:

• The scale (the number of people who die, the size of the explosion)
• The impact (the number of British people who die, whether the explosion is in Ipswich or Kasakhstan)
• Shock value (motor racing boss in orgy scandal, toddler beaten up)
• Emotional reaction (toddler goes missing on holiday)
• Humanity (how much we care about the people involved)
• Drama

It is the last of these that drives the Sergeant story. It is a classic underdog drama — a fat journalist winning a dance competition against all the odds and then backing out at the last minute. You could make a Hollywood movie about it.

It is easy to underestimate the importance of drama when one evaluates news. After all, what we write are called stories. The better they work as a story, the higher their ranking as news.

John Sergeant's dancing story also reminds us that we cannot often decide what our readers will choose to care about.