Students at OsloMet want to change traditional news criteria
The journalists of tomorrow don’t want to feed the negative news cycle. Students at Oslo Metropolitan University have created their own takes on news criteria: At the top of their list is constructive journalism.
Danish and Norwegian journalism students are often taught in the five news criteria known as VISAK.
Væsentlighed (Significancy)
Identifikation (Identification)
Sensation
Aktualitet (Topicality)
Konflikt (Conflict)
The journalists of tomorrow strive to change this approach.
With the help of their students, associate professors at Oslo Metropolitan University, Karianne Steinsland and Anne Håskoll-Haugen plan to add “Constructive” to the list of news criteria. Students have come up several with new acronyms and criteria such as KOMISK, which stands for Constructive, Objective, Human, Including, Truthsearching, Short.
In 2019, a rapport from the Center of News Reseach at Roskilde University in Denmark, concluded that 23% of Danish youth avoided the news stream often, or occasionally.
It is in the light of such results, that the journalism students at OsloMet have come up with new takes on what news should be. The students have one common message: They don’t wish to contribute to an overly negative news cycle that spreads a warped worldview.
– We don’t want to throw away the “old” criteria, but we need to add on new ones, say Steinsland and Håskoll-Haugen.
Read the full article published by Norwegian media Medier24 here.