It's Britney Bitch

In my other class, Media Writing, we discussed and read a chapter from our book about what is news. In the section ‘What Makes News’ on page 13, there is a list of qualities that can define what news is. There has to be Timeliness, Proximity, Prominence, Consequence, Conflict, Suspense, Human Interest, Novelty, and Progress. The next class, we had a pop quiz concerning news events in the media that occurred in that week. Besides my low grade of zero on this quiz, I am shocked that the quiz did not include the release of Britney Spears’ new CD entitled ‘Blackout.’


Maybe I am just not understanding the concept of what news is, or that I am just so in love with Britney that I consider anything she does news, but correct me if I am wrong, the release of her first studio album in over 4 years must qualify as headlining media news.

In response to the chapter in the Media Writing book, I believe this qualifies as news. The release of ‘Blackout’ has timeliness because it is not every week that Britney releases a new CD. This also has timeliness because of all the hype surrounding Britney lately with her going bald, and loosing her kids, etc. It has Prominence because it is about a well-known name and celebrity. Consequence because Britney Spears is a pop icon all around the world and her CD can potentially affect everyone in the world. Human interest because people like to read about other people, and Britney has “been American Dreams since she was just 17” and people still talk about her. There is Suspense because everyone wanted to know if her CD would be a flop or not. This story has most of the requirements to be considered news by the book, and I do not understand why it was not in the pop quiz, when stories that no one had ever heard of were in the quiz. I can confidentially say that the class average on that test was 20%, and the pieces of media news chosen were weak.

Maybe I am just rambling, but I was shocked that my other teacher did not consider this news.


Cited Work:


Whitaker, Richard, and Janet E. Ramsey, and Ronald D. Smith. Media Writing - Print, Broadcast and Public Relations. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004.

Blackout. Dir. Various Directors. Perf. Britney Spears. CD. Jive Records, Zomba, 2007.