p.65 In other words: how do 'events' become 'news'?

p.65 Imagine that the world can be likened to an enormous set of broadcasting stations, each one emitting its signal or its program at its proper wavelength... The emission is continuous, corresponding to the truism that something is always happening to any person in the world... The set of world events, then, is like the cacophony of sound one gets by scanning the dial of one's radio receiver... Obviously this cacophony does not make sense, it may become meaningful only if one station is tuned in and listened to for some time before one switches on to the next one.
Since we cannot register everything, we have to select, and the question is what will strike our attention. This is a problem in the psychology of perception

p.66 the thesis if that the more similar the frequency of the event is to the frequency of the news medium, the more probable that it will be recorded as news by that news medium. A murder takes little time and the event takes place between the publication of two successive issues of a daily, which means that a meaningful story can be told from one day to the next.

p.66 What is 'signal' and what is 'noise' is not inherent; it is a question of convention

p.67 It is the unexpected within the meaningful and the consonant that is brought to one's attention, and by 'unexpected' we simply mean essentially two things: unexpected or rare. Thus, what is regular and institutionalized, continuing and repetitive at regular and short intervals does not attract nearly so much attention, ceteris paribus, as the unexpected and ad hoc... Events have to be unexpected or rare, or preferably both, to become good news.

p.68 there is little doubt that there are also culture-bound factors influencing the transition from events to news