Excerpted from HCO POLICY LETTER OF 14 AUGUST 1963
"The rules of newspaper writing today are very exact. And this is probably a far better analysis of the rules than he [the reporter] has, so you could surely win.
To be printed, a story must contain one or more of these things:
1. HARM (Blood, violence, damage, death, scandal)
2. SEX
3. MONEY
4. BIG NAMES
5. The story must be written to INVALIDATE something.
6. The story must contain a CONTROVERSY.
7. A story must contain TWO OPPOSING FORCES. Dialectic Materialism is the basic philosophy used by the society at this time. This philosophy is crudely stated in the following statement: 'It takes two opposing forces to produce an idea.'
Therefore a great story to a newspaperman contains nearly all of 1 to 4 above and 5, 6 and 7.
This is the formula on which modern newspapers operate. They don't publish any other kind of 'news story'.
...
You could be elected Queen of the May and the headline would be 'Controversy Rips Queen Election. Sexual bias Hinted.'
If you inherited a billion happily from an uncle who loved you, and were all set to help the millions with it, the news story would be 'Foul Play Hinted in Uncle's Death. Rights of Heir Challenged. Sex Life Probed.'
And that's the is-ness of the entheta called news." - L. Ron Hubbard
If you haven't read the entire document, you should.
If nothing else, it's an interesting read.