What is a news peg, again?

One of you asked this question last night; I thought I would answer it for everyone.

A news peg is what makes the story timely or newsworthy now. For example, you could be working for months on a story about, say, increased costs of healthcare in Massachusetts, but your news peg might be a just-announced hike in health insurance costs. It would be the element of the story that makes it timely and important now, the reason why you wouldn’t wait two weeks to run the story.

Another example: the endless array of movie stars who are guests on the late-night shows. Those folks don’t usually show up on those shows because they like to chat with Letterman or Colbert; they do it because — you guessed it — they have a movie or project coming out. That is the ‘news peg’ for having them on the program then. The reason to do it, and do it now.

And you ALWAYS want to have a news peg for your story. If there isn’t an obvious one, you will look for one, because it will make your story stronger. It gives your reader/viewer/listener more reason to pay attention and how it connects to the here and now, instead of looking like a random story that was done because the reporter was really interested in the topic.