The news business relies heavily on high technology, but there is nothing scientific about it. 'Feel' is the oldest tool in journalism. Journalists are guided by hunch, gut instinct and assumptions dating back to the dawn of civilisation. This is admirably demonstrated in Evelyn Waugh's novel Scoop, written in 1936, in which two journalists are sent off to report on a war in a far distant country. Foreign correspondents caned away from journalistic jobs, which each knows are more important. At home, one covered politics and scandal, and the other wrote about the countryside. This order of priorities hasn't changed much, I fear. News is about the exceptional, something which threatens, benefits, outrages, enlightens, titillates or amuses.

Preferably it carries a headline: 'Pop star becomes astronaut!' or 'Killer bees invade small town!'. But it might also be a slow pattern of details, like a deadly virus gradually spreading into a worldwide epidemic. There is no shortage of news reports. An average newspaper editor might sift through a million words of news daily, but have room for only a few thousand. Decisions are not made about what is fit to print. They are about what fits. And where space is tight, news from far away is always the loser.