What makes an issue relevant to newspaper editorials? An empirical approach to criteria of editorial-worthiness

Although journalism studies rely on a well-grounded debate about news values, there are fewer investigations about the values used to select a topic in newspaper editorials. By tackling the concept of editorial-worthiness, this article aims to empirically examine which editorial values influence how news organizations build their institutional opinions. Methodologically, we use content analysis to find out what makes a topic worth being addressed in 840 editorials published by Folha de S. Paulo and O Estado de S. Paulo (two Brazilian mainstream newspapers) in 2007 and 2017. Our results reveal that “topicality,” “the power elite,” and “conflict” are the most frequent editorial values in both organizations, showing some parallel with news values, although not a complete overlap. Lastly, our framework provides a key contribution to disclosing the similarities and singularities typical of different cultures concerning editorial journalism, offering the opportunity to think about journalism research and practice more broadly.