Awareness Instinct

"People crave news out of basic instinct – what we call the Awareness Instinct. They need to know what is going on over the next hill, to be aware of events beyond their direct experience. Knowledge of the unknown gives them security; it allows them to plan and negotiate their lives. Exchanging this information becomes the basis for creating community, and making human connections." - The Elements of Journalism by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel

In people there is an innate instinct to scour for information about their environment, an automatic function that thirsts for useful knowledge. A newspaper serves as the water to quench that thirst for information about the unknown.

Consider a businessman, the first act he might perform in the morning, prior to heading to his place of employment, is read the newspaper, not just for the sake of reading something in the morning, but to find out market conditions. And sometimes these businessmen extract ideas reading articles that further them in fathering companies.

A businessman has a natural want for news concerning his business, so he reads the paper to fill his mind with relevant knowledge. Sometimes in newspapers there are scandals involving competitors that is also useful to the businessman because it is a form of intelligence that he can use when making decisions. In other words, for him the news serves to provide information on “what is going on over the next hill.”

A paper's appeal thrives on human curiosity for information, and this is why a newspaper almost always has an audience, so long as it continuously provides fresh contents to its readers.