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Dunántúli Napló is a Hungarian county daily newspaper which came into existence in the last two years of the second World War. The paper is popular amongst people living in the south of the country for two reasons: not only does it inform the reader in detail of the local news, but also that of national and international news as well. Seven years ago its name changed slightly from Dunántúli Napló to Új Dunántúli Napló owing to the new Hungarian regime, its only name change in fifty three years. The shape or the size of the paper has not been altered, only the numbers of pages amplified giving a more overall view of political, economical and cultural events.

Greater understanding of the actual regime can be achieved by examining the structure of the newspaper and analysing the text with the help of different news values such as consonance, unexpectedness or personalization. However, this paper will restrict its scope of investigation to the definition, identification and interpretation of three news values as represented in a Hungarian newspaper in the seventies. It will provide a text analysis of home and international news as well as of features and interviews in the April 14, 1973 edition of DN.

This paper can be divided into two parts: one shows the events that happened on that day or the preceding day in the country. Some examples are the following in this issue. This Saturday, as any other day in April must have been capricious: sleet, rain, clouds and a temperature of seven to twelve degrees centigrade. The lottery was drawn on Friday 13, in Dunaszekcsõ. The article notifies the reader of the process through the newspaper man (Rab Ferenc) who was present at the time. With the collaboration of five local inhabitants the numbers of ten, twenty-two, thirty-two, seventy-five, seventy-eight were drawn from the globe. Under the headline of “Megnyilt Walter Engel fotókiállitása” the reader is informed of an Austrian-Hungarian venture, as a result of which a photo exhibition was opened on Friday at Doktor Sándor Mûvelõdési Központ in Pécs. On the same page (page 4) in another column, the attention is drawn to the police who were still looking for eyewitnesses of an accident which took place at the end of the previous year. One of the front page stories is about a delegation of the Austrian Communist Party which was met by Kádár János in Budapest. Most importantly, more than one article can be found in this edition of DN in the center-fold and on the front page as well, about the preparations for the national elections of the council members which would take place on the following Sunday.

The other part is about the events in the world. This international news section is located on the second page of the newspaper. The main article on this page concerns Italy. The people in Milan went on strike, to express mass indignation against the fascist provocation which took place two days before. Another negative story was about an earthquake in Catanzaro in Italy. The earthquake caused only financial damage. Regarding Romania, one is informed of the return of the Romanian president, Nicolae Ceausescu, from Holland where he stayed for three days on an official visit. In West Germany, Chancellor Brandt was elected to become the president of the Social Democrat Party.

This issue of DN consisted of 8 pages and carried 48 news stories in all. Five of these were front page stories, 21 inside front cover foreign news stories with the rest of the stories on pages 3 to 6. Almost half of the news stories are foreign news. The front page story of Acél György's remarks at the national pioneers’ leaders conference was without an illustrative element. In the foreign news section (24 óra a nagyvilágban) and in the national news section respectively, two and five stories were shown with photographs. The news elements included reports of meetings, of the approaching council elections and of several other events in the world and in the country.

The articles on the second page of Dunántúli Napló are devoted to report about conflicts between certain countries, terrorist actions and clashes between political parties. The news value represented by these articles is negativity. Although fundamentally negative news is likely to appear on the front page of a newspaper, in this particular paper these articles are placed on the second page, as the first page is reserved for domestic news on political issues. There were at least three negative stories on the second page of the April 14, 1973 issue of DN . The longest one was a twelve paragraph long report on the UN Security Council’s discussion brought about by Lebanon’s proposal to terminate Israelis membership in the UN because of the country’s continuous aggression in the Middle East area, “a Biztonsági Tanács nem hagyhatja büntetlenül Izrael megismétlõdõ agresszióit ”. The story went on to disclose further details of the matter in question.

The story was negative in the way that it revealed the details of a serious disagreement between two Middle East countries. The story was probably an adaptation of news agency reports, however it was only indicated by the fact that the opinions of representatives of the member countries were reported from four different cities. The sources of the news items were not apparent as there were no direct quotations of the words of the different delegates and Ministers of Foreign Affairs. Negativity was the most apparent news value in this article but recency also contributed to the story because the event reported was one that had happened in the last 24 hours. However, unambiguity did not complement the story because the sources of news items were not impeccable.

There were numerous short, clear-cut, factual stories on the very same page. For these reasons they could be considered unambiguous, but neither one revealed the source of news items. One short story told about a rare, outstanding moment of medical history: a woman who had two wombs gave birth to two healthy babies on the very same day. ( Egy nõ két méhébõl-két gyerek ) This short news was complemented by another news value, that is, unexpectedness. „The unpredictable or the rare is more newsworthy than the routine.” (adapted version of Allan Bell’s 1991 analysis of news values).

Proximity is a news value which occurs in almost every article connected to local news. Newspaper men are aware of the public's bigger interest in incidents, developments which took place geographically close by and are essentially linked to the inhabitants' local community life.“ The minor accident is reportable in the settlement where it happens, not a hundred miles away.”(adapted version of Allan Bell's 1991 analysis of news values ). However, this news value can be presented together with proximity, negativity and facility as well as with many others.

A three paragraph long article at the bottom of the fifth page (DN April 14, 1973 Tömeg verekedés a pécsi nagypiacon) told about a brawl in the crowd at the Pécs Flea Market. A totally drunk man, Barics J. of Hásságy fell on the ground. A few customers were pulling and tossing him, to get him back on his feet. This scene was misunderstood by Barics’s companions, as they thought that Barics had been insulted. In a few minutes several people got involved in a mass fight that could only be finished by the police. Barics got injured during the fight, he was taken to hospital by ambulance.

The news value proximity was very well represented by this article. Hásságy is a village near Pécs and the Flea Market has always been a popular shopping place among the habitants of the town and the nearby villages. The reported event could only be placed in the DN because this news item only bore importance within this area.

Headlines of a newspaper also have a determining role in newspaper writing. Their functions are to capture the reader’s attention, to focus their attention on the issues, and in order to fulfil these aims they must synthesise the contents of the issues. DN applied several letter types and sizes to grab the reader’s attention: it used large-sized, coloured letters for the title of the newspaper. The headlines were printed in bold type to make it possible to get an outline of the contents for the reader who only skimmed through the newspaper. Longer or more important articles (eg. A Biztonsági Tanács elõtt Libanon panasza) were divided by sub-headlines still printed in bold type, but with smaller letters.

On the second page, in the foreign news section (24 óra a nagyvilágban), the presentation of the short stories was not a success, because too many letter types, highlighting and division devices had been applied. This method resulted in a somehow chaotic page. Headline placing and the choice of letter types turned out to be more successful on the rest of the pages; the look of these pages was neat and the column-placing was tidy.

Photos obviously have an important, illustrating function in newspapers. DN often used photos to throw light on those aspects of the news that did not become apparent only by the written text or to introduce an author or the subject of the article. There were photos on all pages.

The sources of news items in most cases were not clear. There were only three articles that were signed by their authors, one or two were signed only by the author’s initials and the majority of the articles carried no byline at all. The tendency throughout the whole newspaper was the disguising of sources. This tendency was not balanced by the few direct and the many more indirect quotations in the articles. Source disguising raises a serious problem, that is, ambiguity. News stories are supposed to be clear-cut but clarity cannot be achieved without revealing sources of news items. But the writing method of this paper was forced on journalists by the Hungarian regime that restricted the freedom of the press.

The day in question was a relatively uneventful one in Hungary, judging by the pages of Dunántúli Napló. The range of stories on offer was fairly undramatic in content, covering such subjects as the visit to Budapest by a delegation of Austrian communists, the opening of a photo exhibition, the results of a lottery draw and an appeal by the police for eyewitnesses to an accident. The most significant articles were the ones which concerned preparations for the national elections. Unfortunately, the reporting of some of these events, as well as some of the actual layout of the newspaper, left a lot to be desired. Some of the shortcomings included lack of bylines, unattributed sources, ambiguity in stories and occasionally cluttered layout. However, many of these flaws resulted from government control of the press and the subsequent pressure endured by journalists. Yet despite these problems, it can still be said that the newspaper contains good examples of the news values proximity, recency, negativity and even, sometimes, unambiguity.