Editorial guidelines such as SRF's say story selection is governed by relevance and audience interest. What concrete criteria orient each of the two judgements?

Relevance is read off the story's objective weight — topicality, significance, proximity, the actors, exemplary character, exclusivity, importance beyond the day; audience interest off its pull — closeness to daily life, talk value, community buzz, emotion, surprise, strong material.

Neither criterion has a final definition, so SRF's editorial guidelines (Publizistische Leitlinien) give orientation checklists instead — and every publication decision is supposed to reflect the weighting:

• Relevance (does it objectively matter?): topicality / news value; political, economic, cultural, scientific or societal significance; geographic, cultural, economic or political proximity; the significance of the actors involved; exemplary character (one case standing for a wider pattern); exclusivity; significance that lasts beyond the day.
• Audience interest (will people actually care?): closeness to the audience's lived reality; public attention ("everyone is talking about it"); strong interest in digital communities; emotionality and drama; a surprise effect; the availability of powerful audio, image and text material.

Two details are worth noticing. The lists are weighted differently per publication channel — a TV evening news show and a social-media clip legitimately rank the same story differently. And "exemplary character" is the editorial twin of the tip-triage question "is this a single case or a pattern?": one incident earns relevance precisely when it stands for something systemic.

Go deeper:

• SRG editorial guidelines (Publizistische Leitlinien) — the rulebook these orientation lists come from.