McLurg's Law

McLurg's Law, named after a legendary British news editor, is a rule of journalism, by which events diminish in importance in proportion to their distance from London. However, the rule now seems to have uses in locations other than London too.

The rule demonstrates the general news value of proximity.

Some examples of the uses of the rule are:

• If books worth a quarter of a million are stolen at Westminster Abbey, it is news. If it happens at Durham Cathedral, it is news in brief.
• In the UK, the rule means that 1 dead Briton is worth 5 dead Frenchmen, 20 dead Egyptians, 500 dead Indians and 1,000 dead Chinese.
• In Australia, the rule equates 10,000 killed in a Peruvian earthquake with 100 killed in an Irish railway accident, 10 killed in an Australian capital city apart from the one in which the news report is based, and one person killed in the suburb in which the news report is based.