>UPDATE: better might be sum of individual deaths, each divided by an inverse power factor of degree of separation i.e.
>
>Newsworthiness = SUM[ 1 / ( ( FactorN ) ^ ( degree of separation from readers ) ) ]
>
>That way:
>
>- A large number of deaths of people unknown and far away ( high degree of separation ) would be steeply discounted
>
>- A single death could make it newsworthy e.g. your local newspaper reporting the death of someone from your town in Serbia, amongst a group of 12 otherwise unknown people dying in an avalanche on Everest

If it were that simple. The distances, however, are not geographical. Death of Jimi Hendrix was publicized here much more than who knows how many died in Vietnam the same day, even though the US are geographically more distant and we officially and unofficially opposed the war then. Any large traffic accident, involving less than 20 people, may pass completely unpublished if it happened in any of the neighboring countries.

The newsworthiness is in the eye of the editor.