In an attempt to identify criteria used by readers to select science news, a homogeneous group of women in the Philadelphia area was asked to indicate which of 48 science-news statements they would be interested in reading in their newspapers. The statements were condensed from stories selected from Philadelphia newspapers over a six-and-a-half-month period. Each statement contained a combination of two factors: content in one of four categories (biomedicine/health and disease, biomedicine/policy, physical sciences/research and application, and physical sciences/policy) and emphasis on one of four content-free categories (conflict, impact, prominence, and proximity). A total of 200 questionnaires was mailed, of which 128 were returned in usable form. Factor analysis of responses indicated that respondents based their preferences for newspaper science news primarily on content, with content-free criteria apparently serving as secondary bases for selection. Such results suggest that reader preferences for news are probably based on complex mixtures of criteria rather than on just content or content-free components, as some earlier studies suggest. (Author/JM)