News
Related: journalism - new - sensationalism - newspaper
“If you don’t like the news, go out and make some of your own.” --Scoop Nisker radio signoff, 1969
Definition
News is new information or current events. This article discusses news in the context of journalism.
News is reported by newspapers, television and radio programs, Web sites, RSS feeds and wire services. News reporting is a type of journalism, typically written or broadcast in news style. Most news is investigated and presented by journalists (or reporters) and often distributed via news agencies. If the content of news is significant enough, it eventually becomes history. To be considered newsworthy, an event usually must have broad interest due to one or more news values:
- Sales (how much revenue can be generated?)
- Effect (how many people were, are or will be affected?)
- Timeliness (did the event occur very recently?)
- Revelation (is there significant new information, previously unknown?)
- Proximity (was the event nearby geographically?)
- Oddity (was the event highly unusual?)
- Entertainment (does it make for a fun story?)
- Celebrity (was anyone famous involved?)
News items and journalism can be divided in various ways, although there are gray areas. Distinctions include between hard news (more serious and timely topics) and soft news (usually lighter topics) breaking news (most immediate); news analysis; and enterprise or investigative reporting.
News coverage traditionally begins with the "five W's"—who, what, where, when, why.
In democracies, news organizations are often expected to aim for objectivity: Reporters cover both sides in a controversy and try to eliminate bias. This is not true of all, as some are expected to have a point of view. In the United Kingdom, limits are set by the government agency Ofcom, the Office of Communications. Both newspapers and broadcast news programs in the United States are generally expected to remain neutral and avoid bias except for clearly indicated editorial articles or segments.
Many single-party countries have operated state-run news organizations, which may present the government's views. Even in those situations where objectivity is expected, it is difficult to achieve, and individual journalists may fall afoul of their own personal bias, or succumb to commercial or political pressure. Individuals and organizations who are the subject of news reports may use news management techniques to try to make a favourable impression. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News [Mar 2006]
A History of News - Mitchell Stephens
A History of News - Mitchell Stephens [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
From Publishers Weekly
Humankind has always been interested in news, notes New York University journalism professor Stephens, and in this impressive work he shows how that interest has been satisfied. Although it is impossible to provide examples of the oral transmission of news from preliterate societies before the third millennium B.C., the author demonstrates it in action among primitives in the 19th and 20th centuries. Thence he moves to handwritten news, sometimes in personal letters, sometimes in public notices, like the acta posted and copied in ancient Rome and the newsletters written in Renaissance Venice, which were the immediate predecessors of newspapers. News in print followed quickly after the invention of movable type and newspapers proliferated, until they began to be supplemented, if not supplanted, by the electronic media. This solid history is made even more absorbing by such sidelights as the universal fascination with gossip, gore and the supernatural and trenchant observations about the relationship between society and the news it consumes.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Traditional accounts of journalism tend to move from one historically important paper to another, but Stephens (journalism, New York University) breaks that mold. He proffers a broader social focus on the changing form and function of news and gives us the world view, not just that of America. He deftly traces news from primitive societies to early modern Europe up through electronic media today. His final chapter, "A Surfeit of Data," perceptively and concisely sums up the gains and losses of our current journalistic forms. His version also is less trenchant and analytical than Michael Schudson's similarly focused Discovering the News : A Social History of American Newspapers (Basic, 1978). Very useful for college journalism curricula. Daniel Levinson, Thayer Academy, Braintree, Mass.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.