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News is any information whose revelation is anticipated to have an intellectual or actionable impact on the recipient. This information could add insight to an existing topic, or could pertain to current events. News can be disseminated using any available communications vehicle, such as word of mouth, public address system, postal letter, print, broadcast or the Internet. Some forms of news dissemination are intended for a single person, while others are directed towards a mass audience. Mass audiences could consist of a spatially-diverse group of individuals (such as those listening to a radio or television broadcast), or could consist of a temporally-diverse set of individuals, such as those reading a news blog on the Internet.

[edit] Etymology

One theory is that "news" was developed as a special use of the plural form of "new" in the 14th century. In Middle English, the equivalent word was newes, based on the French nouvelles.^{[citation needed]} A somewhat similar development is found in at least three Slavic languages (Czech, Slovak and Polish), where there exists a word noviny ("news"), developed from the word nový ("new").

Another theory is that the word, phonetically and its written style, is based upon the Germanic word "neues".

A folk etymology suggests that it is an acronym of the cardinal directions: north, east, west, and south.

[edit] History of news reporting

In its infancy, news gathering was primitive by today's standards. Printed news had to be phoned in to a newsroom or brought there by a reporter, where it was typed and either transmitted over wire services or edited and manually set in type along with other news stories for a specific edition. Today, the term "Breaking News" has become trite as broadcast and cable news services use live satellite technology to bring current events into consumers' homes live as they happen. Events that used to take hours or days to become common knowledge in towns or in nations are fed instantaneously to consumers via radio, television, cell phones, and the Internet.

[edit] Newspapers

Most large cities had^{[citation needed]} morning and afternoon newspapers. As the media evolved and news outlets increased to the point of near over-saturation, afternoon newspapers were shut down except for relatively few. Morning newspapers have been gradually losing circulation, according to reports advanced by the papers themselves.^{[citation needed]}

Commonly, news content should contain the "Five Ws" (who, what, when, where, why, and also how) of an event. There should be no questions remaining. Newspapers normally write hard news stories, such as those pertaining to murders, fires, wars, etc. in inverted pyramid style so the most important information is at the beginning. Busy readers can read as little or as much as they desire. Local stations and networks with a set format must take news stories and break them down into the most important aspects due to time constraints. Cable news channels such as MSNBC and CNN, are able to take advantage of a story, sacrificing other, decidedly less important stories, and giving as much detail about breaking news as possible.

[edit] Objectivity in news

News organizations are often expected to aim for objectivity; reporters claim to try to cover all sides of an issue without bias, as compared to commentators or analysts, who provide opinion or personal point-of-view. However, several governments impose certain constraints or police news organizations for bias. In the United Kingdom, for example, 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 governments 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 foul of their own personal bias, or succumb to commercial or political pressure. Similarly, the objectivity of news organizations owned by conglomerated corporations fairly may be questioned, in light of the natural incentive for such groups to report news in a manner intended to advance the conglomerate's financial interests. Individuals and organizations who are the subject of news reports may use news management techniques to try to make a favourable impression.^{[citation needed]} Because no human being can remain entirely objective (each of us has a particular point of view), it is recognized that there can be no absolute objectivity in news reporting.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Newsworthiness

Determining what information is newsworthy (or worthy of being called news - suggesting that news should have some inherent value) is a largely subjective process, and is generally determined by the individual or organization that is distributing the information. The greater the newsworthiness of a piece of information, the larger this inherent value.

In societies where information is not heavily controlled, newsworthiness loosely equates to an assessment of the impact that the information will have on the intended audience -- the greater the impact, the greater the newsworthiness is deemed to be. This determination is offset somewhat by the perspective that a greater diversity in intended audience should tend to broaden the scope of what is considered newsworthy. Additionally, when available distribution resources tend to be plentiful, or when such distribution has little actual, perceived or incremental cost, the scope of what the distributor considers newsworthy tends to be broadened even further, to the point that the distributor's assessment of newsworthiness has no relevance to the recipient.

In societies where information tends to be controlled by a central authority, newsworthiness can be roughly equated to propaganda value. In these societies, information which tends to reinforce the controlling authority's particular opinion or view is deemed more newsworthy, and information which counters these opinions or views is deemed not to be newsworthy at all.

A distributor's assessment of newsworthiness can be at odds with the recipient's assessment of newsworthiness. This situation tends to erode any trust that may exist between the distributor and the recipient.

Wherever news dissemination becomes commoditized, the fact that an ever-growing number of individuals is being reached ends up increasing the diversity of opinion and perspective of the audience. As that audience's perspective broadens, there is less likelihood that a distributor's assessment of newsworthiness will match a majority of the audience's individual assessments, to the point where the distributor's assessment will be considered largely irrelevant. This dynamic could be an underlying cause for the decline in audiences for many mass-market news dissemination services, such as newsprint and television broadcasting. It may also be helping to drive the turn from "traditional news" towards "infotainment", where sensationalized or salacious material is being passed off more and more by its distributors as "news".

[edit] References

• Stephens, Mitchell. "A History of News - 3rd Ed" Oxford University Press, New York, 2007.
• World News Worldwide news by country agency and category.