News is any new information or information on current events which is presented by print, broadcast, Internet, or word of mouth to a third party or mass audience, i.e. the reporting of current information on television and radio, and in newspapers and magazines.

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.Fact: date=March 2008 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, it was because news is all around the world and north, east, west, and south are obviously the cardinal directions.

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.

Newspapers

Most large cities hadFact: date=April 2007 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.Fact: date=April 2007

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 Fox News Channel, 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.