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| Words used in the
media to indicate an important recent news
development. |
News
News is information about current events. This may be
provided through many different media: word of mouth,
printing, postal systems, broadcasting, electronic
communication, or through the testimony of observers and
witnesses to events.
Common topics for news reports include war, government,
politics, education, health, the environment, economy,
business, fashion, and entertainment, as well as
athletic events, quirky or unusual events. Government
proclamations, concerning royal ceremonies, laws, taxes,
public health, and criminals, have been dubbed news
since ancient times. Technological and social
developments, often driven by government communication
and espionage networks, have increased the speed with
which news can spread, as well as influenced its
content. The genre of news as we know it today is
closely associated with the newspaper. |
|
History
Evidence suggests that cultures around the world have
found a place for people to share stories about
interesting new information. Among Zulus, Mongolians,
Polynesians, and American Southerners, anthropologists
have documented the practice of questioning travelers
for news as a matter of priority. Sufficiently important
news would be repeated quickly and often, and could
spread by word of mouth over a large geographic area.
Even as printing presses came into use in Europe, news
for the general public often travelled orally via monks,
travelers, town criers, etc.
The news is also transmitted in public gathering places,
such as the Greek forum and the Roman baths. Starting in
England, coffeehouses served as important sites for the
spread of news, even after telecommunications became
widely available. The history of the coffee houses is
traced from Arab countries, which was introduced in
England in the 16th century. In the Muslim world, people
have gathered and exchanged news at mosques and other
social places. Travelers on pilgrimages to Mecca
traditionally stay at caravanserais, roadside inns,
along the way, and these places have naturally served as
hubs for gaining news of the world. In late medieval
Britain, reports ("tidings") of major events were a
topic of great public interest, as chronicled in
Chaucer's 1380 The House of Fame and other works. |
|
News media today
News can travel through different communication media.
In modern times, printed news had to be phoned into 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 commercial
broadcasting United States cable news services that are
available 24 hours a day use live communications
satellite technology to bring current events into
consumers' homes as the event occurs. 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, mobile phone, and the internet.
Speed of news transmission, of course, still varies
wildly on the basis of where and how one lives. |
|
News agencies
News agencies are services which compile news and
disseminate it in bulk. Because they disseminate
information to a wide variety of clients, who repackage
the material as news for public consumption, news
agencies tend to use less controversial language in
their reports. Despite their importance, news agencies
are not well known by the general public. They keep low
profiles and their reporters usually do not get bylines. |
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