Talk:News

Feedback

I've been working on the stub for Broadcast Journalism. I'd appreciate any feedback anyone has as well as any suggestions for further expansion on the article.

---

The following note was moved from the article to here where (I hope) it belongs:

To be covered:

• History of news
• Propaganda and censorship
• Freedom of the press and importance thereof to political movements
• How news is disseminated

chocolateboy 19:44, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC) Maybe some sports or events like the ban of alcohol (this is an event not a sport) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.31.25.8 (talk) 02:12, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

No history of news

What's the first instance of information identified as news? What's the first news organization? No history of news here. basilwhite 12:19, 25 Jan 2008 (UTC)

No external links to news organizations

I've removed many external links - this article is turning into a link farm to every news organization on the planet. The only ones I left (I think) are those that go to a directory of news organizations, not the individual news org's themsevles. - DavidWBrooks 16:21, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

No external links to news sites

I removed the link to Google News for the same reason as above: external links to sources of information about what news is (such as directories of news sites) are appropriate here, but links to sources of news aren't. They would quickly swamp us. - DavidWBrooks 18:43, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

So where have you put it?

Can you organize all links to news pages together in the article list of news websites? Or as you like it just to make it consistent and easy to find. Also be aware of the tag put into the article. --Eleassar777 12:20, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the note on the tag in the article; I missed that. Personally, I don't think wikipedia needs a list of news websites - the web is already full of such lists. But then, we have lists of newspapers and TV stations showing the Simpsons (sheesh!) so I suppose it's not outlandish. - !!!!

Actually the Web is full of everything except what you need in a given moment. Thanks God we have Wikipedia that searches for info instead of us ;). --Eleassar777 18:07, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

"external" links

Interesting idea to give a more specific lid to the "external links" section. I've returned the work "external," to emphase that (unlike the "see also" area) it's not pointing to wikipedia pages. - DavidWBrooks

Well done. I just wanted to format it a little and it's already mada. Thanks --Eleassar777 08:27, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

origins

I remember having read, that the term NEWS originated from a re-arrangment of NSEW (north, south, east, west) which used to be a part of the header for several early news papers ?. How much is this true --IMpbt 17:20, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Check the article and you'll see that this is discussed. (answer: it's not true) - DavidWBrooks 17:27, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yikes, Thank you :-), --IMpbt 18:33, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well done!

This article needs a complete rewrite

Just a few comments about this article:

News is the reporting of current events usually by local, regional or mass media ...

(To say that news is what is reported by the news media is a bit tautological, but it's also incorrect since news would be news even if were merely passed on by word of mouth.)

... in the form of newspapers, television and radio programs, or sites on the World Wide Web.

(A listing of the various media used for news reporting is appropriate, but it doesn't have to be included in the first sentence.)

... News reporting is a type of journalism, ...

(Wrong. Journalism is a type of news reporting. It is nothing more than the professional reporting, or journaling, of news.)

... typically written or broadcast in news style.

(A discussion of news style may be appropriate, but not in this sentence.)

...Most news is investigated and presented by journalists (or reporters) and often di...stributed via news agencies. If the content of news is significant enough, it eventually becomes history...

(Some news is investigated, some (probably most) is simply reported. )

Now, brace yourself, because I am slightly critical from this point forward :)

...To be considered news, an event usually must have broad interest ...

(One man's trivia is another's news. News is news if it is new and has interest to anyone. It needn't be broad interest.)

... due to one or more news values:

   *Review (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?)
   * Entertainment (does it make for a fun story?)
   * Oddity (was the event highly unusual?)
   * Celebrity (was anyone famous involved?)

Here is where I must be somewhat critical. Get rid of this list, please.

--To begin with, the "timeliness" item should be removed to stand alone, because without timeliness, we have no news, just information.

--Entertainment? A "fun" story is a fun story, not news. Journalists distinguish between news, features, analysis, opinion. Everything that appears in a newspaper is not news.

--Celebrity? Again this is tautological. A celebrity is a celebrity because he/she is celebrated, which usually means he/she has been reported on. Does that means that everything that person does henceforth is news? Entertainment maybe, not news.

So let me take off my critical hat and try to be a little more constructive. The article should contain:

A crisp definition. Something like: News is the factual account of events made soon after their occurrence or their becoming known and delivered to an audience to whom it is of interest.

Perhaps a discussion of what is not news, e.g. news analysis, opinion, background and feature articles.

The paragraph on objectivity and bias should be eliminated or recast as a discussion of journalistic standards. Care should be taken here. Generalizations about democracies will almost certanly be taken as a sign of your own bias!! Democracy is a vague term to start with. The term is currently being used rather sloppily to mean a particular form of "liberal democracy", i.e. rule by the "demos" but with limits that preserve freedom. This is conducive to a free press, which -- if I may be a bit judgmental -- is a good thing. But a free press isn't necessarily an unbiased press, merely one where the sum of the biases may result in some balance. Better to stick with the importance of balanced reporting (reporting accounts from all parties involved, not just two sides) and the clear separation of news reporting from analysis and judgment.

Just my two cents worth.

(This was my first Wikipedia post. I hoped I haven't offended everyone :)

[Originally posted 7 May 2005. Signed retroactively Frappyjohn (talk) 06:30, 21 December 2008 (UTC)]

I disagree that "journalism is a type of news reporting" and contend that "news reporting for wide, public dissemination is a type of journalism" is more accurate. As you point out there are many kinds of journalism, such as features, reviews and opinion pieces, that are not news reporting. Barnabypage 14:00, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

I agree that this article needs a complete rewrite. I'd suggest that some of the contributors to the journalism article come up with a simple definition and then link to the main journalism articles. For example there is a good discussion and references for the topic of news values. RachunZero 08:25, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the article, like most, could use some work. However, I hope you are a professional journalist or have been trained as such due to your disagreements with the list of news values. As a journalism student I can say that those are news values as they are taught to journalists. Therefore, if you disagree with that concept, you disagree with the fundamental way that media outlets determine "What is news?". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.9.102.200 (talk) 18:49, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

I concur with the heading on this sub-section. This, along with its sister article Journalism is an embarrassment. It currently vindicates much of the worst thrown at WP by its detractors. One wonders (again) what the legions of teachers of media courses across the English speaking world, and their students, are up to. Heaven help us. Wingspeed (talk) 15:29, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Sourcing article doesn't refer to this article

I take issue with the following: "This article has been cited as a source by a media organisation. See the 2004 press source article for details. The source is: Will Richardson (December 28, 2004). "The Future of News Right Now". Ed-Tech Insider. [1] (http://www.eschoolnews.com/eti/2004/12/000426.php)."

The only reference to Wikipedia in the above article is to the article on the recent Indian Ocean Tsunami

• It was a mistake by whomever added the note to the "press source" page back in 2004. I'll remove this from this talk page. 131.111.8.96 00:35, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

North East West South.... NEWS

Does the compass have to do something with the news?

Read the article - the last section. (answer: no) - DavidWBrooks 17:43, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Said last section seems to have been edited out, what did it say? -- Resuna (talk) 13:30, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

External links

I'd like to kill off the entire "list of news websites" list. It could be endless. People can find news stories on their own - if we have any links, they should be to discussions or information of news as a subject rather than to news articles or lists of articles. - DavidWBrooks 01:24, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

• • We could just stick to credible known sources that serve as examples of news outlets.

News?

As of now, that first line reads "New is any new information or current events." Should it be "News" insead of new?--PaxNobiscum 14:23, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Spam Links

I removed the two (the only two) external links. They didn't seem to be notable web sites. Mrees1997 00:13, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Violent news stories in Canada

I removed the statement "News often influences our choices, for example: In Canada they don't have many news stories on violence, so most people aren't afraid not lock their doors in Cananda" from the article. Not only is it unverified but I think it is a very misleading statement and it would probably be a bad idea to include such a claim in an article until it can be cited. Vvitor 10:57, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

NEWS is not a backronym

The first sentence of this article states that news means New Event With Significance. While this might be an apt description or mnemonic device, the word is certainly not a backronym. The word most likely evolved from the english word new which in turn evolved from the french word nouvelle. I suggest this first sentence be struck completely. Ngaskill 22:57, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree. The etymology of the word is listed in its own sub-section, and this conflicts with the current introduction. The section also has a footnote linking to snopes, which explains the origin of the word as being a plural of "new". I'm reverting the article back to an earlier revision with a much better introduction. Thanks. Vvitor 05:03, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

The details about it being a plural for new are key. 99.224.137.2 (talk) 12:29, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

The Snopes link doesn't seem to be there any more. Perhaps text addressing this and the "North East West South" myth could be added back? -- Resuna (talk) 13:31, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

French equivalent

There seems to be no article linked to this for the French version of Wikipedia. This is probably because there is no real equivalent to the word 'news' in French (in a journalistic sense). In France, they seem to use the word 'information', most often abbreviated 'info' and the French page on 'information' mentions this in an article based on information in a broader sense. Canadian French uses the word 'nouvelle' more often, which seems to be a more literal translation ('nouvelles' translates directly as news in a broad sense e.g. 'What's the bad news?') but the nouvelle page links back to novella in English (a novella is a narrative work of prose fiction longer than a short story but shorter than a novel). I have linked it to the 'information' article in French as it mentions the topic in a journalistic sense and seems to be in widest use but I would appreciate input from anybody else. --Mgill 08:13, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

A lot of languages don't have a term for news. 99.224.137.2 (talk) 21:13, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism

There is a piece of vandalism on the page which i cannot remove using the edit tool saying "Whoever reads this is a LOSER," I do not know why I cannot remove it using edit page, but it is clearly not encyclopedic and should be removed —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.45.146.200 (talk • contribs)

I suspect you couldn't remove it because it had already been removed. -- Ian Dalziel (talk) 17:48, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Absence of any discussion of criticism of the medium

I made what I believe to be a useful addition to this piece. It was immediately removed because of, I believe, a misapplied standard of conflict of interest. (I cited a published article I had written on the topic. I have no material interest in this article's further use, and do not benefit from the promotion of the ideas I presented.) If my addition can be included but only if it is uncited, that seems odd, but better than nothing -- though it would obviously weaken the entry. The discussion above shows there have been other attempts to acknowledge criticism of the genre, but they were done in an unreferenced and personal way and so, more justly, removed. Here is my addition that was removed:

Criticism

While news delivery is pervasive in modern society, some question the value of the constant updates people receive. There is also concern that the bombardment with negative information and disturbing portrayals of society degrades people's outlook on life. A popular phrase, especially in the local broadcast news genre, "if it bleeds it leads," refers to the priority on putting the most sensational and violent stories up front, to tease people with exciting and frightening images, which has nothing to do with accurate reporting of the facts. In addition to this blurring of the line between news and entertainment, the news also falls under question for feeding the sense that one must keep up to date on facts that have no bearing on one's life -- the information feeding a false sense of control.

--PFR 17:18, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

History section

The section History of news reporting starts thus:

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.

This suggests that in the "infancy" of news reporting, the telephone and wire services already existed. But the earliest newspapers are much older.  --Lambiam 17:09, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Etymology

"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")"

This is not strictly true for Polish, because while nowy produced the derivation nowiny (and also nowości), the latter word is now somewhat archaic, like tidings in English. At any rate, the standard word now used for media news is wiadomości. 85.221.240.201 (talk) 11:32, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Quote

Perhaps this quote can be added:

“ News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising. -Lord Northcliffe ”

How r u

Thanks for all the info — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.31.25.8 (talk) 02:18, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

news stream

No mention of news stream. There should even be a separate article on this! --Espoo (talk) 10:33, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

External links modified

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Lead paragraph

"News is packaged information about current events happening somewhere else."

should be :

"News is packaged information about current events.

which includes local news.

Xb2u7Zjzc32 (talk) 21:19, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

True or false

Is it true that N.E.W.S is suppose to stand for: Notable, Events, Weather, and Sports? --172.114.196.164 (talk) 07:07, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

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Bizarre statement in lede

The genre of news as we know it today is closely associated with the newspaper, which originated in China as a court bulletin and spread, with paper and printing press, to Europe. What is this? Is news a "genre"? Of gossip? Of history? Of advertising? What is the "news as we know it today"? Isn't it constantly evolving? Isn't the news different every day? Chinese court bulletins contained alternative facts? ("as we know alternative facts today") They had advertisements? They could be sued for libel? They had crossword puzzles as we know them today? "Court bulletin"—do our newspapers originate in court? and spread How did it spread? From western China through the oasis cities of the Taklamakan Desert, one oasis at a time, harvesting all their trees so they could make paper? Were there, like, social changes as the availability of newspapers transformed the societies of the desert cities? Bats, birds, and insects all evolved wings, but literate Europeans who shared information through writing letters would never have come up with newspapers on their own? I agree with 173.209.101.238, who recently removed this bizarre statement, but was rolled back. And how should readers 20 years from now understand "today" ("as we know it today")? Vagabond nanoda (talk) 07:54, 3 July 2020 (UTC)