News is the information that tells people what is happening in the world around them. News stories can be reported in a variety of ways including newspapers, radio and television. Depending on how the news is presented people may be able to form opinions about what they are reading or listening to. A good news article will start by identifying the main facts of the story. It will then follow up these main facts with any other relevant information. This additional information can include quotes from experts or people involved in the event, contact information for further enquiries and background history. Ideally a news article should be written in third person, using pronouns like ‘he’,’she’ and ‘it’ rather than first person pronouns. This avoids jarring the reader by changing between the two different styles of writing.
The type of information that makes the most interesting or significant news varies depending on the audience. For example, a coup d’etat in the next town might not be as big a story as one that affects the whole country or even the entire globe.
A good rule of thumb is that a news item has to be new, unusual, interesting, significant and about people to be considered newsworthy. However, events that have already happened can still be newsworthy if they become known for the first time. For instance, if scientists report that an insect has been found living on a plant that it previously did not inhabit, this might be a big news story for a specialist publication, but it would probably only receive a paragraph in the general press.
When deciding which events to report, journalists try to balance the need for original reporting with the desire to keep their audiences interested. For this reason, they focus on high impact news stories that incorporate violence and scandal, are local and familiar to their audiences, and relate to current political or economic issues.
National papers, for example, are more likely to report on world news affecting the wider populous than their local counterparts. This can include wars, natural disasters and other major international events. They also tend to report on sports and entertainment events that appeal to a wide range of audiences, as well as local stories.
In the study that looked at all the local media outlets in Baltimore for one week, and a more detailed examination of six major narratives, it was found that the vast majority of what people are getting in their “news” is not actually new. Fully eight out of ten stories studied contained no original reporting, with most coming from the government (often in the form of official statements) or from interest groups. The rest, mostly newspapers, repeated and repackaged existing news.
The pace of news dissemination has changed with the growth of online and mobile technology. It now takes minutes for an event to go from a source of information in the field to arrive in a newsroom and be typed up and put into print, or transmitted to television, radio and mobile phones.