News is the information that is reported in the media. It can be in the form of a newspaper article, radio or television report, or online post. As long as the written word has existed, people have been recapping current events and sharing noteworthy information with one another. There are many different kinds of news content, from the straight-forward inverted pyramid structure to the investigative, in-depth feature piece. Each type of news story has a different audience and purpose, but all are meant to inform, entertain and engage the reader.
To be newsworthy, something must be unusual, significant and important to the readers or listeners. It must also be new or interesting. News articles must be written without personal bias and should provide facts. If the writer inserts her own opinion, the news article is no longer an objective piece of news but a column.
The most common kind of news is about people and their activities. This includes celebrity, human interest and sports news. It is also possible for non-human activities to make the news, such as weather events, natural disasters and other environmental issues.
Other sources of news can include government crackdowns or revolutions. It is also possible for information to be disseminated via the Internet, which makes it difficult to control or block completely. This is especially the case in countries where there is no free press or where the press is not allowed to report independently.
A good way to start writing a news article is to identify the audience that you are trying to reach. This may be obvious based on the location of your publication, or it can be more narrowed down if you are covering an event that is specific to a certain community. Once you have identified your audience, you can focus on the most relevant facts and details to your target group.
As well as the traditional methods of getting news to a print, radio or television audience, online media such as websites and blogs can be a good source of news. This is because it can be quicker to get a story online and can be viewed at a time convenient to the viewer.
In addition to local newspapers and radio stations, there are global news services such as Reuters and Bloomberg that can supply stories for use by smaller local publications. These can be used to quickly bring in breaking news which is too urgent to wait for the next edition of a newspaper. Once an article has been selected for a newspaper it is laid out on dummy pages and the reporter is given a byline (their name appears alongside their work). It can then be published daily, weekly, fortnightly or monthly. The dummy pages also give the journalist an opportunity to see how the article looks before it is published and to edit it if necessary. The article can be sourced from several sources, which are then credited, or it can be the writer’s own original work.