What
do you understand by the term News?
News is timely information about an event or issue of
public interest and importance. It is usually the information through which
audience or public fulfill their desire to know what is happening around them.
News is timely report of facts of either interests or importance or both to
considerable number of people.
The word "news" is derived from the Latin
word "nova" which means "new". Some refer news as a
derivation from a Sanskrit word "Nava" which means new too . Some
others claim that the common acronym of the
four direction NEWS( North East West South) is news. But overall news
means the information that has happened recently, i.e. which is new.
News is that which is happening now' has happened or
will happen. The journalists rely upon set of "news values" such as
prominence, unusualness, local interest, conflict, human interest, impact,
timeliness, etc. in deciding what stories to cover. However all the events of
surroundings do not make news. The subjects of public interest, wonderful
inventions and things, important events for people or country, etc. make news. News usually answers all the questions of 5WH
i.e. who, what, where, when, why and how. News can either be hard news which
gives exact fact based news or it can either be soft news which simply are not
for urgent purpose. News can either be straight or analytical as well. It can
also either be breaking or follow up .
These types of news are usually collected from various news sources such
as interview, press conference, press release, speeches, news agencies, state
mechanisms, NGOs/INGOs, internet, etc.
How
do various scholars/ experts define news?
Though the term news doesn't have a specific or
accurate definition, various scholars/experts have defined it in their own
perception. Different people say that ' News is something interesting,
something that has happened, something new, something people didn't know
before, something that affects their life and something they are interested
in.' However something interesting for one person might not be interesting to
the other and something new to one might not be new to the other. Hence,
defining news is a difficult task. Some
of the definitions of news from different scholars are given as follows:
- News is information about something that has happened recently or reports of recent events that appears in newspapers or on television or radio or in the internet."-Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary
- "News is anything that you did not know yesterday."-Turner Catledge
- "News is surprise and unexpected happening"-Lord North Cliff
- " News is people."-Harold Evans
- "When a dog bites a man that is not a news but when a man bites a dog that is news."-Charles Anderson Dana
- "News is news when it is new"-M.V. Klamath
- "The rise and falls of governments, wars, stories, of peaceful international relations, the doings and movements and sayings of famous people, man-made disasters- those are essentially what news is."-Reuters
- " News is a compilation of facts or events of current interest of importance to the readers of the newspaper printing it."-Nein McNeil
- "News is more unpredictable than the winds. Sometimes it is the repetition with new characters of tales as old as the pyramids, and again, it may be almost outside the common experience."-Stanley Walker
Do
you see any changes in the notion of news over the time?
By the time you are
reading this article about news in this blog, it can be sure that you already
are a part of online news reader. You either check news feeds on your Facebook
account or on other online news websites through your smart phones or
computers. It is the same with most of us. We all rely so much on technologies
which has lots of impacts on our lives directly or indirectly. This is the
change we have seen over the never stopping time. In the same way as
technologies has lots of impacts on our lives, technologies have also changed
the notion of news over time.
About a couple hundred years ago, we couldn't have possibly thought of reaching to world on our palms or through a single click. Today we can know about every single thing that's happening around the world from anywhere. The ongoing media developments are also changing the concept of disseminating news and information. The news readers read the news according to their interests. People get the urgent news within seconds of those events or happenings. Internet access has provided a significant convenience to people for news dissemination.
During ancient times,
the major incidents used to be known by burning fires at different locations.
Also the scroll with some code or message used to be tied on a pigeon's feet
and that's how people used to know about the information. The Roman
Emperor Julius Caesar used Acta
Diurna(daily activities) in 59 BC to inform his mercenaries and soldiers about
the wars. Caesar wanted to inform public about important social and political
happenings. He ordered to write major political and social happenings in them
and placed in the popular places of his city. The Acta Diurna was a kind of a
gazette of the Government of Caesar. From 4th century onwards people in China
used wooden blocks having carved symbols within then to print in paper and clothes.
It was a concept to put embroidery in the fancy clothes of the time. A
newspaper called "Tsingpao" was published in China in about 6th
century. It is known to be the first newspaper ever where news were handwritten
or block/metal-printed. Then after the invention of Guttenberg's press at 1440
by Johannes Guttenberg, the print system was introduced. After that time,
different printing press were introduced and people developed the habit of
reading newspapers. A popular press called Penny Press was also popular during
1833 for cheap cost of newspaper. At
1895, an Italian citizen Guglielmo Marconi's successful experiment introduced
radio for the first time. Then people were able to hear the news as well. In
Britain, a team led by J.L. Baird transmitted a scanned British coin
successfully through television in 1926. Germany televised the Olympic in 1936;
in the same year Britain began the regular programs for a few hours each day.
Though television was very expensive but
gradually due to technology developments different types of televisions were introduced and people began to afford to buy television. At 1980s Tim Burner Lee introduced world wide web and it online news became popular over time.
From the above evolution of technologies over time we can now prove that the notion of news have changed over the time. Today all the people around the world at least have an access to radio to know the news. People have options to choose whether to read or hear or watch the news. Varieties of news are printed or broadcasted or posted for the targeted audience. These advancement in technology will continue to develop like present development and people will get the easier way to get informed about all types of news.
