News: an adjective meaning “of, relating to, or affecting the world”. It is probably best to leave news to the “real” news women and their male counterparts, unless you have time to watch CNN all day. Unfortunately, we live in a world where people are constantly talking about the latest scoop and often without giving any supporting detail, much less explanation why the information is considered relevant in the first place.
As a verb meaning “to be, become, or appear”. News is a wonderful subject for puns, of course. It is so popular that every dictionary seems to have its own version of the word meaning “journalism” which connects to our “news” loving culture. It is not uncommon to hear news being mentioned as “up-to-date” or “current” with a dash of “on”, “and” or “and it may be”.
There are several definitions of News that should be considered: The purpose or objective of news is to inform the public, usually by way of a news report; news is meant to serve some societal need or desire (usually political) through the reporting of events or phenomena. News is meant to be objective, which means that news reports are meant to be unbiased and to serve the public interest. In other words, news is subjective.
What exactly is a news story? A news story can be anything from an article you read in a newspaper, to a video you saw on YouTube. It can also be something that someone says on TV, to a viral e-mail marketing campaign, or a political campaign ad that hits your inbox. Anything that is reported in the press has the purpose of spreading information to people around the globe. This is why you will hear someone scream or cheer when a sports team wins, or a doctor discovers a new cure for a disease. These things are newsworthy, and the purpose of the media is to inform the general public.
So how do you know if something is newsworthy? There are several criteria for judging news, but at its heart, there are two: what is new and what is being reported. Since the beginning of human communication, we have been documenting events that happen around the world. This is not the same as reporting news, however, and a news article can be considered a news article if it has both a new event and a report on it. For example, a new study about colon cancer was in the news because researchers from Harvard University reported that the polyps found in the colon of people who had the disease made them resistant to a drug used to treat colon cancer.
What is antedating? Antedating is a pre-disseminating of an item or a news story before it gets published. As such, it can be considered the pre-sale of a news story. In the case of journalism, an antedating is the publication of the news within 24 hours of it having been antedated. In the case of the Internet, antedating is the publishing of an article, video, podcast, audio file, or web page immediately after it is antedated so that users can read or receive the news immediately after it is posted online.
