What Is News?

News is information about current events and a range of other topics that are of interest to people. It is about what is happening in the world and how it affects us, and includes stories about famous people, the weather, work, food, health, sex, entertainment, religion and politics. News articles should contain facts and quotes from sources, but should not include the writer’s opinions. They should also be written in clear, concise sentences and paragraphs.

People are interested in what other people do and the way that they live, and in their achievements. Celebrities, athletes, politicians and business people make news when they achieve something significant or are involved in a scandal. Health and the environment are also important issues in news stories, as are food shortages, harvest sizes and prices of goods in markets. People are interested in agriculture and the food supply, and they are concerned when an insect eats their crops or kills their livestock. Sex and relationships are of interest, particularly when they involve behaviour that is unusual or goes against society’s generally accepted norms.

Different societies have different interests, and these influence what is considered newsworthy. For example, a story about an archbishop’s views on the ordaining of women priests is more likely to be newsworthy in western Europe than in Iran or Russia. Similarly, a natural disaster is more likely to be newsworthy in a western country than in a developing one. News is usually reported by journalists, but it can be delivered by a wide variety of other sources. These include radio, television and the Internet. Online news aggregation sites such as Google News gather articles from many sources and distribute them to their audiences, often using algorithms rather than human curation.