News and Media

News is essentially new information or current events. This article discusses news in the context of journalism.

News is reported by newspapers, television and radio programs, Web sites, RSS feeds and wire services. News reporting is a type of journalism, typically written or broadcast in news style. Most news is investigated and presented by journalists (or reporters) and often distributed via news agencies. If the content of news is significant enough, it eventually becomes history To be considered newsworthy, an event usually must have broad interest due to one or more news values:

• Impact (how many people were, are or will be affected?)
• Timeliness (did the event occur very recently?)
• Revelation (is there significant new information, previously unknown?)
• Proximity (was the event nearby geographically?)
• Oddity (was the event highly unusual?)
• Entertainment (does it make for a fun story?)
• Celebrity (was anyone famous involved?)

News items and journalism can be divided in various ways, although there are gray areas. Distinctions include between hard news (more serious and timely topics) and soft news (usually lighter topics) breaking news (most immediate); news analysis; and enterprise or investigative reporting.

News coverage traditionally begins with the "five W's"—who, what, where, when, why.

In democracies, news organizations are often expected to aim for objectivity: Reporters cover both sides in a controversy and try to eliminate bias. This is not true of all are expected to have a point of view. However, limits are set by the government agency Ofcom, the Office o , both newspapers and broadcast news programs in the United States are generally expected to remain neutral and avoid bias except for clearly indicated editorial articles or segments.

Many single-party countries have operated state-run news organizations, which may present the government's views. Even in those situations where objectivity is expected, it is difficult to achieve, and individual journalists may fall foul of their own personal bias, or succumb to commercial or political pressure. Individuals and organizations who are the subject of news reports may use news management techniques to try to make a favourable impression.

Etymology

The word "news" comes from a special use of the plural of the word "new", and not as the common backronym claims, from the four cardinal directions (North, East, West, and South). Old spellings of the word varied widely—newesse, newis, nevis, neus, newys, niewes, newis, nues, etc.— casting doubt on the popular etymological theory.

See also

• Journalism
• List of news web sites
• Mass media

External links (directories of news sites)

• News and information Collection of links to newspapers and other news, also streaming medialinks
• LookSmart - Directory of News & Magazines
• Open Directory Project - News
• Hot Bulletin View hundreds of news sources at once
• Yahoo - Directory of News and Media
• Open Press Room - Open Source News Directory
• Wikinews project
• News Finder
• CNN
• BBC News
• ITN
• Sky News
• Google News
• News from different UK sources

"Media" redirects here. For other uses, see Media (disambiguation).

Mass media is a term used to denote, as a class, that section of the media specifically conceived and designed to reach a very large audience (typically at least as large as the whole population of a nation state). It was coined in the 1920s with the advent of nationwide radio networks and of mass-circulation newspapers and magazines. The mass-media audience has been viewed by some commentators as forming a mass society with special characteristics, notably atomization or lack of social connections, which render it especially susceptible to the influence of modern mass-media techniques such as advertising and propaganda. It is also gaining popularity in the blogosphere when referring to the mainstream media.

Usage note: The term mass media is mainly used by academics and media-professionals. When members of the general public refer to "the media" they are usually referring to the mass media, or to the news media, which is a section of the mass media.

Etymology and usage

Media (the plural of medium) is a truncation of the term media of communication, referring to those organized means of dissemination of fact, opinion, entertainment, and other information, such as newspapers, magazines, cinema films, radio, television, the World Wide Web, billboards, books, Compact discs, DVDs, videocassettes, and other forms of publishing. Although writers currently change in their preference for using media in the singular ("the media is...") or the plural ("the media are..."), the former will still incur criticism in some situations. (Please see data for a similar example.) Academic programs for the study of mass media are usually referred to as mass communication programs.

History

During the 20th century, the advent of mass media was driven by technology that allowed the massive duplication of material at a low price. Physical duplication technologies such as printing, record pressing and film duplication allowed the duplication of books, newspapers and movies at low prices to huge audiences. Television and radio allowed the electronic duplication of content for the first time.

Mass media had the economics of linear replication: a single work could make money proportional to the number of copies sold, and as volumes went up, units costs went down, increasing profit margins further. Vast fortunes were to be made in mass media.

In a democratic society, an independent media serves to educate the public/electorate about issues regarding government and corporate entities (see Mass media and public opinion). Some consider concentration of media ownership to be a grave threat to democracy.

Corporate and mainstream outlets

Sometimes mass media (and the news media in particular) is referred to as the "corporate media". Other references include the "mainstream media" (MSM). Technically, "mainstream media" includes outlets that are in harmony with the prevailing direction of influence in the culture at large. In the United States, usage of these terms often depends on the connotations the speaker wants to invoke. The term "corporate media" is often used by leftist media critics to imply that the mainstream media is manipulated by large multinational corporations. This is countered by right-leaning authors with the term "MSM", the acronym implying that the majority of mass media sources is dominated by leftist powers which are furthering their own agenda (see Conspiracy theory, Media bias in the United States).

Purposes

• Advocacy, both for business and social concerns. This can include advertising, marketing, propaganda, public relations, and political communication.
• Enrichment and education, such as literature.
• Entertainment, traditionally through performances of acting, music, and sports, along with light reading; since the late 20th century also through video and computer games.
• Journalism.
• Public service announcements.

Forms

Electronic media and print media include:

• Broadcasting, in the narrow sense, for radio and television.
• Various types of discs or tape. In the 20th century, these were mainly used for music. Video and computer uses followed.
• Film, most often used for entertainment, but also for documentaries.
• Internet, which has many uses and presents both opportunities and challenges. Blogs are unique to the Internet.
• Publishing, in the narrow sense, meaning on paper, mainly via books, magazines, and newspapers.

Toward the end of the 20th century, the advent of the World Wide Web marked the first era in which any individual could have a means of exposure on a scale comparable to that of mass media. For the first time, anyone with a web site can address a global audience, although serving to high levels of web traffic is still relatively expensive. It is possible that the rise of peer-to-peer technologies may have begun the process of making the cost of bandwidth manageable. Although a vast amount of information, imagery, and commentary (i.e. "content") has been made available, it is often difficult to determine the authenticity and reliability of information contained in (in many cases, self-published) web pages. The invention of the Internet has also allowed breaking news stories to reach around the globe within minutes. This rapid growth of instantaneous, decentralized communication is often deemed likely to change mass media and its relationship to society.

"Cross-media" means the idea of distributing the same message through different media channels. A similar idea is expressed in the news industry as "convergence". Many authors understand cross-media publishing to be the ability to publish in both print and on the web without manual conversion effort. An increasing number of wireless devices with mutually incompatible data and screen formats make it even more difficult to achieve the objective “create

Contrast with non-mass media

Non-mass or "personal" media (point-to-point and person-to-person communication) include:

• Speech
• Gestures
• Telephony
• Postal mail
• Some uses of the Internet
• Some Interactive media

See also

• CNN effect
• Media controversy
• Media imperialism
• Media studies
• Multimedia literacy
• Media transparency
• Locative media
• Situated media
• Media and ethnicity
• Media and gardening

External links

• ((fr.en.nl)) news concepts and applications of communications with the interactives multimedia and networktechnologie
• MANA - the Media Alliance for New Activism
• Philosophical Society.com's list of scholarly articles on media.
• LanguageMonitor - Media Metrics and Analysis