News represents information about recent events, especially about events that influence people’s lives. Something interesting, intriguing or unique, something that holds a grain of conflict or controversy, something that is happening near a certain audience, something that raises the human interest – all these qualify as news. Dozens of events take place every day in each specific place and hundreds of events take place globally. But not all of these become news. Journalists are the ones who decide which of the information and events that flood the world every day are actually presented to the public. In order to choose what becomes news they have certain tools at hand. Thus, for an event or information to be judged newsworthy, it has to meet at least one or more criteria: impact, significance, prominence, proximity, timeliness, conflict, unusual/human interest, currency, or necessity. In a globalized world, news helps people stay informed and find out about things that influence their lives. For example, the ups and downs of the major stock exchanges influence the markets of the world, and people want to learn from news reports if the day’s changes will affect their savings or investments.
News is not a literary genre, but a textual one. Its main goal is to inform the audience. That means that news is factual: it should present true facts about events, situations, or people. All news has a headline, a lead, and the text itself (the news body). The main features of the news are accuracy and objectivity. Also, news should be balanced (by presenting all the points of view involved in a situation/event), concise (because people want to gain as much information as possible in the shortest possible time), and current (the news must present the latest information, not old news that people have no interest in anymore). It is also important for the news to be clear and rather simple (so that all people can understand it no matter their degree of education), easily read, and attractive to everyone. News reports usually appear in newspapers, on television, radio or on the internet. Due to the rapid evolution of technology, social media has become an important tool for presenting and sharing news. The problem today is that many individuals rely entirely on social media to keep up with the news and the data presented there is sometimes fake, untrue, or biased.
