News
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
"Understood in its totality, the spectacle is both the result and the goal of the dominant mode of production. It is not a mere decoration added to the real world. It is the very heart of this real society’s unreality. In all of its particular manifestations — news, propaganda, advertising, entertainment — the spectacle represents the dominant model of life."--The Society of the Spectacle (1967) by Guy Debord "If you don't like the news ... go out and make some of your own" --Wes Nisker "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one" --A. J. Liebling |
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
News is any new information or information on current events which is relayed by print, broadcast, Internet, or word of mouth to a third party or mass audience. The reporting and investigation of news falls within the profession of journalism. News is often reported by a variety of sources, such as newspapers, television, and radio programs, wire services, and web sites. News reporting is a type of journalism, typically written or broadcast in news style. Most news is investigated and presented by journalists and can be distributed to various outlets via news agencies.
There are many categories of news. The weather is typically presented by a certified meteorologist or, on smaller stations, a less-trained "weatherman" and is considered news. Other news categories are: sports, fashion, society, entertainment, business, cartoon strips, features, lottery numbers, lives of celebrities, advertising, and more. Until the 1970s, when women's lib issues came to the forefront, most newspapers had a "Women's" section devoted entirely to fashion and society news. Papers even printed "cheesecake" feature photos of attractive young women in bikinis, often transmitted by the AP or UPI wire services, illustrating various news events or feature ideas.
History
Before the invention of newspapers in the early 17th century, official government bulletins and edicts were circulated at times in some centralized empires. The first documented use of an organized courier service for the diffusion of written documents is in Egypt, where Pharaohs used couriers for the diffusion of their decrees in the territory of the State (2400 BC). This practice almost certainly has roots in the much older practice of oral messaging and may have been built on a pre-existing infrastructure.
In Ancient Rome, Acta Diurna, or government announcement bulletins, were made public by Julius Caesar. They were carved in metal or stone and posted in public places.
In Early modern Europe, increased cross-border interaction created a rising need for information which was met by concise handwritten newssheets. In 1556, the government of Venice first published the monthly Notizie scritte, which cost one gazetta. These avvisi were handwritten newsletters and used to convey political, military, and economic news quickly and efficiently to Italian cities (1500–1700)—sharing some characteristics of newspapers though usually not considered true newspapers. Due to low literacy rates, news was at times disseminated by town criers.
Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien, from 1605, is recognized as the world's first newspaper.
The oldest news agency is the Agence France-Presse (AFP). It was founded in 1835 by a Parisian translator and advertising agent, Charles-Louis Havas as Agence Havas.
In modern times, printed news had to be phoned into a newsroom or brought there by a reporter, where it was typed and either transmitted over wire services or edited and manually set in type along with other news stories for a specific edition. Today, the term "breaking news" has become trite as commercial broadcasting United States cable news services that are available 24-hours a day use live satellite technology to bring current events into consumers' homes as the event occurs. Events that used to take hours or days to become common knowledge in towns or in nations are fed instantaneously to consumers via radio, television, mobile phone, and the Internet.
See also
