News is information about current events that affect people. It can include wars, government, politics, business, education, the economy and health. It can also be about famous people or quirky events. News can be shared through newspapers, magazines, radio and TV.
The main purpose of news is to inform and educate. It can also entertain, but entertainment should come from other areas – music and drama in radio and television, for example, or crosswords and puzzles in newspapers. News should be impartial and independent from political influence.
Whether writing for a newspaper, online or for a news blog, the first thing to do is research your story and find out what’s important about it. Then follow the inverted pyramid structure to write your article. This means putting the most important information first, and then writing what happened in descending order. This is because readers often only read a small part of an article, or skip over it completely, so it’s important to get the key points across as quickly as possible.
A number of theories about what makes news have been developed, but there is no single explanation for why some events are deemed important enough to be reported and others not. Some of the most widely cited theories include impact, proximity, controversy and prominence. It is also important to consider the audience, as different groups of people are interested in different kinds of news. It is sometimes suggested that journalists have their own agendas and preferences when selecting stories to publish, and that this may be one of the reasons why some stories make the cut while others don’t.