Etymology
One
theory is that "news" was developed as a
special use of the plural form of "new"
in the 14th century. In
Middle English, the equivalent word
was newes, based on the French
nouvelles.[citation
needed] A somewhat
similar development is found in at least
three
Slavic languages (Czech,
Slovak and
Polish), where there exists a word
noviny ("news"), developed from
the word
nový ("new").
Another
theory is that the word, phonetically
and its written style, is based upon the
Germanic word "neues".
A
folk etymology suggests that it is
an
acronym of the
cardinal directions: north, east,
west, and south, it was
because news is all around the world and
north,
east,
west", and "south'"
are obviously the cardinal directions.
History of
news reporting
In its
infancy, news gathering was primitive by
today's standards. Printed news had to
be phoned in to 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 broadcast and
cable news services use live
satellite technology to bring
current events into
consumers' homes live as they
happen. 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,
cell phones, and the Internet.