What is news?

What is news?

When a dog bites a man that is not news, but when a man bites a dog that is news.

Charles Anderson Dana, American journalist, 1819-1897
News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising.

Lord Northcliffe, British publisher 1865-1922
Well, news is anything that's interesting, that relates to what's happening in the world, what's happening in areas of the culture that would be of interest to your audience.

Kurt Loder, American journalist, b. 1945
Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light.

Joseph Pulitzer, American publisher, 1847-1911
News is anything that makes a reader say, `Gee Whiz'!
Arthur MacEwen, American editor, 

No one says "Gee Whiz!" very much these days, of course, not even in America — both because that expression has long since been supplanted by others more colourful and less printable, and because our capacity for surprise has long since been dulled by a surfeit of sources.
Shashi Tharoor, Indian writer and diplomat, b. 1956

What you see is news, what you know is background, what you feel is opinion.
Lester Markel, American journalist, 1894-1977
It is hard news that catches readers. Features hold them.
Lord Northcliffe, British publisher 1865-1922

To a journalist, good news is often not news at all.
Phil Donahue, American entertainer, b. 1935

No news is good news.
Ludovic Halevy, French author, 1834-1908

[News is] a first rough draft of history.
Philip L. Graham, American publisher, 1915-1963

For most folks, no news is good news; for the press, good news is not news.
Gloria Borger, American journalist, b. 1952
 
The real news is bad news.
Marshall Mcluhan, Canadian communications theorist, 1911-1980
 
News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read. And it's only news until he's read it. After that it's dead.
Evelyn Waugh, British author, 1903-1966

Good stories flow like honey but bad stories stick in the craw [gullet]. What is a bad story? It's a story that cannot be absorbed in the first time of reading. It's a story that leaves questions unanswered.
Arthur Christiansen, British newspaper editor, 1904-1963

Hard news really is hard. It sticks not in the craw but in the mind. It has an almost physical effect, causing fear, interest, laughter or shock.
Andrew Marr, British journalist, b. 1959

Never awake me when you have good news to announce, because with good news nothing presses; but when you have bad news, arouse me immediately, for then there is not an instant to be lost.
Napoleon Bonaparte, French Emperor, 1769-1821

Journalism consists largely in saying Lord Jones died to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.
G.K. Chesterton, British writer, 1874-1936

News reports stand up as people, and people wither into editorials. Clichés walk around on two legs while men are having theirs shot off.
Karl Kraus, Austrian satirist, 1874-1936

A master passion is the love of news.
George Crabbe, British poet, 1754-1832

On journalists and journalism

There can be no higher law in journalism than to tell the truth and to shame the devil.
Walter Lippmann, American journalist, 1889-1974

People may expect too much of journalism. Not only do they expect it to be entertaining, they expect it to be true.
Lewis H. Lapham, American publisher and editor, b. 1935

The day you write to please everyone you no longer are in journalism. You are in show business.
[Possibly] Frank Miller, American cartoonist,

Newsmen believe that news is a tacitly acknowledged fourth branch of the federal system. This is why most news about government sounds as if it were federally mandated - serious, bulky and blandly worthwhile, like a high-fiber diet set in type.
P. J. O'Rourke, American journalist, b. 1947
 
The conflict between the men who make and the men who report the news is as old as time. News may be true, but it is not truth, and reporters and officials seldom see it the same way. In the old days, the reporters or couriers of bad news were often put to the gallows; now they are given the Pulitzer Prize, but the conflict goes on.
James Reston, American journalist, 1909-1995
 
The greatest felony in the news business today is to be behind, or to miss a big story. So speed and quantity substitute for thoroughness and quality, for accuracy and context. The pressure to compete, the fear somebody else will make the splash first, creates a frenzied environment in which a blizzard of information is presented and serious questions may not be raised.
Carl Bernstein, American journalist and writer, b. 1944
 
Journalism is literature in a hurry.
Matthew Arnold, British poet and critic, 1822-1888

Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once.
Cyril Connolly, British editor, 1903-1974

The truth is, "What is a journalist?" is one of those questions for which there is no proper answer. The prehistory of modern journalism shows it has been a ragged and confusing trade all the way through.
Andrew Marr, British journalist, b. 1959

Journalism is often simply the industrialisation of gossip.
Andrew Marr, British journalist, b. 1959

We cannot make good news out of bad practice.
Edward R. Murrow, American broadcast journalist, 1908-1965

I have a motto: My job is not to make up anybody's mind but to make the agony of decision making so intense that you can escape only by thinking.
Fred Friendly, former president of CBS News, 1915–1998