The “News” as the Basis of Journalism

Abstract

“News” remains one of the most relevant and controversial categories of journalism. News is difficult to define, and this is the reason why so many people take a lively part in the discussion of this subject. The discussion is not only theoretical, because knowing and understanding what “news” is can bring real benefits. Production and consumer priorities regarding news content are related to the culture of a particular society, its historical traditions, and national mentality. Therefore, news categories in journalism are written a lot and defined in different ways. The aim of this article is to show that “news” as the main information component of journalism is self-sufficient and does not need to be linked to certain genres. The research was conducted on the basis of a systematic approach methodology using a comparative genre methodology and typology of journalistic texts. The scientific novelty of the research consists in the fact that it for the first time substantiates the differences between genre as a formal logical structure and news as an objective category that has its own properties and qualitative features. It is proved that news can be presented in any information genre, if it does not contradict its main property, its novelty. The article defines the concept of “news” in the following wording: news is an operational and relevant message for the audience, transmitted through the channels of mass communication, about new facts, events, phenomena, processes from the surrounding nature and social reality. The selection of news depends on the type of journalism system, type of media, and priority agendas in a given society at a given time.

Keywords

• news
• genre
• quality
• facts
• news selection
• mass media