The Purpose of News Media
News (sometimes called newsreel) is a short movie, usually with a dramatic music score, that tells an important event, occurrence, or other context in such a way that would be of interest to a wider audience. It usually shows some form of action, either political or sporting in its depiction, and often includes some form of report on the person, place, or thing being depicted. News is not the same as entertainment, however. Entertainment is typically considered the story of a human interest, the story of how an interesting person or place came to be or what it is like about them at this particular moment. News, on the other hand, is more typically a news story that shows some sort of significant happening or development that is of interest to the public.
Today, reporters are usually employed by a single newspaper or a number of newspapers, in order to cover a wide variety of local, national, and international events and happenings. Reporters, who are also referred to as news anchors, often have their own departments, which consist of hundreds or even thousands of people. They often report for major television networks, but in recent years many news outlets have begun syndicating their reporting, rather than having them based entirely in the main newspaper. The process of obtaining and editing news footage for broadcast has, in recent years, also been done exclusively by news desks instead of by freelance reporters.
There are many different kinds of journalists who work in the mass media. There are journalists covering business and industry news, sports news, and international news agencies. The extent of the coverage offered by a given news agency, therefore, depends on the specific field of news that the agency covers. Journalists who work for newspapers and other large publications tend to have a much broader range of expertise than those who work for smaller local or national news agencies.
The development of the multimedia revolution allowed the evolution of the print media as well. Newspapers in the early 20th century began publishing short stories and daily editorials, which were widely read by the general public. Throughout the decades that followed, the evolution of the print media came to encompass more newsworthy events and more detailed reporting. When photography became widely available to the general public, the scope of journalism expanded significantly. Pictures provided newsworthy material for newspapers and magazines for the first time, and they allowed journalists to capture much more visually interesting and informative content. Digital technology has enabled the growth of television news, and with it the explosion of online journalism.
Unlike the more recent forms of journalism, newspaper journalism is primarily designed to generate a strong, wide-reaching readership. Because newspapers regularly publish news that is relevant to their readership, it is a form of information and opinion that is trusted by many people. This trust is not only based on the veracity of the information that is published, but also on the overall quality of the reporting. Because newspapers are published daily, it is impossible to provide breaking news or celebrity interviews overnight. Reporters work to produce a series of related stories that provide the reader with important information about a specific area, event, product, or trend.
The vast majority of journalists today report for newspapers through an in-depth reporting style. They often use personal experience and personal knowledge to create original, non-fiction material. In other cases, they may utilize a combination of writing style and personal experience to inform the reader about a specific event. No matter what type of media they choose, the purpose of a newspaper is to inform its readers, and this purpose is served when a story is written to an extent that it is relevant, well-written, and clearly reported.