What is news? There are scores of definitions that are used to answer this question. Here is a selection of the top seven:
# 1. News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising.
Lord Northcliffe
— British publisher 1865-1922
# 2. [News is] a first rough draft of history.
Philip L. Graham
–American publisher, 1915-1963
#3. Journalism consists largely in saying Lord Jones died to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.
G.K. Chesterton
— British writer, 1874-1936
# 4. What you see is news, what you know is background, what you feel is opinion.
Lester Markel
— American journalist, 1894-1977
# 5. 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
# 6. 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
# 7. No news is good news.
Ludovic Halevy
— French author, 1834-1908
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