News is an unaired account of real-time human activity, which aims to inform, interest, or entertain the public. The first demand of news is that the written piece must not have already been published elsewhere before. It ought to come straight to the public’s attention for the first time. There are two ways to get news to your audience: first, it can come to you by way of wire services or wire bundles; and second, you can publish news online. With the former, as the name suggests, the news is first picked up by wires or transmission companies, who in turn disseminate the news to other media houses, wherein the news gets more exposure and visibility.
With news media, a distinction is made between two forms: traditional media and the weaver news media. Traditional media are the ones, such as the printed newspapers, that report on stories and current affairs; while weaver news media are those, such as the television news, that generate their information straight to the public. It is for this reason that a breaking news segment is almost always sponsored by a news media company. Weaver news-media include cable TV news, radio news, and satellite news.
The field of journalism has developed a close relationship with the news media. It is therefore crucial to understand both its limitations and possibilities. A good example is the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, which is currently going on at a very fast rate. As of this writing, there are still much that remains unknown about this crisis, the extent of the damage it will cause, and the impact it will make on the lives of millions and billions of people. Many journalists have been covering this unfolding event day after day, but there has not been any significant amount of hard facts that can be verified yet.