The definition of “news” I’m going to share in this post is the one we used for years when talking to news publishers who asked why their website was not being included in the Google News platform.
For me, this definition of news is still the best one: the clearest and most elegant.
The goal is to make it easy to distinguish what can truly be considered news, and what instead is opinion, an explainer, an editorial, or any other type of content that is not actually news.
The Definition of “News”
Several years ago, I was in San Francisco having dinner with a group of friends. We had spent the whole day working on a series of updates to the Google News platform.
During the evening, I asked the head of the Google News community how she would define “news”. She replied in just a few words:
News is a fact that has happened recently and is reported promptly in an original way.
This is the definition we then repeated in support communications when people asked why their site had been rejected: because it did not publish news, but other types of articles.
Let’s look more closely at the elements in that definition.
At the Core of News There Is a Fact
News is first and foremost a fact.
An event of any kind that has taken place at a specific moment.
“Tizio killed Caio”, “Sempronio signed an international agreement”, and so on. There has to be an occurrence. Without a fact, there can be no news.
What the news reports is essentially a fact.
Not a thought, but the externalisation of a thought in a particular press conference.
Not the opinion of the writer or of a columnist adding elements that are not facts at all, but are meant to steer public opinion.
The fact is an incident, an accident, an event—something that has happened.
The elements of a fact are:
- Who – e.g. Tizio, the protagonist of the event
- What – e.g. “killed Caio”, the event itself, what actually happened
- How – e.g. “with a firearm”, the way the event unfolded
- When – e.g. “this morning”, the time of the event
A fifth and last element seems necessary but in reality is not always required: the why.
Often we find ourselves reporting a fact without yet knowing the motive, which may become public only after a confession that might come much later—or never come at all. The absence of the “why” does not undermine the completeness of the news. We’ll come back to this later.
The Fact Must Have Happened Recently
A fact is news only if it has occurred recently.
One of the historic myths of journalism has always been being the first to break a story.
A murder happens, a journalist is alerted by the police, a photojournalist arrives (those were the days), and in just a few lines they send out a wire:
“ANSA – CAIO KILLED BY TIZIO WITH FIREARM THIS MORNING.”
or
“INGV – 3.7 MAGNITUDE EARTHQUAKE IN THE L’AQUILA AREA THIS AFTERNOON AT 3:17 PM.”
In reality, the concept of “recent” still applies even if the news is printed the following day.
An event that happens today will reach the newsstand tomorrow.
What definitely isn’t news is something that happened a week ago, was already covered by news agencies, and has been written about in the evening edition or the following morning’s papers.
To be even clearer: a blog post titled “10 tips to lose weight” is not news.
It might be a good informative article, or a decent disguised advertorial for a beauty clinic—but it’s not news.
News Is a Fact That Is Told
Unless you are a direct eyewitness, you only learn about the event through the story of the person who writes it: the journalist.
The journalist is almost never a direct witness either, but is a trained professional, capable of identifying the verified elements of the news and reporting them in a certain way.
Beyond the key facts, a journalist on the scene can gather other details: neighbors’ testimonies that help pinpoint the time of the crime, statements from police officers and paramedics, and so on—usually enough to write a fairly complete first piece.
A good journalist stops at these elements.
They don’t start speculating out of thin air; at most they report hypotheses from reliable sources (such as the police).
For example:
“This morning, Tizio shot Caio multiple times with a firearm.
According to a neighbor, three shots were fired at around 10:30 a.m.
Police and paramedics arrived on the scene immediately, but despite several attempts at resuscitation, the man was pronounced dead.
A prosecutor has opened a case for manslaughter.
According to police, the killer is a 30-year-old man already known to authorities. His identification was made possible by security camera footage from the adjacent shop, which was acquired by investigators in the morning.”
Note: at this stage, we usually do not yet know the “why”.
But many news outlets begin speculating, going beyond the news itself: they use words like “probably”, “according to what people are saying”, and so on—things that are not yet proven. Even worse is when journalists build hypotheses from posts found on social media:
“He was probably a mobster”
when in fact the guy on Facebook was just imitating a scene from his favorite TV series.
The Reporting of News Must Be Timely
News needs to be reported within the timeframe in which it can still be considered “hot”.
There is no fixed time limit. It depends on how long it takes to prepare the piece and on the speed of the medium used (the web is faster than print).
A story can also have aftershocks for days or even months and be intertwined with related news: the initial report of an earthquake can be followed by updates on aftershocks, revised casualty figures, and so on.
There are also “news within the news”, sub-stories tied to the main narrative:
for example, the missile strike on a hospital is the main story, followed a few days later by the “story” of a wounded patient.
These sub-stories are not always news in the strict sense: the core fact remains the same; what changes is the perspective adopted by the storyteller (such as the personal stories of families suffering the consequences of the event).
The Reporting of News Must Be Original
This is a crucial point—both for Google and for readers who compare different sources to get a clearer picture of what happened (and the related opinions).
The originality of the storytelling allows readers to see the news through the lens of a specific editorial line.
For example, a politician’s quoted statement may be framed differently depending on whether the newspaper is closer to one political side or the other.
However, we should not confuse originality with editorial stance.
Two newspapers owned by the same publisher used to report the same news in different and original ways simply because two different journalists were writing, drawing on some distinct sources in addition to the official ones.
The “Why”
The “why” is the only element of news that can be delayed—or even absent.
The motive behind a murder may emerge only after years of investigation, during a trial.
The “why” of a pandemic might never appear clearly in the narrative, while public debate shifts to other questions—such as why certain groups of people refuse to comply with government decisions (for instance, mandatory vaccination).
History contains many events that have never had a fully established “why”, or that rest on officially accepted explanations which gradually crumble over time as new documents emerge, challenging what was once considered highly probable.
This post is also available in: Italiano (Italian)
