ABSTRACT
What is news? What is journalism? How do they overlap? This chapter grapples with these fundamental questions, offering definitions that serve as guideposts, illuminating the nature of contested terms like news and journalism. Guided by scholarship, journalism is defined as a craft devoted to truthfully verifying information, based on particular criteria, transforming information into news, while also illuminating problems, offering opinions, and engaging with the community. News is discussed, beginning with a 21st-century example that highlights its essential features, and is then defined as a constructed narrative account of recent issues of public importance.
