Why the News is News

'News' pertaining to the reporting of factual stories across the globe does not, as widely believed, take its name from the fact that the stories are 'new'.

The word is in fact an acronym used to represent the four significant points of the compass - North, South, East, and West - chosen to indicate the global nature of the 'News'.

I suppose they could have called it 'NSEW' but it just doesn't sound as good does it?

Interesting stuff here from lioncub. In fact, News in every language is actually amusing acronyms :

• in Italian news is 'notizie', acronym of 'there are many directions to the compass'
• in French, it's 'actualités', acronym of 'The whole world is just one big happy family'
• in Russian it's 'Novosty', a witty little acronym of 'there is a North Star in America too'
• in Hebrew it's 'Hadashot', an acronym of 'Oh my God, they killed Kenny! You Bastards!'

Of course, the fact that all these words bear a relation to the word for 'new' in their respective languages is merely coincidental.