The Gills and the Antedating News
The Gills and the Antedating News
News is what someone somewhere wants to bury; all else is advertising. (Karl J.aspers, American sociologist, 1890-1977) The best news is that no one wants to talk about. (Cable Guy, a former TV reporter, 1990-present) Sometimes it takes someone with a strong opinion to get news out to those who need it most.
News consists of different subjects and genres. It is written for different societies with different needs. Every society has their own set of needs. Some news stories are designed to inform, some are designed to entertain, some are designed to bring forth light, and some are designed to criticize. (The Washington Post, USA Today, Africa Headlines, etc.) News, according to the dictionary, is “news of recent interest or current affairs.”
News as a form of communication is something that can be critiqued, criticized and judged over time. It is something that you are either for or against, but without ever having to say or do anything. News as a form of communication has been very useful to people since the dawn of civilization, according to Mark Twain in “The Celebrated Use of News.” He called it “the best of all human inventions.”
Since its creation, news has been used to transmit information that would affect humanity as a whole. This would include breaking news as well as general whitewash. Breaking news as we know it today means reports of violence, murder, crime, explosions, etc. General white washing is a term for news that would convey information to the public on important matters that are deemed to have little or no effect on the public’s wellbeing.
In the future, the use of the word might like will likely be replaced by something else. We already have words such as antedating and whitewash. These words appear to indicate the future. They indicate that something is about to happen. This is likely to be a smaller step in the evolution of news. As new technology comes online, news will become even more prominent in our culture.
In the next article, we’ll take a look at the role the gills play in the story of the antedating news. Next post: “The Gills: An Ancient Dilemma and the Modern Problem of Language.” Copyright: Mark J. Gilgamesh. All rights reserved. Reprint rights granted to all formats; individual pages may be reprinted or distributed in their entirety in any Ezine, newsletter, blog or website.