National news is the term used for stories that affect a nation as a whole. It covers politics, major disasters and other events that impact the entire country. This type of news is contrasted by local news which covers community events, crime reports and other issues affecting the city or town where the news is published.
International news is a separate branch of journalism from national news. The main difference is that international news covers a country or global subject, while national news focuses on the nation’s government and institutions. The field of international news includes several subfields, the most well known being war reporting.
The first newspaper titles included foreign news as part of the title, such as the courants (in England), Nieuwe Tijudinger and Avisa Relation oder Zeitung (in the Netherlands) and d’Arenberg’s (in France). The invention of printing made it possible to publish more regularly and in larger numbers, and the advent of telegraphy enabled news to be transmitted from abroad to be published locally in newspapers and magazines.
News agencies were founded to provide a steady stream of foreign news articles in bulk to many different organizations, including newspapers, radio and television broadcasters. Typically, the news agencies prepare hard news and feature articles that can be used in their original form with little or no modification by others, and they sell them to these entities (originally via wire services; today they use the Internet). National news is often supplied by these same news agencies.
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