“News” is first attested in English representing the Latin nova (“new things”) in John Wycliffe’s translation of the Vulgate (1382), and it first came into use in the sense of “tidings” in the early 14th century. According to Grimm’s dictionary, the German Nachricht (“piece of news,” “tidings”) first carried the sense of “message to be acted upon [darnachrichten] and heeded” [1]. The German term thus did not refer to just any piece of new information, but to a co…