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News is similar to a bulletin board where anyone can leave a message about any subject.
The message may ask a question or open a discussion, or it may be a reply to someone else's message. Now think about if that bulletin board was organized into sections, so that one section had messages about sports, another about science, a third about computers, etc. And, in each section, there were numerous sub-sections. For example, the sports section had an area for soccer, one for basketball, one for tennis, etc. People exchange messages, but unlike email, the messages are available to anyone who wants to read them.