Curiously, for a publication called a newspaper, no one has ever coined a standard definition of news.
Reporters are a newspaper's front-line eyes and ears.
Reporters glean information from many sources, some public, such as police records, and others private, such as a government informant. Occasionally, a reporter will go to jail rather than reveal the name of a confidential source for a news story. Some reporters are assigned to beats , or an area of coverage, such as the courts, city hall, education, business, medicine and so forth. Others are called general assignment reporters , which means they are on call for a variety of stories such as accidents, civic events and human-interest stories. Depending on a newspaper's needs during the daily news cycle, seasoned reporters easily shift between beat and general-assignment work.