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A comment on Cuban responds to the SEC Insider Trading complaint. Parent comment

Re:Cuban responds to the SEC Insider Trading complaint by fallentimes on Monday November 17, 2008 @03:06PM (#367274)
Even a short paragraph (which ESPN/WSJ had before them) would be nice. It demonstrates a level of due diligence.

The term "breaking news" doesn't mean anything any more because it's so overused. It's like the word unique or the word special.

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Re:Cuban responds to the SEC Insider Trading complaint by jorgeortiz85 on Monday November 17, 2008 @08:27PM (#367646)
I'm a bit puzzled. "Breaking" doesn't mean "important". In this context, "to break" means:

  14. (v. tr.) To make known, as news: break a story.
  15. (v. intr.) To become known or noticed: The big story broke on Friday.
  (http://www.answers.com/topic/break)
So a "breaking news" story is one that is being made known or becoming known. In the morning when the story was becoming known, I think the label was perfectly appropriate.
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Re:Cuban responds to the SEC Insider Trading complaint by fallentimes on Monday November 17, 2008 @09:14PM (#367696)
Another definition (and the one I was thinking of):

Breaking news is a current event that broadcasters feel warrants the interruption of scheduled programming in order to report its details

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Re:Cuban responds to the SEC Insider Trading complaint by jorgeortiz85 on Monday November 17, 2008 @09:27PM (#367711)
Did cnn.com really "interrupt" any "scheduled" programming with the Cuban story? They usually just have that red bar over the top with the "breaking" headline.
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Re:Cuban responds to the SEC Insider Trading complaint by fallentimes on Monday November 17, 2008 @10:15PM (#367761)
Obviously the definition doesn't transfer perfectly to the internet.

Traditionally breaking news is reserved for news deemed important (see previous definition). The problem is, everyone uses it too much, and if too many things are deemed important, nothing is. And we're back to where we started :).

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