When Can You Claim Something is ‘New’ in a Story?

How to refer to the newness, or oldness, of whatever you write about

Anyone who's ever worked for a news organization knows the value of the word “new.” If you can say a survey or a fact or quote or a discovery is new, well… that’s eyeballs, baby. Those three letters—new—are headline gold. But how new does something have to be to be new? 

Newer than it used to be, one might argue. Things move fast these days. And when som…