newsmongery

English

Etymology

newsmonger +‎ -y

Noun

newsmongery (uncountable)

1. Gossip.
   • 1945, Sidney Lanier, Shakespeare and his forerunners, →ISBN, page 111:

     ...and since one told one's intimate friend all that one knew, — and often a great deal that one didn't know,— the tale-bearing, and news, and so on, of one god's-sib to another began itself to be called god's-sib, or gossip, until now, when all manner of scandal and newsmongery has come to be universally called gossip

   • 2003, H.G. Cocks, Nameless Offences: Homosexual Desire in the 19th Century, →ISBN, page 83:

     Instead, the Age declared, of 'merely noticing the misdemeanour, which would have been the course most consonant not only with public decency, but also with public justice, they gloat on it as a kind of god-send in newsmongery and recur to it with most damnable iteration'.

2. The act of spreading gossip.
   • 1898, William Adamson, The life of the rev. James Morison - Part 4, page 247:

     Take care of gospel gossiping, of inquiring about places and individuals, merely for the sake of newsmongery.

   • 1998, Dan-nian Lu, Pamela's Richardson and Joseph's Fielding, page 78:

     However, while signifying Mr. B's wealth and enhancing the significance of Pamela's marriage, this sizable downstairs population could also be perceived by the contemporaries as a hotbed for newsmongery and a network of guerrilla spies routinely invading the master's privacy.

3. Journalism, especially the type that is sensationalist.
   • 1860, The Welcome Guest - Volumes 1-2, page 19:

     A correspondent, confessing himself as yet unknown to fame — a circumstance he appears to consider unaccountable, and which we ourselves are unable to explain, at all events on the score of constitutional modesty— writes to us, adopting the above signature, with a somewhat authoritative request that we shall engage him for the weekly supply of certain articles of newsmongery, which he declares indispensable to the permanent success of our publication, (a necessity we had not previously contemplated), and, for the superior production of whihc, he recommends himself above all living writers, on the singular plea that he seldom looks into a newspaper, and labours under a Doctor-Johnsonian inaptitude to "read books through."

   • 2015, Rob Chapman, Psychedelia and Other Colours, →ISBN:

     He was angry about the magnetic effect the coverage was having on the youth of America, 'angry about how their newsmongery was drawing a disproportionate number of kids to the district that was already overcrowded', as he put it, 'thousands of young foolish kids who fell for the Love Hoax and expected to live comfortably poor .and take their place in the district's kingdom of love'.