News looks like a plural noun because it ends in s, but in modern English it is usually treated as singular. That is why we typically pair it with a singular verb.
The most common pattern is:
- The news is good.
- This news was unexpected.
Using a plural verb, such as “The news are”, sounds wrong to most speakers today. Historically, news developed from an older sense related to “new things” or “new information,” but it settled into the role of a mass or uncountable noun, similar to information or furniture. Mass nouns usually take singular verbs because they refer to a whole body of content rather than separate countable units.
There are a couple of useful contrasts to remember:
- News is typically singular: “The news is on at six.”
- Newspapers is plural when you mean the printed publications: “The newspapers are on the table.”
- You can make it countable by adding a unit: “Two pieces of news were confirmed.”
In careful writing, stick with singular agreement for news unless you clearly mean distinct items, and you phrase it in a way that makes the plurality explicit.
