Ben Bagdikian wrote a book called "The Information Machines" about personalized news circa 1970.
One chapter in the middle of it makes the most damning indictment of the concept of "news" that I've ever seen.
At that time, the editor of a local newspaper had to look at thousands of news wire article that he could run and had only a few seconds to evaluate an article and decide if they want to put it in or not.
Fast forward to 2011 and a small media market like Tompkins County. We've got a daily paper, the Ithaca Journal, which seems to get a page thinner every month. Most newswire news is now in a section with USA Today branding, and the local news in the Ithaca Journal is largely about crime -- this works because a single crime can generate a large number of news stories: there is a report, an arrest, an indictment, an interminable trial, a conviction, appeals, imprisonment, parole hearings, a release, etc.
The serious newspaper in Tompkins is a weekly paper, the Tompkins Weekly, which is actually profitable. It covers things that are going on in the area that are ongoing... And that's the point: most of the things that are important are ongoing processes, not event. The fact is that there just aren't enough significant events in an area of 100,000 people to fill a daily. And who needs wire news stories in a local paper when you get them online?
"News" in the conventional sense is entertainment; even if you're watching the events in Egypt on Al Jazeera, it's probably something that isn't going to change your behavior or make a real difference in your life.