newsmongery

Noun

newsmongery (uncountable)

1. Gossip.
   • [S]ince 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 news[-]mongery has come to be...1902, Sidney Lanier, Shakspere and his forerunners, page 111
   • 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'.2003, H.G. Cocks, Nameless Offences: Homosexual Desire in the 19th Century, →ISBN, page 83
2. The act of spreading gossip.
   • Take care of gospel gossiping, of inquiring about places and individuals, merely for the sake of newsmongery.1898, William Adamson, The life of the rev. James Morison - Part 4, page 247
   • 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.1998, Dan-nian Lu, Pamela's Richardson and Joseph's Fielding, page 78
3. Journalism, especially the type that is sensationalist.
   • 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...1860, The Welcome Guest - Volumes 1-2, page 19
   • He was simply angered by the outrageous publicity that the Haight Independent Proprietors had created to develop new markets for the merchandising of their crap—angry about how their newsmongery was drawing a disproportionate number of young kids to the district that was already...1972, Emmett Grogan, chapter 3, in Ringolevio: A Life Played for Keeps, St Albans, Hertfordshire: Panther Books, →ISBN, pages 316–317