The rate at which the word, ‘news’, is pluralised by some of us is baffling. Right from elementary schools, many teachers do not fail to stress that it is an uncountable noun. Yet, it is widely wrongfully pluralised.
I know it would be unheard of for anyone to say ‘newses’, no matter how drunk or poor they might be at English. Not even our comedians, who might be guilty of inadvertently spreading bad expressions, have gone to this extent. The wrong pluralisation is, however, real.
It comes in the form of ‘a news’, ‘many news’, ‘several news’ etc. In other words, the culprits use elements meant for countable plural nouns with the word. While it is right to say many chairs and several chairs, it is inappropriate to say many news or several news. Similarly, it is unacceptable to say a news, one news, two news etc. So, the noun should be treated as other non-count/non-directly pluralised words such as furniture, equipment and information.
Pieces of
When you feel you must establish the volume of the news you are referring to, you can use a piece or pieces of:
A piece of news I read in ‘The Punch’ indicates that the progmame has been cancelled.
Two pieces of news I read in ‘The Punch’ and ‘The Guardian’ indicate that the programme has been cancelled.
Some pieces of news I read indicate that the programme has been cancelled.
Many pieces of news in the newspapers, magazines and online publications indicate that the programme has been cancelled.
Note that while ‘news’ remains singular and uncountable, piece/pieces, which are countable, now determine the number of the verb. If it is ‘news’ alone, the singular verb (is, sounds, has been etc.) will accompany it. But ‘a piece of’ selects a singular verb while ‘pieces of’ selects the plural:
The piece of news is scary.
The pieces of news are scary.
News items
If you still want to dramatise the extent of the information, you can turn the term into an adjective, now qualifying another word, yet referring to news:
There is a news item in the story.
The news items have to be separated from the body of the report.
Similarly, we can employ ‘report’ itself to quantify ‘news’. It is understandable that ‘report’ can at times refer to ‘news’, meaning they can be synonyms, as in ‘I read the news in ‘The Punch’ and ‘I read the report in The Punch’. Yet, there are occasions you can use ‘report’ to pluralise ‘news’:
The news report indicates that the programme has been cancelled.
Two news reports indicate that the programme has been cancelled.
And what about much, some, a lot of?
These are also accepted with ‘news’, depending on the context:
There isn’t much news in the story.
Much of the news is fake.
A lot of news these days is not to be taken seriously.
