What is News?

Specifically, what is sports news? ESPN's sportscenter this morning has a story about Brett Favre. Nothing surprising, except he has retired, and they keep asking him if he is still retired. But the real news story? He's going to be on the cover of EA Sports Madden '09. How is this news? When Pete Rose was on the Wheaties box, did the 6:00 news report it? There's too much t.v. programming. I imagine its rather difficult to fill all that time, so I shouldn't be surprised. But 300 channels, 24 hours a day. That's a lot of space to fill. Hence the dime-a-dozen sitcoms, the non-news news stories, the liberal-conservative pundits fighting each other, the non-journalist pundits telling us what to think, and the dominance of Law and Order and CIS and their abundant spinoffs.