A news magazine is a typed, printed, and published magazine, radio, or television program, usually published weekly, consisting of articles about current events. News magazines generally discuss stories in greater depth than newspapers or newscasts do, and aim to give the consumer an understanding of the important events beyond the basic facts.

The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. (January 2024)

Radio news magazines are similar to television news magazines. Unlike radio newscasts, which are typically about five minutes in length, radio news magazines can run from 30 minutes to three hours or more.

Television news magazines provide a similar service to print news magazines, but their stories are presented as short television documentaries rather than written articles. These broadcasts serve as an alternative in covering certain issues more in depth than regular newscasts. The formula, first established by Panorama on the BBC in 1953, has proved successful around the world. Television news magazines provide several stories not seen on regular newscasts, including celebrity profiles, coverage of big businesses, hidden camera techniques, better international coverage, exposing and correcting injustices, in-depth coverage of a headline story, and hot-topic interviews.

In the United States, television news magazines were popular in the 1990s, since they were a cheap and easy way to better use the investment in national television network news departments. Television news magazines once aired five nights a week on most television networks.^[1] However, with the success of reality shows, news magazines have largely been supplanted. Reality shows cost slightly less to produce and attain a younger and more loyal audience than the news magazines they replaced. Thus, the audience once attracted to news magazine shows has largely drifted to cable television, where common news magazine topics such as nature, science, celebrities, and politics all have their own specialty channels.

Most commercial broadcasting television stations have local news that refers to news coverage of events in a local context which would not typically be of interest to those of other localities, or otherwise be of national or international scope.

• News program
• News media