Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(Aus.) a gossip.

1914

Sport (Adelaide) 31 Jan. 9/3: For Vic, she was a boshter, / A noted old -newsbag, / Her tongue. was such a long one, / And always on the wag .

(W.I.) a gossip.

1952

cited in Cassidy & LePage Dict. Jam. Eng. (1980).

(US) a seller of newspapers, sweets etc. on a train.

1882		Sedalia Wkly Bazoo (MO) 25 July 3/5: A pretty good one was gotten off at the expense of a K&T news butcher.
1890		Brenham Wkly Banner (TX) 18 Sept. 10/1: This is the last time I come down here [...] to give these little one-horse papers a chance to ridicule me by calling me a ‘news butcher’.
1894		Daily Ardmoreite 1 Jan. 3/1: Ben R. Wheeler, an old time and popular news butcher on the Santa Fe [...] is in the city [DA].
1900		N.Y. Tribune 30 Dec. 13/5: The train newsboy, or, as he is more familiarly known, the ‘news butcher’.
1909		L.W. Payne Jr ‘Word-List From East Alabama’ in DN III:v 352: news-butch(er), n. Vendor of newspapers, etc., on a railway train.
1916		Wash. Times (DC) 4 May 5/4: Perhaps you think that there is neither romance nor adventure in the life of the humble ‘news butcher’.
1922		Bourbon News (Paris, KY) 14 Nov. 2/1: Did you ever stop to wonder why a railroad train, on which there is no sleeper, no diner [...] no porter and no news butcher is termed an ‘accomodation train’?
1935		J. Conroy World to Win 109: The news butcher was sitting in a seat and staunching his nose.
1947		L. M. Beebe Mixed Train Daily 85: The news butcher [...] still carries as stock in trade the immortal volume of senescent anecdotes, Thomas W. Jackson’s On a Slow Train Through Arkansas [DA].

1. (orig. US) a newspaper reporter.

[1699		N. Ward London Spy XII 11: At last comes in an old News-Hound, who in hunting after Intelligence [...] enquir’d of the rest, if any stragling News had come that way].
[1707		Humours of a Coffee-House 2 July 59: How is it possible that either God [...] or Man in the Best of his Conduct, should long preserve such an untoward mixture of uneven Temper’d News-hounds in their right Senses].
1915		Ogden Standard (UT) 28 June 8/1: The news-hounds of the great dailies.
1919		O.O. McIntyre New York Day by Day 10 Jan. [synd. col.] A group of Park Row news hounds [...] galloped up to Mrs Vincent Astor’s home.
1930		J. Lait Gangster Girl 45: The news-hounds are draggin’ me out of bed.
1935		R. Chandler ‘Spanish Blood’ in Spanish Blood (1946) 12: Leak this to your favorite newshawk and you’re out a job.
1946		Mezzrow & Wolfe Really the Blues 167: That four page hot-tamale sheet had gone and scooped [...] all the other globe-circling know-it-all newshawks.
1959		A. Zugsmith Beat Generation 119: Some of those newshawks hate the Beats.
1966		H.S. Thompson Hell’s Angels (1967) 44: The Attorney General called a Press conference and handed it out in a neat white package, one to each newshawk.
1971		J. Mandelkau Buttons 140: Letting a number of local newshogs photograph them and their patches.
1972		(con. 1916) G. Swarthout Tin Lizzie Troop (1978) 229: Neither he nor the Army dared risk a line in the papers which might put some damned newshawk on the scent.
1999		Guardian Guide 15–21 May 21: Following a newshound on the trail of a rock n’roll suicide.
2012		(con. 1954) ‘Jack Tunney’ Tomato Can Comeback [ebook] Other news hounds would be running for the telephones when the referee raised Braxton’s arm in victory.

2. (US) a newspaper seller.

1957		H. Simmons Corner Boy 82: ‘How you expect to keep up with what’s going on in the world, mister?’ the news hawk said.
1973		G. Sheehy Hustling 21: The best sources were the eyes on the street: all-night counter men, hotel staffers, newshawks .

(US) a female journalist.

1946		G.C. Hall Jr 1000 Destroyed 183: Her aide-de-camp [...] took the typewriter with a rather austere gesture, leaving me bereft of all save my memories of Lee Carson, Hearst news-hen.
1968		A. Drury Preserve and Protect 104: You know our demon news-hen. Helen-Anne can take a sneeze, a sniff and a snuffle and write 1500 words of in-depth analysis.
1977		T.A.G Hungerford Wong Chu and the Queen’s Letterbox 63: He thought she referred to a press conference [...] when some daffy news-hen had breathed down the back of Houlihan’s neck.
1983		D.R. Mankekar Sheer Anecdotage 277: Thereupon, the foreign news-hen amongst us, Taya Zinkin, had a brilliant idea.
1997		G. Troy Affairs of State 187: The voracious media had to be handled by a professional—not by a matron, not by a news hen.
2002		J. Saltzman Frank Capra and the Image of the Journalist 56: More often than not, the whirlwind news hen scooped her male colleagues.