One theory is that news was developed as a special use of the plural form of new in the 14th century. In Middle English, the equivalent word was newes, like the French nouvelles and the German neues. A somewhat similar development is found in at least three Slavic languages (Czech, Slovak and Polish), where there exists a word noviny ("news"), developed from the word nový ("new").
A folk etymology incorrectly suggests that it is an acronym of the cardinal directions: north, east, west, and south.[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News#Etymology