World news is the term used by the news media to refer to news from a worldwide perspective. It may also be called international news or foreign coverage, although these terms often have other meanings in the jargon of journalism.

The concept of world news as a subfield of journalism grew out of innovations in the 19th century in communication technologies, particularly the telegraph, that made it easier to distribute reports from far-flung places. This led to the development of news agencies such as Reuters, AP and AFP. These prepare stories that can be sold to multiple outlets, including newspapers, radio and TV stations, magazines and, more recently, the Internet. They are sometimes known as wire services or newswires. The bulk of the major news agency services contain foreign news.

Journalists who specialize in world news are called correspondents, and they work in a variety of fields. In general, a correspondent is a full-time reporter who works for a newspaper or other news source. Correspondents often focus on a particular country, region or even a continent and gather material for their stories from local sources, including the government, diplomats and members of the community as well as events they witness themselves.

A journalist with a global outlook and style seeks to explain events in a way that connects them to the rest of the world, rather than simply explaining how they affect a single region. This approach aims to reflect the complexity of relationships among different social realities across the globe, and it requires that journalists develop a transnational news style.