What is Network News?
In Summary:
Network news is a group of discussion forums, called newsgroups, which revolve around specific topics. There are several thousand newsgroups on almost every imaginable topic available on USENET, the network which carries most newsgroup traffic.
Newsgroup articles are stored on special computers called news servers. A newsreader
program is used to access articles from a subscribed newsgroup on the news server. The
newsreader also allows a user to read articles, reply to them and post new articles.