Hi Carmen:
Interesting question these days, with the lines blurring between content types all the time :)
As Rick said, it’s now more about what’s relevant to a reader, and I’d add when and where.
However, going back to my journalism roots, I’d call anything timely and factual “news”. If it’s been written by a journalist or independent person (i.e. not someone in the marketing department), it’s more readily defined as news.
If the content has been created by the marketing team, it’s more often “branded content” or native advertising (the advertorials of yore).
And yes, “evergreen” is a fairly common term for content that’s got a longer shelf-life than breaking news. However, in the journalism world, that content would still originate with a journalist. For example, feature articles, in all their varieties, are not news per se, but they have value and can prove engaging reads for people long after their original publication date.
There’s also the maintenance issue – with news content, you expect that to appear and evaporate quite quickly from the feed. It might be available in some sort of archive, but you would be under no obligation to update it – the follow-on news items that come after will do that. With evergreen content, you’ll need to assign a lifespan – can it sit on the site for 3 months? 6 months? Forever? How often does someone need to check it/update it? And do the analytics suggest that after X amount of time, it still has value? If not, is a process in place to ensure it’s removed?
Hope that helps :)
--Lisa