What do I need (legally) if I want to publish a news website?

I think the whole point of free speech is... you can just make a website and publish whatever you want on it.

Buy a domain, put a website on it

Depends on country, if you're a company or doing it for profit and if you do additional stuff like sending emails.

If you're doing it for fun and are in the USA, you don't need to do anything.

If you're a company you should add the fine print. Add copyright notices, trademark claims, terms and conditions, disclaimers...

If you're sending out newsletters you need to make sure people can unsubscribe.

If you're in the EU you might need a whole imprint, privacy policy, handle user data properly...

What legal stuff you need to do will depend largely on what country you’re in, the legal jurisdiction. Are you doing this just for fun? Then probably very little. Are you hoping to make money from this? You might want to set up a legal entity, a company that owns and publishes the website, probably something that limits your personal legal liability in case someone decides to sue you. Speaking of which, you’ll probably want to become very familiar with legal requirements for libel/defamation where you live, as well as where you can legally take photos/videos without permission and if you need someone’s consent to publish their image.

In registering your company you’ll also need to register with the tax authorities. Keep in mind that there are usually fees involved with these registrations, so you’ll want to have a plan to hopefully break even if not turn a profit, unless you don’t care about losing money.

You’ll probably need to have some legal documents like Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy, etc. Even if it’s not legally required where you are those are good to have. If they are required you’ll want to be sure you’re familiar with those requirements and what they mean, such as what data you collect and how you safeguard it. I’ve found this write-up informative; it’s U.S.-focused but should at least give you an idea of the kind of things you need to consider if you’re creating a website with a significant audience. You might also want an explicit statement about AI/LLM training with your content, and be familiar with copyright laws in your country; do you need to register/submit your content for protection?

That’s not necessarily exhaustive, but probably a good starting point. Depending on how serious this venture is for you it might even be worth consulting with an attorney. Most news organizations have some level of ongoing relationships with an attorney or attorneys, either in case they are sued or perhaps they need to sue for open access to government records or similar.

I would just make a substack or a self hosted ghost website unless you're really invested in the development process.

I would just look at sites like https://apnews.com/ or https://www.bbc.com/ and see what they do, but I don't think you technically need anything, plenty of people have wordpress blogs and substacks without a legal section. What's the difference between your website vs a twitter account vs a substack where you live, probably not very much.

There are no requirements.

I'd advise that if you're making a parody site you have some disclosure of that fact pretty accessible on your website (it doesn't need to be front and center but it needs to be reasonably discoverable).

What you need... is a lawyer

Publish what you have the right to publish. Is you question what you have the rights to? About the technical hosting or distributing? Referencing or quoting other works? Whether you need a legal entity or author disclosure?