A " news briefs" is a very short, usually one paragraph article about something.

“新闻简报”是一篇非常短的文章，通常是一段关于某事的文章。

I started out at the bottom, writing obituaries and news briefs.

我从底层做起，写讣告和新闻简报。

I started out at the bottom (meaning in the lowest position of the newspaper), writing obituaries and news briefs.

我从底部开始（意思是在报纸的最低位置），写讣告和新闻简报。

" To be brief" means to be short, so a news brief is a short – very short news article.

“to be brief” 就是简短的意思，所以news brief就是一篇很短——很短的新闻文章。

Sometimes in newspapers they want to report news that isn't necessarily that important, so they put little one paragraph descriptions of these news items inside the newspapers somewhere, and that's what a news brief is.

有时在报纸上他们想报道不一定那么重要的新闻，所以他们在报纸的某个地方放了一小段对这些新闻的描述， 这就是新闻简报。