newspaper history—the modern newspaper

the young man contemplating journalism may be interested in the beginnings of the business. the little known about them is abundantly repeated in various histories. china seems to have been the pioneer at a time before the christian era. but the records of those early years are hazy. it is known that the peking gazette, as the sheet now is called, has been in continuous publication since the year 618 and mention is made of the peking news as being much older. news-sheets printed in the time of julius c?sar speak of their esteemed contemporaries published in china.

before the invention of type and printing all communications intended for public consumption were written on papyrus sheets and were hanged in the market places, or were read to the people, or were circulated in various ways.

fifty years before the coming of christ, the roman government sent out an official sheet for the information of its public servants, the army, and the people, and this publication was continued for many years. latterly it was called acta diurna (daily news) and it seems to have been exceedingly popular.

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the public appetite for news and gossip appears to have been quite as voracious then as now. the news-sheets were almost sensational in their telling of scandals, of murders, and the details of crime. there seems to have been little regard for the proprieties in those days, for we read in the acta diurna that “the funeral of marcia was performed with greater pomp of images than attendance of mourners.” extracts from cicero’s speeches are given, and one commentator writes:

when cicero was sent as governor to cilicia he asked a friend to send him the news of rome. the friend employed scribes, the reporters of that day, to gather the information and prepare the letters. the man who wrote the first letters reported everything from the procedure of the senate to the result of the latest gladiatorial contest. cicero objected to his methods and complained that the letters contained items that he would not have bothered with when at home. what he wanted, he explains, was advance information to keep him in touch with the political movements of the time.

it was during the reign of the c?sars that the news-sheets were in full request. they were written in latin, of course, and were marvels of the penman’s art on papyrus; and they were expressed with an epigrammic terseness and a snap that might well be imitated to-day. dr. johnson translates a few of them in the gentleman’s magazine as follows:

the latin festivals were celebrated, a sacrifice performed on the alban mount, and a dole of fish distributed to the people.

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a fire has happened on mount coelius; two trisulae and five houses were consumed and four damaged.

demiphone, the famous pirate, who was taken by licinus nerva, a provincial lieutenant, was crucified.

the red standard was displayed at the capitol and the consuls obliged the youth who were enlisted for the macedonian war to take a new oath in the campus martius.

the aedile tertinius fined the butchers for selling meat which had not been inspected by the market overseers. the fine is to be used to build a chapel for the temple of tellus.

m. tullius cicero pleaded in defense of cornelius sylla, accused by torquatus of being concerned in catiline’s conspiracy and gained his cause by a majority of five judges. the tribunes of the treasury were against the defendant. one of the praetors advertised by an edict that he should put off his sittings for five days on account of his daughter’s marriage.

a report was brought to tertinius, the praetor, while he was trying cases at his tribunal, that his son was dead. this was contrived by the friends of coponius, who was accused of poisoning, that the praetor might adjourn the court; but the magistrate having discovered the falsity of the story, returned to his tribunal and continued in taking information against the accused.

after c?sar’s time the roman sheets gradually disappeared and newspaper history becomes very misty. news publications reappeared, however, in vienna and in augsburg in 1524 and pendleton in his “newspaper reporting in olden time and to-day,” after quoting chalmers in his “life of ruddiman,” observes:

but he admits that the first modern sheet of news appeared in venice about the year 1536, that it was manuscript, and was read aloud in certain parts of the city—a200 journal that proved a great attraction, for it was issued once a month only, and narrated in polished stirring words how the venetians fared in their war against turkey. the fee paid for reading this sheet in manuscript was a gazzetta, and the news-sheet gradually got the name of the coin (the gazette). at least blount, in his glossographia published in the seventeenth century, would lead on to this conclusion, giving as the definition of the word gazzetta, “a certain venetian coin scarce worth one farthing; also a bill of news or short relations of the occurrences of the times, printed most commonly at venice, and thence dispersed every month in most parts of christendom.” it was not until 1612 that the gazzettas of the venetians first appeared as numbered sheets but some years previously the thirst for news—now well-nigh unquenchable in every civilized part of the globe—had spread to england.

all through the middle ages the news-letters were restrained both by church and state. the privilege of printing them was withdrawn, and by the year 1500 they virtually had ceased to exist. when they reappeared they were under strict government direction and censorship. the use of movable type and the printing press now facilitated their production, but all authority frowned on them save that authority which made use of them for its own ends.

the newspaper censorship of the next one hundred and fifty years was the severest ever known. lord burleigh, who was prime minister in queen elizabeth’s reign, seems, however, to have understood the value of publicity—understood that a handful of facts is worth a hatful of rumors when it comes to influencing the201 people. the appearance of the spanish armada in 1588, with its one hundred and twenty-nine ships, its twenty thousand soldiers and its ten thousand sailors, bent on the invasion of england, had long been looked for, and on its approach the people were overcome with hysterical excitement. but burleigh had a news-letter printed from day to day telling the exact facts of the situation and the panic subsided.

dr. james melvin lee, head of the department of journalism in new york university, believes that the first newspaper to be printed in the english language was published in amsterdam, december 2, 1620, and in proof of his belief he produces a facsimile of the sheet. it was half sheet folio and had no title. a descriptive of the battle of weissenberg was its chief feature.

in a discussion as to the early use of the word “reporter,” mr. henry n. cary, a new york journalist, quotes from a pamphlet of 1613 of which the title is:

the wonders of this windie winter, by terrible stormes and tempests, to the losse of lives and goods of many thousands of men women and children. the like by sea and land hath not been seene nor heard of in this age of the world. london. printed by g. eld for john wright, and are to be sold at his shop neer christ-church dore.

in this pamphlet is the following:

ships were perishing to the number of a hundred, and forty seafaring men, besides other passengers, both of men and women which at that time made their watery graves in the deep sea. this first strooke feare into the hearts of202 people, which hath since seconded with many calamities, which lieth heavily upon the heart of the reporter.

the details of this storm’s destruction are far less interesting to us than is the way they circulated the news in 1613 when there were no newspapers.

for the next one hundred years the news-sheet was the chief source of information to the english people. a few weekly newspapers were started, the first being edited by nathaniel butter, in 1622. it was called the weekly news, but it seems to have had few readers. the people stuck to the news-sheets in which they had confidence. possibly they did not credit butter’s yarns. pendleton quotes two of them as specimens of seventeenth century journalism:

a true relation of the strange appearance of a man-fish about three miles within the river thames, having a musket in one hand and a petition in the other, credibly reported by six sailors who both saw and talked with the monster.

a perfect mermaid was by the last great wind driven ashore near greenwich, with her comb in one hand and her looking-glass in the other. she seemed to be of the countenancy of a most fair and beautiful woman, with her arms crossed, weeping out many pearly drops of salt tears; and afterwards she, gently turning herself upon her back again, swam away without being seen again any more.

later in the century the use of the news-sheet became so general as to clog the mails. macaulay writes interestingly of the disseminating of information in those days:

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in 1685 nothing like the london daily paper of our time existed or could exist. neither the necessary capital nor the necessary skill was to be found. freedom too was wanting, a want as fatal as that of either capital or skill. during the great battle of the exclusion bill, many newspapers were suffered to appear. none of them was published oftener than twice a week. none exceeded in size a single small leaf. the quantity of matter which one of them contained in a year was not more than is often found in two numbers of the times. after the defeat of the whigs, it was no longer necessary for the king to be sparing in the use of that which all his judges had pronounced to be his undoubted prerogative. at the close of his reign no newspaper was suffered to appear without his allowance; and his allowance was given exclusively to the london gazette. the london gazette came out only on mondays and thursdays. the contents were generally a royal proclamation, two or three tory addresses, notices of two or three promotions, an account of a skirmish between the imperial troops and the janissaries on the danube, a description of a highwayman, an announcement of a grand cockfight between two persons of honor, and an advertisement offering a reward for a strayed dog. the whole made up two pages of moderate size.... the most important parliamentary debates, the most important state trials, recorded in our history, were passed over in profound silence. in the capital the coffee houses supplied in some measure the place of a journal. thither the londoners flocked as the athenians of old flocked to the market place, to hear whether there was any news. there men might learn how brutally a whig had been treated the day before in westminster hall, what horrible accounts the letters from edinburgh gave of the torturing of covenanters, how grossly the navy board had cheated the crown in the victualling of the fleet, and what grave charges the lord privy seal had204 brought against the treasury in the matter of the hearth money. but people that lived at a distance from the great theatre of political contention could be kept informed of what was passing there only by means of news-letters. to prepare such letters became a calling in london. the news-writer rambled from coffee room to coffee room collecting reports, squeezed himself into the sessions house of the old bailey if there was an interesting trial, nay perhaps obtained admission to the gallery of whitehall and noticed how the king and duke looked. in this way he gathered materials for weekly epistles destined to enlighten some country town or some bench of rustic magistrates.

such were the sources from which the inhabitants of the largest provincial cities and the great body of the gentry and clergy learned almost all they knew of the history of their own times.

we must suppose that at cambridge there were as many persons curious to know what was passing in the world as at almost any other place in the kingdom out of london. yet at cambridge during a great part of the reign of charles ii, the doctors of laws and the masters of arts had no regular supply of news except the london gazette. at length the services of one of the collectors of intelligence in the capital were employed. it was a memorable day on which the first news-letter from london was laid on the table of the only coffee house room in cambridge.

at the seat of a man of fortune in the country the news-letter was impatiently expected. within a week after it had arrived it had been thumbed by twenty families. it furnished the neighboring squires with matter for talk over their october, and the neighboring rectors with topics for sharp sermons against whiggery and popery.

it is scarcely necessary to say that there were then no provincial newspapers. indeed except at the capital and at the two universities there was scarcely a printer in the kingdom.

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this was the condition of the newspaper business at the end of the reign of king charles ii.—a period distinguished by less interest in literature and study than any period of england’s history after the elizabethan revival of learning. the reading of books and the search for information had been abandoned in the quest for pleasure. the people had joined in imitating the profligacy, the licentiousness and the revels of charles’s court. they who champion the newspaper as a great uplifting influence in community might instance these profligate days in which there were no newspapers and compare them with later years.

but the opening of the eighteenth century brought fresh impetus to study and a new interest in literature. several weekly newspapers had been set going. the first daily newspaper was started in london in 1702. it was called the courant. it was a small single-sheet publication printed on one side only, and it gave but a meager assortment of news items. it refrained from expressing opinions, the editor saying that “he would give no comments of his own as he assumed that people had sense enough to make reflections for themselves.” scores of editors even to the present day have launched initial numbers of their editions with this same resolution, expressed in the same way, but somehow it does not last long.

then came the review founded by defoe, and richard steele’s tatler and the spectator by steele and joseph addison, which publications mark the real beginnings of journalism. by this time pope and swift, william walsh, whom dryden praised as a great critic, and206 arthur maynwaring and others of the famous kit cat club were writing for the periodicals.

editorial comment, or the expression of editorial opinion seems to have had no place in newspapers until toward the close of the reign of king charles ii. then, while the london gazette, appearing under government direction, was printing news only, sir roger lestrange was permitted to print a journal of comment without news, called the observator. lestrange had been a tory pamphleteer, and for a short time had edited small news-sheets and under the government. he had been surveyor of printing offices and licensor of the press. the observator was ferociously against the whigs and the protestants. because editorial comment was new, it focused much attention. here was the first editor to write violent political editorial articles. he confined his subjects to politics and to religion which was then a part of the politics of the day. he inspired a host of imitators and the leading article, of which he was the parent, has been the leading feature of all journalism ever since. great in its political use, immediately after him, were dean swift in his examiner, and daniel defoe in the review which he started in 1704 while in jail for political offense.

it was just at the beginning of the eighteenth century that steele and addison began their tatler and spectator. their first impulse was to write of politics, for steele was alive with political zeal and addison was interested; but presently they seemingly sensed the opportunity for success in the new direction of a207 publication given to the elucidation and the discussion of general topics, of subjects on which politics was unlikely to produce diversion of opinion—social life, play-house criticism, literature, morals, ethics and personal conduct. the spectator was printed daily. to the policy of minimizing politics and exalting general topics of interest it adhered.

newspapers and periodicals increased rapidly after this time. henry fielding, the novelist, was editor of the true patriot in 1745 and the jacobite journal in 1747. dr. samuel johnson started the rambler in 1750 and the idler in 1758. in 1714, eleven papers were appearing in london. in 1733, the number had increased to eighteen and in 1776, to fifty-three.

john wilkes in his newspaper the north briton accused the king of lying in his address at the opening of parliament in 1762, for which wilkes was committed to the tower and expelled from the house, of which he had been a member.

oliver goldsmith wrote his delightful letters from “a citizen of the world” for the public ledger. samuel taylor coleridge, hazlitt and john campbell were writers for the morning chronicle.

and in after years, contributing to the london times at one period or another as writers, were: beaconsfield, lord chancellor brougham, cardinal newman, lord grey, lord macaulay, sir william harcourt, moore, dean stanley, lord sherbrook, and dr. groley.

the constant and consistent progress of the newspaper since its feeble beginnings, and especially its development208 in the last two hundred years, attest its importance to mankind. rarely, indeed, has progress been more deliberate; rarely has it been more substantial. long years of experience with it have tested and verified the newspaper’s usefulness.

thirst for news and for information has always prevailed and newspaper progress undoubtedly must have taken a vigorous spurt with the invention of type and printing but for the reason that both church and state joined in its repression. in 1685, at the close of the reign of king charles ii. there were in all england two newspapers only, worthy of the name, and both of them were under the strict supervision of the royal censor.

the first real jump in newspaper progress came with the relaxation of government repression just after the year 1700. it was then that addison, steele, defoe, fielding, swift and dr. johnson, gave the real beginnings to journalism. thereafter, for a hundred and fifty years, the advance and improvement in the making of newspapers were deliberate and irresistible. from chatterers and gossipers only the journals came gradually to be leaders of thought and of public opinion and circulators of essential information. but the change in them was so slow as to be almost unnoticed from year to year.

in the latter half of the nineteenth century, however, came the invention of the modern printing press which permits the printing of a newspaper of thirty-five pages or more at the rate of thirty thousand or more copies an hour; the invention of the stereotyping process by209 which newspaper pages may be duplicated to indefinite numbers, in solid metal, and used on an indefinite number of presses in the printing of a single edition; and the invention of the typesetting machine by which type may be cast and placed with something like six times the speed of the old-time process of hand composition. they were marvelous inventions.

these inventions removed mechanical difficulties that had confined the size and restricted the circulation of newspapers, and great changes came quickly. heretofore the newspapers had been restricted to eight pages and many of them printed four pages only; but immediately twenty and twenty-four page editions appeared and thirty-five and forty page ones are common now. this great increase in volume permitted a like increase in scope and we now see in the newspapers a mass of information on an innumerable number of topics. moreover, all changes in national or social life bring changes in newspapers. big business brought big newspapers, as soon as they could be made.

greatly increased newspaper importance has followed this expansion. it is possible to present great events with a fullness of detail and an attention to side issues hitherto unknown. a senator’s attack on the administration may be printed in full—six or seven columns of it. an investigation involving the conduct of the war may be reported question and answer verbatim. pages are devoted to a catastrophe like the blowing up of halifax that a few years ago would have been described in as many columns. scores of special articles are210 printed the like of which never had found place in the daily newspaper. and in the evening sheets, especially, are department features intended to interest women and children, funny picture series, puzzles, medical information, screeds, and freak features—all of which emphasize the very great change from comparatively a few years ago. and every change from the beginning has been in the direction of progress, has made the newspaper a greater and a better product, has given to it the increased confidence of the public. confidence in a production of any sort usually is withheld until experience has tested and verified it. the value and the importance of the newspaper have come to be firmly established.

many persons do not require the services of a lawyer. many rarely employ a physician. thousands seldom listen to a clergyman. but in these wide-awake days everybody of any account must read the newspaper, for the reading of the newspaper has come to be absolutely essential to the daily routine of every intelligent person. the things we read in the morning newspaper are the things we talk about during the day. if you are interested in politics, or if you are interested in finance, or the fluctuations of prices, or the movements of society, or any phase of trade or commerce, or in any of the vital questions of the hour—for all of these you turn to the newspaper. the things taught in the colleges are the things of the past, or the principles that experience has tested and verified. the things taught by the newspapers are the things of the present. you211 cannot learn politics from a textbook. you must absorb the politics of the day by a study of the events of the day. your financial policy must be governed by existing monetary conditions rather than by conclusions drawn from the panic of 1873 or that of 1907. the events of the day, the progress of the day, are of more importance to the man in business life or the man in social life than any other consideration. the newspaper is his great source of inspiration and instruction. the newspaper informs you, instructs you, influences you, amuses you, inspires you, directs your thoughts, assists your conclusions, fires your ambitions, enlarges your vocabulary—all of which are of the utmost importance to you. it may be said, therefore, with confident complacency that the profession of journalism rests on the solid foundation of supplying an essential need.

in a lecture before the students of dartmouth college, mr. john lee mahin said:

the family that pays a cent or two for its big morning newspaper receives a carefully digested review of the political, economic, social and commercial activities of the entire world for the previous twenty-four hours. probably five hundred men in new york city would pay a thousand dollars a year each for the commercial information alone that they receive from the new york times if they could not obtain it in any other way.

in considering these changes it should be remembered that the journalism of fifty years ago was conspicuous for the reason that a famous bunch of editors stamped212 their personality on almost every column. it was the period of personal journalism. these editors were inspired by the tragedies and the ferocities of the civil war and by the magnitude and the political importance of events involving as they believed the very life of the nation. they were made conspicuous by the very greatness of the causes that moved their minds and their pens. they were stimulated to the limit of mental exaltation in what they wrote. the country was surging with excitement. part of the people were clamoring for peace on any terms. others insisted on fighting the war to a finish at any cost of life or money. still others were for compromise. it is hardly possible for generations of to-day to appreciate how intensely the war agitated the people. the editors fought each other with a ferocity otherwise unknown in american journalism. they were the people’s champions and their names were known in every household; and doubtless their names will live for years to come as the country’s greatest editors.

nevertheless, let it be said, in all truth, that we have to-day scores of editors equally capable of producing the crisp and pungent paragraphs as well as the profound editorial articles of prentice, greeley, raymond, dana, bryant, bowles, watterson, medill and manton marble. the personal journalism of that day was impetuous and impressive, but latterly and by degrees, in the big cities especially, “the supreme importance of the editor has been transformed into the supreme importance of the newspaper,” and we hear less about the editor and more about the newspaper itself.

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this effacement of individuality influences to exalt the newspaper and to exalt journalism as a profession. the greatly enlarged field has attracted thousands of most excellent writers, fine editors, conductors, and managers. news-gathering and news-presentation are now regarded as of supreme importance. our pages bristle with specialties. our sunday editions are magazines of information. the great modern newspaper represents the product of the profession rather than the genius of a single writer.

it was not so fifty years ago. these men, whose names have come down to us, were great editorial writers rather than great editors of the entire newspaper. aside from the editorial page their editions were devoid of genius. the news columns were slovenly in appearance and dull in narration. they lacked the cunning of embellishment with the flavor of literature and the charm of fiction. the book reviews, the critical articles were excellent—but the editors daubed dullness over everything else. the newspaper of that day is not to be compared with the newspaper of to-day in general excellence.

the editorial pages and the criticisms, however, were of high excellence. it was a literary era and the literary impulse was a conspicuous factor in public thought. marble, dana, bryant, curtis and others made reputations for literary excellence in journalistic work that would not to-day attract so much attention; for literary excellence, while commended and appreciated, is not so much insisted on, encouraged, or taught, as it was forty years ago.

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the foreign correspondence of that day as printed in the newspapers consisted largely of descriptions of scenery and revelations of the writers’ emotions while climbing to alpine heights or floating by moonlight on the silent waters of italian lakes. it was written mostly by staff members who were on vacation trips and who were inspired by the travel notes of washington irving and nathaniel hawthorne that had obtained great attention. the journals of fifty years ago did not maintain regular correspondents abroad. all first class important papers to-day have representatives in the capitals of europe, but they do not write descriptions of scenery. some of the foreign correspondence of that day was very good, however, notably that of bayard taylor for the new york tribune.

the most conspicuous difference between the newspapers of 1850 or 1860 and those of to-day is in the treatment of news. very little space was given then to really important events. the national convention that nominated a candidate for the presidency was reported in two columns or so, whereas to-day from three to six pages are required. a bare half column was given to the stock market. the commercial markets were equally pinched; two or three pages of matter are now devoted to them. there was no real estate department. the court calendars were not printed for the lawyers, nor the list of buyers in town for the merchants; nor was there a sporting page, or a woman’s page, or a list of school teachers appointed, or of policemen transferred, or of firemen granted a leave of absence. the news was215 presented in the most perfunctory and routine fashion, with no attempt to make it attractive or interesting. news collecting had not been systematized or especially studied, as to-day. the associated press was in its infancy, devoting itself almost entirely to congress proceedings and to market reports. raw reporters were permitted to intersperse their own comments through what they wrote and their conclusions received little revision or supervision. every line in the modern newspaper is revised by a copy reader editor and not a suggestion of reportorial opinion is permitted. the edition of fifty years ago was more or less subject to haphazard inexactitude and casual error.

the present-day newspaper is prepared with great care. its ambitious articles are studied out. the errors in its news columns are the results of haste rather than ignorance—the haste compelled by necessity in getting to press on the minute. the sunday edition supplements, devoted to general topics and to literature, are already taking the place of many kinds of literature. they print new fiction by popular authors. they exploit and expand the latest developments in science, art, music, medicine, mechanics, construction, transportation—indeed, anything that is new or important. they quickly transfer to their columns any important matter contained in a new book.

the reading of newspapers is immeasurably greater than the reading of any other kind of matter. the new book of which fifty thousand copies are sold is called very successful, of which one hundred thousand216 are sold is pronounced a wonder, of which two hundred thousand are sold, phenomenal. yet in new york city alone a million and a half newspapers are printed every morning and nearly two millions every afternoon. in america, millions of persons who do not read more than five books in a year read a newspaper or two every day.

and the newspaper of to-day is a better paper because it is more accurate of statement and more faithful to fact, and more fair-minded in the presentation of passing events. the long weary day of misrepresentation in news reports is drawing to its close. the chief events of the time are recorded with such fidelity to accuracy that in future years they must be accepted as historically correct. all decent newspapers now take pride in their accuracy of statement in the news columns and there is little intentional misrepresentation. in our political campaigns the attitude of each candidate is decently described and what he says is faithfully reported and made equally conspicuous. in this respect the newspapers have changed greatly within a few years.

moreover, the collection of news has been greatly facilitated by increased telegraph and telephone and ocean cable efficiency. these agents give much better transmission, making communication with all parts of the world little short of instantaneous. speaking of the benefits to the world secured through electricity, mr. w. w. harris said in a recent address:

when the norsemen were on their way to the discovery of america they had no compass; yet the compass had been217 discovered by the chinese many centuries before. but the news of the compass had not in all these centuries gotten half way around the world. and the science of navigation came not until that piece of news had made its way to the european world. to-day any important fact girdles the globe in a cable’s flash.

the newspapers of to-day are better because more study and thought are put into their construction. not only are the editorial writers men of education, but the sub-editors, the night editors, the revisers of copy and the reporters are mostly educated men—men who have been taught where to seek and how to find information, who have been taught to be confident and self-reliant and original. the proportion of college-bred men on newspaper staffs is much greater than it used to be, and the intelligence of the staffs has increased in the same proportion. the modern newspaper wants men of brains who know how to use their brains—men who can think rapidly and act instantly.

this unceasing, irresistible, cumulative progress is making newspapers more important, is making the profession of journalism more attractive. even as years of experience and study and laborious patient application have perfected and solidified the practice of law and medicine, have made firm and substantial the developments of electricity and mechanics, and have solved the problems of transportation and great business, so the making of newspapers is settling down to a strong substantial basis.