History Of News Paper

 its long and complex history, the newspaper has undergone many transformations. 

*Examining the history of the newspaper can help shed some light on how and why it has evolved into the multifaceted medium that it is today.

*In 1566, an ancestor of the modern newspaper appeared in Venice, Italy. These visit or gazettes were handwritten and focused on politics and military conflicts. However, the absence of printing-press technology greatly limited the circulation.

Printing Press:-

Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press changed the face of publishing forever. In 1440, Gutenberg invented a movable-type press that permitted the high-quality reproduction of printed materials at a rate of nearly 4,000 pages per day, more than could be done by a scribe by hand. 

This innovation drove down the price of printed materials and, for the first time, made them accessible to a mass market. Overnight, the new printing press transformed the scope and reach of the newspaper, paving the way for modern-day journalism.

Early Versions

The first weekly newspapers to employ Gutenberg’s press emerged in 1609. Although the papers did not name the cities in which they were printed, to avoid government persecution, their approximate location can be identified because of their use of the German language. 

Despite these concerns over persecution, the papers were a success, and newspapers spread throughout Central Europe. 

These early newspapers followed one of two major formats. The first was the Dutch-style, corantos, a densely packed two to four-page paper, while the second was the German-style pamphlet, a more expansive 8 to 24-page paper. Many publishers began printing in the Dutch format, but as their popularity grew, they changed to the larger German style.

Current Affairs 

Because many of these early publications were regulated by the government, they did not report on local news or events. However, when civil war broke out in England in 1641, citizens turned to local papers for coverage of the events.

When newspapers were freed from government control, papers took advantage of this newfound freedom and began publishing more frequently. 

With bi-weekly publications, papers had additional space to run advertisements and market reports. This changed the role of journalists from simple observers to active players in commerce. Once publishers noticed the growing popularity and profit potential of newspapers, they founded daily publications.

Early American Newspaper

Newspapers did not come to the American colonies until 1690, when Benjamin Harris, a newspaper editor from England, printed Public Occurrences, Both Forreign and Domestick. However the publication folded after just one issue.

Fourteen years passed before the next American newspaper: The Boston News-Letter launched. Fifteen years after that, The Boston Gazette began publication, followed immediately by the American Weekly Mercury in Philadelphia. 

These early papers carefully eschewed political discussion to avoid offending colonial authorities.

The First Amendment 

In 1791, the nascent United States of America adopted the First Amendment as part of the Bill of Rights. This act states that:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”  

In this one sentence, U.S. law formally guaranteed, amongst other core democratic freedoms, freedom of the press.

The Sedition Act

However, as a reaction to harsh partisan writing, in 1798, the US congress passed the Sedition Act, which declared that any “writing, printing, uttering, or publishing any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States”, was punishable by fine and imprisonment. 

When Thomas Jefferson was elected president in 1800, he allowed the Sedition Act to lapse, claiming that he was lending himself to “a great experiment … to demonstrate the falsehood of the pretext that freedom of the press is incompatible with orderly government.”  

This free-press experiment has continued to modern times.
Affordable Press

As late as the early 1800s, newspapers were still quite expensive to print. Although daily papers had become more common and gave merchants up-to-date, vital trading information, most were priced at about 6 cents a copy—well above what working-class citizens could afford. As such, newspaper readership was limited to the elite.

All that changed in 1833 when Benjamin Day created The Sun. Printed on small, letter-sized pages, The Sun sold for just a penny.

News Daily

As he reached out to new readers, Day knew that he wanted to alter the way news was presented. He printed the paper’s motto at the top of every front page of The Sun: “The object of this paper is to lay before the public, at a price within the means of every one, all the news of the day, and at the same time offer an advantageous medium for advertisements.” 

The Sun sought out stories that would appeal to the new mainstream consumer. As such, the paper primarily published human-interest stories and police reports with ample room for advertisements.

The adoption of this new format and industrialized method of printing was a success and the Sun became the first paper to be printed by what is known as the penny press.

Popular Reporting 

Another early successful penny paper was James Gordon Bennett’s New York Morning Herald, which was first published in 1835. 

Bennett made his mark on the publishing industry by offering nonpartisan political reporting. He also introduced more aggressive methods for gathering news, hiring both interviewers and foreign correspondents. His paper was the first to send a reporter to a crime scene to witness an investigation. 

In the 1860s, Bennett hired 63 war reporters to cover the U.S. Civil War. Although the Herald initially emphasized sensational news, it later became one of the country’s most respected papers for its accurate reporting.