Newspaper

=A Brief History of Newspapers=



The Origins of Newspapers The history of newspapers is an often-dramatic chapter of the human experience going back some five centuries. In Renaissance Europe handwritten newsletters circulated privately among merchants, passing along information about everything from wars and economic conditions to social customs and "human interest" features. The first printed forerunners of the newspaper appeared in Germany in the late 1400's in the form of news pamphlets or broadsides, often highly sensationalized in content. Some of the most famous of these report the atrocities against Germans in Transylvania perpetrated by a sadistic //veovod// named Vlad Tsepes Drakul, who became the Count Dracula of later folklore. In the English-speaking world, the earliest predecessors of the newspaper were //corantos,// small news pamphlets produced only when some event worthy of notice occurred. The first successively published title was //The Weekly Newes// of 1622. It was followed in the 1640's and 1650's by a plethora of different titles in the similar //newsbook// format. The first true newspaper in English was the //London Gazette// of 1666. For a generation it was the only officially sanctioned newspaper, though many periodical titles were in print by the century's end.

Beginnings in America In America the first newspaper appeared in Boston in 1690, entitled //Publick Occurrences//. Published without authority, it was immediately suppressed, its publisher arrested, and all copies were destroyed. Indeed, it remained forgotten until 1845 when the only known surviving example was discovered in the British Library. The first successful newspaper was the //Boston News-Letter,// begun by postmaster John Campbell in 1704. The Industrial Revolution The industrial revolution, as it transformed all aspects of American life and society, dramatically affected newspapers. Both the numbers of papers and their paid circulations continued to rise. The 1850 census catalogued 2,526 titles. In the 1850's powerful, giant presses appeared, able to print ten thousand complete papers per hour. At this time the first "pictorial" weekly newspapers emerged; they featured for the first time extensive illustrations of events in the news, as woodcut engravings made from correspondents' sketches or taken from that new invention, the photograph. During the Civil War the unprecedented demand for timely, accurate news reporting transformed American journalism into a dynamic, hardhitting force in the national life. Reporters, called "specials," became the darlings of the public and the idols of youngsters everywhere. Many accounts of battles turned in by these intrepid adventurers stand today as the definitive histories of their subjects.

MY OPINION:

The newspaper is very important because the people learn about this happening in the world.