Journalism, Newspapers, and Newssheets
JOURNALISM, NEWSPAPERS, AND NEWSSHEETS
JOURNALISM, NEWSPAPERS, AND NEWSSHEETS. The earliest printed periodical news publications appeared shortly after 1600. By the end of the seventeenth century, newspapers were being published in every major European country. Together, they constituted a phenomenon new in European history and unique in the world: a system of communication that made the most up-to-date information available, not just to members of government bureaucracies or wealthy elites, but to a socially diverse public that included even those of modest means. Printed periodicals tied Europe's "Republic of Letters" together, promoted the diffusion of knowledge and of new cultural models, and offered a source of income to the period's increasing number of writers. As a medium for advertising, periodicals helped promote the growth in consumption that was one of the striking phenomena of the eighteenth century. By 1804, the German journalist and scholar August Ludwig von Schlözer could write that the periodical press was "one of the great instruments of culture through which we Europeans have become what we are."
Broadsheets (French canards, German Flugblätter or Neue Zeitungen ), the earliest printed news publications, began to appear in the sixteenth century, carrying news of unusual occurrences such as battles, royal deaths, and "wonders" such as two-headed calves. Printers produced them irregularly, as the flow of events dictated, and used illustrations and headlines set in oversized type to attract readers. Around the same time, manuscript newsletters, particularly common in Italy, began to offer subscribers a regular flow of reports. Such handwritten newspapers continued to circulate in many parts of Europe until the period of the French Revolution, but soon after the beginning of the seventeenth century, the development of dependable postal systems encouraged the creation of the first printed publications issued on a regular periodical schedule. The earliest known printed newspapers were published in Germany in 1605. In the course of the seventeenth century, the press spread throughout the European continent. The first newspapers appeared in Holland in 1618, England in 1622, France in 1631, Spain in 1641, and Russia in 1702. Events such as the Thirty Years' War, the Puritan Revolution in England, and the wars of Louis XIV promoted the spread of newspaper publication, producing a flow of constantly changing reports and generating an audience with an intense interest in the latest developments.
Unlike the broadsheets, early modern news gazettes lacked pictures and headlines, and their content consisted largely of dry chronicles of events from the major courts, battlefronts, and trading cities. The earliest news publications appeared at relatively long intervals, sometimes only once a year, but it did not take long for weekly and twice-weekly gazettes to dominate the market. A daily newspaper appeared in Bremen as early as 1650, and although daily publication remained rare before the French Revolution, there was a general trend toward more frequent issues and a greater total volume of content. Publishers quickly learned to help their readers make sense of the news by numbering and dating each issue of the paper, and giving the date and place of origin of each news bulletin they printed. Readers often preserved their newspapers as a permanent chronicle of events, and publishers sometimes provided title pages and even indexes so that the annual collections could be bound as books.
Throughout the early modern period, newspapers continued to be produced on hand-operated wooden printing presses. This technology limited the number of copies that could be printed: a single press could produce at most 3,000 copies of a paper in a day, so that expanding the press run required paying compositors to set a second form of type. In contrast to the leisurely and irregular pace of work in most enterprises of the period, newspaper printers were subjected to strict time constraints and had to "frequently work as if on a forced march," as an eighteenth-century typographer put it: the papers had to be ready to be mailed at fixed times. Although the work was demanding, skilled workers could earn more than in ordinary printing shops, and even before the end of the eighteenth century, some publishers offered enticements such as pensions to keep a loyal work force. For the owners of printing shops, newspaper publishing was a way of ensuring a regular income, particularly since most periodicals were sold by subscription, and readers therefore had to pay in advance, in contrast to the purchasers of books. In small provincial towns, a newspaper might be just one of a local printer's many ways of keeping his presses occupied. At the opposite extreme, the eighteenth century already saw the rise of the first great "press barons," entrepreneurs who brought together a group of periodicals aimed at different market niches. In the 1770s and 1780s, the French publisher Charles-Joseph Panckoucke (1736–1798) managed to gain control of most of the French national press, including the venerable Gazette de France and the country's leading literary journal, the Mercure de France, and to create a "stable" of writers dependent on his patronage.
The news carried in the gazettes attracted a large and varied audience: rulers and their courtiers, military officers, bankers and merchants, all of whom had professional reasons for wanting to know about wars, treaty negotiations, and unusual developments in foreign states, as well as general readers motivated by simple curiosity. Kaspar Stieler (1632–1707), whose Zeitungs Lust und Nutz (1695) was the first book about newspapers, claimed that they were read by many artisans and also discussed their influence on women. Newspapers were the most popular reading matter in the coffeehouses, cafés, and reading rooms that began to spring up in major European cities in the late seventeenth century and then spread across the continent. Numerous sources describe the animated discussions that resulted from this kind of public reading: newspapers were the essential fuel for the verbal interactions that produced the phenomenon of public opinion.
Early journalists, such as Théophraste Renaudot (1586–1653), creator of the Gazette de France, had recognized that the newspaper could also serve an important economic function by carrying advertising. In addition, many newspapers regularly reported the prices of commodities and other economic information. In most continental countries, advertising was printed primarily in newspapers licensed specially for that purpose (French affiches, German Intelligenzblätter ), but in eighteenth-century England, a tradition developed of newspapers combining commercial advertising and political news. These mixed publications had a stronger revenue base than most of their continental rivals and pointed toward the form that the newspaper would take throughout the world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Whereas gazettes dealt largely with political news, periodical magazines, of which the first was the French Journal des Sçavans, founded in 1665, showed that the periodical form could also be adapted to carry many kinds of cultural information. Whereas newspapers did not change greatly in form and function before the end of the eighteenth century, magazines became increasingly varied. Less tied to the immediate flow of events than newspapers, they appeared at less frequent intervals and were often aimed at more limited audiences. Book reviews, literary journals, periodicals aimed at particular professions and at audiences such as women and peasants all appeared in the course of the eighteenth century. Joseph Addison (1672–1719) and Richard Steele's (1672–1729) Spectator (1711–1714), which offered witty commentary on middle-class urban life, served as a model for dozens of imitators throughout Europe.
The profession of journalist developed more slowly than the press itself. Early news gazettes were frequently compiled by entrepreneurs who also engaged in other activities, such as postmasters, who had privileged access to incoming news, or printers. By the eighteenth century, some writers were able to make a living from editorial work alone, but journalists were disparaged as mercenaries who prostituted their talents for pay, and they therefore had a strong incentive to present themselves as "men of letters" rather than identifying themselves with the periodical industry. Voltaire's article in Diderot's Encyclopédie urging that "a good gazetteer should be promptly informed, truthful, impartial, simple, and correct in his style" shows that the elements of what would later become journalism's professional ethic were taking shape, but Voltaire also complained that few journalists measured up to these standards. In spite of its low prestige, newspaper work provided an important source of income for many eighteenth-century writers, and positions such as the editorship of the Gazette de France were much-coveted patronage plums. Editing journals and magazines generally paid less well, but by the end of the seventeenth century it had become one way in which individuals could establish important positions in the "Republic of Letters." Pierre Bayle's Nouvelles de la République des lettres, founded in 1684, provided one of the first demonstrations of this possibility and inspired imitators throughout the eighteenth century.
Rulers took a strong interest in the press from the outset. Throughout most of Europe, publishers needed a license or privilege to create a periodical. They were usually required to submit to censorship and to pay an annual fee to publish, but in exchange they enjoyed a protected monopoly on publication in their native region. Although governments routinely censored the press to prevent the circulation of items that might cause unrest in the population or embarrassment at court, their interest in the press also had a positive side. At a time when the notion of the reporter was unknown, publishers often depended on their local government to furnish them with foreign news culled from diplomatic dispatches. Each major government sponsored its own official gazette to present the news in the fashion most favorable to its own interests. By the eighteenth century, most rulers saw that periodicals could serve useful functions by publicizing new laws and edicts and by circulating economic information; French intendants often played key roles in establishing provincial affiches. Through the fees they paid for their privileges and for postal delivery, periodicals were also a source of income for governments.
The development of the press in England differed from the pattern on the continent. In 1695, the Licensing Act that had restricted press freedom was allowed to lapse, making England the only country where publishers could establish periodicals without prior permission. As a result, England became the only country where the press took on a clear political coloration, with Whigs and Tories subsidizing editors to promote their points of view. The absence of restrictions also gave free reign to entrepreneurial initiative in England. Many of the country's provincial newspapers, for example, were established by local bookstore owners, who used them to advertise their wares. The British press was not completely unfettered: a stamp tax on printing paper kept prices high and discouraged the poor from subscribing, and frequent libel prosecutions had a deterrent effect on most journalists and publishers. Summaries of debates in Parliament were not permitted until the 1780s. Continental visitors were nevertheless struck by the outspokenness of British periodicals and their wide audience.
Although the absence of regulation made the English press unique, its influence on the Continent was limited. In international affairs, the most important newspapers of the eighteenth century were the so-called gazettes d'Hollande, journals published in French but produced in the Netherlands or in other parts of Europe where the censorship systems of the major powers did not reach. Although they depended on privileges granted by their city governments, publications such as the Gazette d'Amsterdam and the Gazette de Leyde were normally accorded considerable latitude in their coverage of events in other countries. Founded in many cases by members of the Huguenot diaspora during Louis XIV's reign (1643–1715), they remained a major part of public life in Europe throughout the eighteenth century. Unable to prevent their circulation, rulers sought to influence them instead by courting their editors, offering them confidential information, and negotiating favorable postal rates. Since French was an international language, these gazettes found readers throughout the European world. Under the editorship of Étienne Luzac from 1738 to 1772 and his nephew Jean Luzac from 1772 to 1798, the Gazette de Leyde occupied the position of Europe's "newspaper of record." "By water and land it was sent to the most distant countries; it was read with the same intense interest at the gates of the Seraglio and on the banks of the Ganges, and copied from by almost all other newspaper editors . . . ," wrote one observer.
Censorship restrictions kept newspapers published in the Holy Roman Empire from reporting as comprehensively as the international French-language press, but more newspapers were published in the German-speaking world than in any other part of Europe: at least 93 in 1750, and 151 by 1785. The most successful of these, the Hamburgische Unparteyische Correspondent, may have reached a press run of 20,000 by the time of the French Revolution. The large number of newspapers in Germany, and the correspondingly impressive number of journals and magazines, reflected both the area's division into many political units and the relatively high level of literacy in the population. By the 1780s, some German publishers were even putting out newspapers aimed explicitly at the peasant population.
Under normal conditions, governments throughout Europe were able to control the periodical press more easily than certain other forms of printing, such as pamphlets, which could be circulated anonymously. Anxious not to jeopardize their privileges and dependent on postal systems to deliver their products, publishers had strong incentives not to antagonize the authorities. The century saw few genuine examples of underground or subversive periodicals. The outstanding example was the French Nouvelles ecclésiastiques, the voice of that country's Jansenist religious minority, which successfully defied the police from 1728 down to the Revolutionary era. This feat was only possible, however, because the paper spoke for a well-organized and strongly committed group that included many influential elite members.
When public authority broke down, however, the door was opened for "media revolutions" in which periodicals became instruments for political agitation. The poet John Milton (1608–1674) served as a newspaper editor during the English Civil Wars of the 1640s, and the impact of his contemporary Marchamont Needham's(1620–1678)journalism was still remembered by the journalists of the French Revolution. Periodicals played important roles in the "democratic revolutions" of the second half of the eighteenth century, particularly the revolt in Britain's North American colonies and the Dutch Patriot movement of the 1780s. The greatest example of the press's role in a crisis was the French Revolution of 1789. At the start of that year, there had been only four newspapers published in Paris, only one of them a daily; before the end of 1789, 140 new titles had been founded, and readers had a choice of several dozen dailies representing a wide spectrum of political views and writing styles. This journalistic explosion increased readership; newspapers read aloud even reached illiterate sections of the population. Leading journalists commanded salaries that dwarfed what pre-Revolutionary writers had made from their books, and many of them, most notably Jean-Paul Marat (1743–1793), used their papers to launch political careers.
The French Revolution and the wars that resulted from it brought about fundamental changes in Europe's press. Although Napoleon restored censorship and licensing of newspapers, press freedom became a central part of liberal programs throughout the Continent. Public demand for news led publishers to experiment with new technologies that would allow larger press runs: in 1814, the London Times put the first steam-powered press into service. Such machines allowed periodicals to overcome the limitations on press runs that had characterized the "typographical old regime" of the early modern period and made the development of a true mass press possible. The growth of the press after 1800 was so striking that its early modern predecessors were largely forgotten. Modern scholarship has made it possible to appreciate the important roles that periodical publications played in the politics, culture, and economic life of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
See also Censorship ; Literacy and Reading ; Printing and Publishing ; Public Opinion .
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barker, Hannah. Newspapers, Politics, and Public Opinion in Late Eighteenth-Century England. Oxford and New York, 1998. A study of the press in the country where it enjoyed the greatest political freedom in the early modern period.
Censer, Jack R. The French Press in the Age of Enlightenment. London and New York, 1994. A survey covering the eighteenth century.
Feyel, Gilles. L'annonce et la nouvelle: La presse d'information en France sous l'ancien régime (1630–1788). Oxford, 2000. This detailed study of the French regional press demonstrates its important role in the early modern economy.
Lindemann, Margot. Geschichte der deutschen Presse. Part 1, Deutsche Presse bis 1815. Berlin, 1969. A comprehensive survey of the press in the German-speaking world.
Popkin, Jeremy D. News and Politics in the Age of Revolution: Jean Luzac's Gazette de Leyde, 1772–1798. Ithaca, N.Y., 1989. An analysis of the international news system of the eighteenth century and of its political and cultural impact.
Solomon, Howard M. Public Welfare, Science, and Propaganda in Seventeenth-Century France. Princeton, 1972. The life of the creator of the first French newspaper.
Tucoo-Chala, Suzanne. Charles-Joseph Panckoucke et la librairie française, 1736–1798. Pau, France, 1977. Biography of the first great "press baron."
Jeremy D. Popkin