The journey to get to professionally-verified information includes social, economic and political coursework. To share this journey, historian Andrew Pettegree focused in his 2014 book The Invention of the News heavily on the European development.
It is dense and comprehensive, at least in the continental sense. It’s been on my list for a year or so, and I finally dug into it, with pages of notes. Find reviews of the book in the Times and Guardian, and consider buying the book yourself. The book’s focus is between the years of 1400 to 1800, and it’s clearly written by a historian, rather than a contemporary media studies approach—I prefer this more dispassionate and distant view of the origins of an industry.
Knowing that printing had earlier roots in China, the book is decidedly Eurocentric. Still I would strongly recommend it to anyone as interested as I am in the foundation of media, news and journalism. Pettegree’s stance is that the industry of professionalizing information-gathering was a European concept, which is his focus. This was one of several books on early journalism foundations I’ve read in the last year.
Find my notes below.
Here are my notes:
INTRODUCTION
- The Printing Press, with early woodblock roots in East Asia, was initially primarily used in Europe for medieval style long text printing.
- The invention in the 1450s by Johannes Guttenberg was not the first use of moveable type, but its combination of durable metal letters in trays and working in languages with fewer characters meant the beginning of a commercial success. (His first commercially viable product was a set of 200 Latin-language bibles)
- By the early 1500s cheaper printing meant the quick commodification of news and shocking stories from afar, though always complimentary of the local prince. There were also strong opinions in the incendiary tradition of news pamphlets. Biased and undemocratic; almost immediately Protestant and Catholic sectarian divide between two bubbles of information
- The 16th century avvisi were expensive trade letters, the earliest B2B for business value news. They were essentially subscription services dispassionate information for investment and politics
- Avvisi continued to flourish for paying subscribers who wanted dispassionate information. They were for serious professionals
- Very slow adoption rate of newspaper, 100 years before they flourished; 200 before they dominated
- Traveling singers and plays and gossip were information tools stronger than newspaper for generations
- Four news business basics: speed, reliability, control of content and entertainment value
- Maximilian I Holy Roman Emperor in 1490 established the basics of a new postal system that gave the foundation of serialized news: a vehicle to inform military and commerce, like the Roman postal network a millennia before
- All those in power developed news: state, church and merchant class
- In 1357 seventeen Florentine companies banded together to create a shared courier service. A rival Scarzelle Genovisi aimed to be faster and more discrete. Kings thought merchant courier systems were more reliable and speedier news distribution
- Francesco Datini wrote in 1392 requesting info about spice. Many merchants would fan flames about speculation to benefit their own business or personal needs. They had the early news networks through couriers whom they’d come to trust. (Thought for later: Later merchants had the printing press. News predated printing press, journalists didn’t make printing press. When everyone got their own printing press via social media they thought they could replace journalists but they missed the work they did: they were the unpopular referee; they built a model that benefited everyone. Those merchants wanted a trusted news source)
NOTES
- In 1357 seventeen Florentine companies banded together to create a shared career service headed by Antonio di Bartolomeo del Vantaggio, among the earliest professional news-gathering cooperatives. It was for business news (page 43)
- The merchant private market news networks were more reliable than the state sponsored ones
- In 1501 the proprietors of the Venetian galley ships destined for Beirut chartered a swift vessel to go ahead and advise the Arab traders that a richly leading fleet was on its way. The captain was to receive 850 ducats if he accomplished at this voyage in 18 days but would lose 50 ducketts for each two days of delay. Speed and business information (53)
- By the 15th century Nuremberg had a number of couriers on the city payroll (56)
- Certificates of indulgence: the Church was a major customer for early struggling print industry by paying for certificates like this to be printed; the Church became a major early developer of the model. This was early repeatable work and more profitable than small runs of books and before news publications (60)
- Gutenberg warning to Christiendom against the Turks called for a Papal-led crusade; this was an example of an early pamphlet which was a precursor to newspapers (62)
- Wittenburg where Luther posted his 95 theses: before that time he would have died in obscurity but he printed and distributed his thesis which let the idea thrive; he did it in German not Latin to make more approachable “ The reformation was Europe’s first mass media news event.” (68)
- The Neue Zeitung by 1509 were news pamphlets on one issue like German City states battling Ottomans or earthquakes. They marketed their trust and reliability not hyperbole (73)
- The French in mid 1400s onward developed proper state run propaganda media, very different than the criticism and satire developing in Italy city states (80)
- By 1540s, though France had wider printing at times, in particular at times of war, state-sponsored news was primarily only positive news. No sense of independent press. Though not literally all pre-read, most governments had the right to approve what would be printed, and there was a really sense of nationalism. That was the mass information. If you wanted accurate information, merchants maintained their private correspondence (84)
- In 1580s, first with tax/policy decrees and then with illustrated woodcut broadsheets narrating true crimes, local news developed (Swiss clergyman Johann Jakob Wick has influential collection) (88)
- London printer Thomas Purfoot published in 1586 news of a triple murder by a Frenchman in Rouen, an innkeeper wife and child. Early example of shock crime (91)
- Thought for later: From the beginning these were never representative of the data; lots of coverage of crimes including women because those crimes were rare
- Many of these early local crime authors were clergymen, they were finding sermon and lessons (1551 Bullard Waldis, Lutheran pastor wrote about a starving mother without a breadwinner killing four children; The point? Maintain a happy marriage )
- These pamphlets in the mid 1500s were bought for the equivalent of 1 penny; they were commoditized from the start (96)
- This marked a major change; from private correspondence to mass and often anonymous news spread by way of transformative technology. European leaders cared about pamphlets to understand public debate and perspective of the public
- This era of commercial news and more established trade routes saw the first private news offices on subscription basis; for two centuries these avvisi of news sheets
- The Relazione were early commentary on political event built off of ambassadors from previously private correspondence to leader like in the Italian city states annually or at the end of an embassy in ambassador with worldly share an overview of the country he had spent time in (99)
- Isabella and Ferdinand of Aragon established the tradition of permanent embassies rather than short term as part of new alliances
- Giovanni Poli in 1590 was a correspondent who would gather and develop trusted news. He’d write these as written reports. He was a novellante in Rome and perhaps the best known of these subscription services (107)
- The origins in the commercial correspondence of medieval times, in 1303 a company sent letter of news; from 1470-1480, Benedetto DEI would send regular bulletin of single sentences of confirmed news . He had traveled the world and so he would boast sending every Saturday “ The news from Asia and from Africa and from Europe always.” It was the first weekly news service (109)
- Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti did similar work but for a patron model; Dei was paid , but his dispatches were heavily copied. He hadn’t yet owned replication and distribution, which is what avvisi did
- Dei pioneered the location dateline coming first in a story to signify being on-site and close to the news; The longstanding avvisi shaped newspapers, as they had neutrality unlike ambassador dispatches that included commentary. Ambassadors had small high paying customers (the state); avvisi had many more (sometimes feuding) subscribers so were more neutral (110)
- Venice was as much a news power as a commercial hub (Rialto being the midtown Manhattan of the era); and Rome because of the influential papacy and politics
- In the 1550s, there were freemium models; higher end subscription service for deeper cuts and more general interest models very low cost
- A cardinal warned an aide of novellanti: they could “take the egg out of a chickens body, let alone the secret out of a youth’s mouth” (111)
- Niccolò Franco was executed after a 1570 Pius V decree against defamatory broadsheets; this was an early publishing death (112)
- There were more satirical and intentionally damning pasquinades, which were posted on a statue nicknamed Pasquino marks an early example of a divide between what we might call journalism and general shit posting ; The serious stuff was political and economic news
- Pompeo Roma had a weekly newsletter in the 1580s for 113 florins (114)
- Fugger news archive is another important preserved collection. This collection includes Corantos, another newspaper predecessor (Fugger are a wealthy family)
- 1583 Philip Bray was paid “enormous sum” of 100 florins a quarter for a newsletter to gather France and Low Countries news (116)
- “Well sourced, dispassionate, and reassuringly expensive, the manuscript newsletters were distinctive and now almost holy forgotten part of the news world.” Were these news agencies purely in the curation and distribution game?
- From the 1500s thru 1600s there were broadsheet balladeers “cord literature” of often blind peddlers in markets singing news ballads of wars etc. (121)
- The Spanish Armada of 1588 marked a major turning point as Roman avvisi reported that Spanish said they had won but they were skeptical and reserved, which proved accurate since the English iconically rebuffed the prominent Spanish attack.
- Earlier the Battle of Lepanto in October 1571, a naval battle between Catholic states and the Ottomans, was treated as a far bigger news event than the report of Columbus finding a rocky shore. Similarly, St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre of 1572, when Catholics attacked French Huguenots, was a continent wide news events, “ because there is such great desire to believe in a victory it is necessary to wait for confirmation” (154)
- For example, Queen Elizabeth’s speech after the Spanish Armada defeat was set to ballads though one author despaired of the “commonness of ballads” (157)
- He cites the first newspaper in 1605 in Strasbourg by Johann Carolus; he had a regular manuscript newsletter. But this publication was serialized printed sheets, and benefited by the beginning improvement of postal services around the world (168)
- Soon the northern Europe was dominated printed news-sheets (newspapers) and the avvisi stayed popular in the Italy and southern Europe
- Emperor Maximillian began a postal system that the Taxis family and others invested in. By 1541, in Rome and Venice the “ordinary post” was established with public, advertised regular delivery of post, allowing the newsletters and newspapers and novellanti to flourish. Taxis set fixed postage amounts and brought down costs with increasing volume (170)
- Carolus had his hand-copied newsletter manuscript service which funded a print shop and his buying a printing press. He wanted to make multiple copies of his news copy, or newspaper. In 1605, he requested from municipal government a single license (monopoly) on this act of printing news so he could recoup his investment: The Strasbourg Relation ; in 1650, the first daily (184)
- No headlines or illustrations that irregular news pamphlets has; no advocacy or commentary
- 350-400 copies an average of 200 German titles by 1690s; one had 1,500 copies (185)
- In 1630, Hamburg booksellers went to city council to complain about a newspaper being sold directly to consumers, a compromise was struck where part of the week it had to be sold in book stores
- Quickly seen as profitable industry and rapid competition
- Early 1600s, Dutch papers were the first to include advertisements: the ads and municipal notices were the first local things; everything else rounded up the biggest news from other places (190)
- An early 1620s combination of the newspaper serialized model with the woodcut illustrations and partisan commentary was like an early tabloid but never quite caught on. Took centuries more for it all to fit (194)
- Frequent early monopolies granted as governments feared rampant publishing. (195)
- Early English papers had government intervention, censorship and influence; in the 1620s, the Duke of Buckingham pressured a newspaper to promote falsely him as a military victor, until a survivor of a failed campaign assassinated him. It was an example of public resistance to false narrative (199)
- The Gazette became a national France paper in 1630s by licensing its editions from Paris. It was fawning and a government sanctioned monopoly; Cardinal Richelieu endorsed. It published Saturdays and was part of this trend of a serialized paper.
- Side note: the term The Gazette comes from the Italian phrase
gazeta de la novità”” ‘a halfpennyworth of news’ because the news-sheet sold for a gazeta, a Venetian coin of small value. - Still during the Fronde civil wars in the mid 1600s, thousands of pamphlets dropped which still was the familiar model for hot takes
- In 1616, gifted and critical writer Paolo Sarpi wrote “ everyone confesses that the true way of ruling the subject is to keep him ignorant of and reverent towards public affairs” (203)
- For two pence, the newspaper Gazette of the 1600s was “affordable” especially compared to the private subscription services that thrived still in Rome and Venice (207)
- Diurnals: 1640 as manuscript but in November 1641 In London the daily printed serial newsletter , by the end of 1642 there were 20.
- Coincided with a thirst for local domestic affairs rather than foreign (220)
- “The informed subject gradually begins to judge the prince’s actions” Paolo Sarpi
- Interesting: Concept of ostracism from Greek city states voting annual to remove someone for a decade
- Marchamont Nedham (1620-1678) was a journalist who wrote propaganda for both sides of the English Ciivil War, though known as the ‘press agent’ of Oliver Cromwell
- Execution of King Charles I in January 1649 was aided by and became major continental news story; was the rival press part of how?
- 1640s, Amsterdam had 10 weekly newspapers published on 4 days (227)
- But serial publications were founded neutral because their listed mailing addresses meant they could be censored and attacked. They developed serious unbiased news making. News pamphlets often anonymously printed were full of opinions and so used for big moments
- France wasn’t where the coffee house gossip and news culture grew up because it regained monopoly and crown control of news in the early 1600s. Instead this happened in England (231)
- By 1700 The Gazette, the French monopoly paper, still had only 7k copies printed weekly; instead there were many newsletters and French language papers printing abroad , like Gazette de Leyde from 1677 onward printed in Amsterdam and elsewhere (234)
- English pamphleteer Sir Roger L’Estrange in 1663: “ supposing the press to be in order, the people in the right wits, and news or no news to be the question, a public Mercury should never have my vote, because I think it makes the multitude too familiar with the actions and counselors there superiors” There was always a question of how much is too much to know (237)
- The Oxford, later renamed the London Gazette, made a news monopoly (inspired by the French Gazette and Nedham’s monopoly under Cromwell). Much of the writing came from civil servants, as confidential manuscript news thrived. Still London Gazette gained wide circulation with one penny purchase price, there were also subscriptions. Postmasters also contributed news. Early newspapers tended to collect foreign affairs and less domestic, which stayed only with private manuscript subscriptions (like House of
- Commons votes) (239)
- “‘Tis The press that made ‘em mad, and the press must set ‘em right again.” L’Estrange in 1687 (244)
- “Post” began to be used in newspaper titles as to convey its widespread distribution via new postal networks in late 1600s;
- In 1702 the Daily Courant became London’s first Daly newspaper. Though it closed in 1735, it pointed to the future.
- In 1704 London had 9 newspapers with 44k weekly copies, 1709 had 18 periodicals of 55 issues weekly and 1712 70k copies weekly for a population of six million, contrasting with the 9k copies of Paris Gazette for French 20 million population (245)
- “The market for news spread beyond those for whom it was a professional necessity to be informed, to new, more naïve and inexperienced consumers” (257)
- In the 1630s, newsmen wanted time to get it right; Thomas Gainsford wrote impatient news consumers urged that we must get it right, but frequently battle deaths are reported incorrectly
- The more established manuscript newsmen critiqued the newspapers for being newer and less established and having more mistakes and being impatient and rushing for their new deadlines; sounds like newspapers of today criticizing newer-wave publications.
- London dramatists poked fun at the new model of newspapering. One popular newsman was named Nathaniel Butter (his publishing house published the first edition of King Lear) and he became quite representative of the era. Dramatist Ben Johnson made a play called “A Staple of News” and it lampooned newspapers and simpletons who bought them. (One penny for a single issue but subscription would be one shilling a month, a lot). In some ways Ben Johnson as a playwright was the established media of the time, as they were used for contemporary critique. Newspapers were competition (259)
- News pamphlets could be wider and longform writerly takes on overall issues; the serialized newspapers were seen as fad as they were in the muck of the daily and fast-changing information
- In 1676, Ahasver Fritsch wrote a pamphlet about the use and abuse of newspapers, noting how just about anyone could have a paper now (he wrote this in Latin) but news should be in the hands of those who needed to have it (261)
- In 1679, Lutheran pastor Johann Ludwig Hartman in his list of vices added newspaper reading to dancing, gambling, drinking and idleness
- Critics of the newspapers focused on three main issues which they felt compromise the media contribution to public debate. They complained of information overload: that there is simply too much news, much of it contradictory. They worried that the old tradition of street reporting was being contaminated by opinion.” (263)
- The complaint of information overload was already reused: in the early 1500s, the first wave of pamphlets around the Reformation felt it was partisan overload. Newspaper culture may have started in the manuscript and avvisi culture of separating out dry fact but there were advancements (264)
- Censorship was a major part of publishing in Europe. The Catholics banned authors, the Protestants pre-viewed anything before printed, like the pamphlets. The serial newspaper changed that and brought in a new stage of censorship: punishment after the fact. In truth it’s still what we have with FCC fees. Newspapers got quiet for a time by end of 1600s, even Dutch, as they all mostly had profitable monopolies (Piedmont in Italy, the publisher had a government pension) (266)
- In 1700s, The Enlightenment brought a new serial periodical: literary, scientific and academic journals. These journals had the voice and context that later newspapers adapted (269)
- Early journals were in French (journal des scavans) and English (like Philosophical Transactions), not Latin, and this began the transition out of Latin (271)
- Dunton’s Athenian Mercury closed in 1697, but its membership of witty intellectuals who answered each other’s questions and paid for subscriptions was a precursor to membership (274)
- Addison and Steele launched in 1711 The Spectator, a kind of London’s gentlemen’s magazine that followed their experiment with the Tattler, which they used to radically expand advertising model (14-18 ads a issue or up to 150 a month)
- Both only lasted a couple years as was common with these early periodicals dependent as they often were on a single founder’s voice.
- Defoe’s Review had a remarkable 10 year run. The audiences were there; the production schedule needed less reliance on a single creative brain:
- The Gentleman’s Magazine in 1731 by Edward Cave hides different professional writers around a central voice (rather than very fact only draft newspapers or individual creative voice) (276)
- Tattler and Spectator actively courted female readership as early as 1691 with a female voice (280)
- Focused q and a ; expanding audience but it took the mid 1700s for Elizabeth Haywood’s Female Spectator to get voice authentic, though sill it was all fairly condescending. In 1759 a French journal des dames launches promising “riens delicieux”
- Many women inherited publishing houses from their husbands and thrived, prominently people like Countess Alexandrine de Rye
- Europe’s first media mogul, the renaissance man Charles-Joseph Panckoucke (286)
- By 1788 he had 800 workmen and employees (288)
- Periodicals brought subscription models for recurring revenue and strong lists for advertisers, preferred over the unpredictable model of one of books and allowed for thoughtful work, among others
- Though merchants largely helped form what we understand to be news, business reporting fell behind. For example, very little coverage of the Tulip Crisis of 1637. Instead there were early lists of commodities pricing and then late 1600s share prices of new companies showed up (293)
- Houghton’s Collection for the Improvement of Husbandry and Trade and then The originator of Lloyd’s List began to do some explaining of the economy to readers
- Advertising really took hold in the nascent press, launch of companies and projects; many ads pitched lotteries as people sought to get returns on income (294)
- Houghton from June-July 1694 did a seven article series on the new Bank of England and consolidation of national debt and other massive changes (later 1696 re-coinage) to help explain this world (295)
- Defoe’s Review frequently wrote about the economy ; Defoe wrote “writing upon trade was the whore I really doted upon” as markets was seen as sinful
- The first newspaper print ad ran in two different competing papers Aug 10, 1624, advertising a book of emblems (300)
- England ads start in 1650s; like Dutch they started as promoting books and then other services and then openings and then wanted posters etc
- On May 4 1685, in The Gazette, an early personal ad after the coronation of James II was looking for “lost at their majesties coronation the button (knob) of his majesty’s scepter”
- Advertising largely introduced the idea of local content to newspapers (302)
- In April 1694 John Houghton asked his early subscribers if “ weather advertisements of schools, or houses in lodgings about London, maybe useful, I submit to those concerned.” This came after his husbandry publication falters on subscribers alone. He got feedback it would help and he tried it
- Marchamont Nedham grew wealthy in the 1650s by running ads with Cromwell monopoly
- Free newspapers with ad revenue started from then 1650s, though irregular in printing to wait for profit
- Advertising is what made local press possible. Early domestic press were doing very small print runs; Thomas Avis of Birmingham Gazette: that a great deal of money may be sunk in a very little time by a publication of this nature, cannot seem strange to anyone.” (304)
- In 1694, Addison and Steele say each copy of their Spectator newspaper would be seen by 20 people. A boast for advertisers that was copied by newspapers today. (305)
- The first known usage in print of the word “journalist” was in 1693; in 1710 it was used disparagingly to describe a hired hand to write copy for the burgeoning publishing class . The words origin in journal and jour was derisively referring to the regular churn of information (309)
- Jonathan Swift tried to use “journalier” for newspaper writer but never caught on. Addison in The Spectator in 1712 referred to a female correspondent as a journalist derisively as if she journaled
- Most early newsmen ran the whole operation though in London the first full time reporters emerged though sometimes working for multiple papers to make a living. Right away accused of over drinking by competitors, one was said to be “scouring the ale houses and gin shops, loitering in public offices like house breakers waiting for an interview with some little clerk”
- Far more distribution infrastructure than for content creation; in 1720s many chains including Mercury women to distribute but often only one newsman curating the content (311)
- By 1770s The Gazetteer listed 14 correspondents paid piecemeal as contractors for their work, a century before news services often relied on customs officials
- In 1758 Ralph Griffiths, founder of the Monthly Review, painted a bitter portrait of the life of the man who wrote for hire. “There is no difference between the writer in his garrett and the slave in the mines. Both have their tasks assigned them alike: both must drudge and starve; and neither can hope for deliverance.” (312)
- Revealingly though “journalist” word shows 1693, “journalism” first appears 1833, 140 years later
- Thru to the late 1700s, a single publisher who gathered information from manuscripts and services and solicited subs and oversaw news hawkers (313)
- Little design innovation; biggest news wasn’t always on the front page because to print serialized issues took speed and so as news came in it was added; no bylines so many anonymous news writers
- Andrew Brice was rare when in 1726 he used commentary and stories to tell of poor inmate treatment (314)
- In 1807 in England, having been a paid newspaper writer barred you from becoming legal professional. Into the 1860s still quite seriously seen as a demerit, a role for scoundrels to make money with writing (315)
- Even a professional writer like Sir Walter Scott saw journalism as a disreputable calling. When his friend asked him in a letter if he should take a newspaper job because it would pay him for his talents, Scott wrote back: “I should think it rash for any young man, of whatever talent, to sacrifice nominally at least, a considerable portion of his respectability in society in hopes of being an exception to a rule which is a present pretty general.”
- In 1835 The London Review: “ those who are regularly connected with the newspaper press her for the most part excluded from what is, in the wildest extension of the term, called good society.”
- This wasn’t true for journals or other periodicals who had bylines. Newspapers didn’t, were seen as quite lewd
- The low pay was related to a reputation for “selling paragraphs,” in which newspaper press would suppress stories for bribery. Not so in manuscripts and pamphlets which remained respectable and used well into the 19th century
- John Wilkes and North Briton tested press freedom by routinely criticizing King George III. Wilkes’s staff was arrested by warrant but they won in a landmark case (328)
- In 1769, Woodfall in anonymous letter from Junius wrote: “ it is the misfortune of your life that you should never have been acquainted with the language of truth, until you have heard it in the complaints of your people.” (A jury refusing to convict this rewrote libel law)
- Boston News-Letter and later Pennsylvania Gazette were mostly reprinting of London news through to 1765 before domestic evolved (333)
- Stamp Act of 1765 changed that, with colonial newspapers rallying against it after seven years war and covering other colonies more after the repeal. (Franklin’s Join or Die snake carton is enduring pro-British cartoon from the Seven Years War) (334)
- Franklin 1731 in apology for printers: “ printers are educated in the belief that when men differ in opinion, both sides are equally to have the advantage of being heard by the public.” (335)
- Partisanship in the cause of Revolution caused huge division and pushed publishers to become more progressive; there was a retrenchment
- Newspapers played a role but still pamphlets: it was Thomas Paine’s Common Sense (120k copies) that is heralded for moving the masses
- “The necessity of writing every day is the tomb of talent:” Benjamin Constant, the French Revolution saw an explosion of publishing where there has previously been a monopoly.
- An active press has always been part of Revolution. These early French publications often tried full exhaustive translations of debates including interjections but over time found the voice of quotes (341)
- An early press freedom advocate, Robespierre flipped, inciting committee of public safety to punish “treacherous journalists who are the most dangerous enemies of liberty” (343)
- As few as 400 copies of papers made it break even, many could sell 3,000, others peaked at 12k
- In eve of French Revolution, magistrates tried to control speech and popular political and satirical song; there was always a way to get information free (348)
- “The wonderful work of God in the guidance of bullets” Nehemiah Wellington an example of someone who chronicled his news consumption closely including this description of battle of Edge Hill in English Civil War. Like other tradesman he saw news as sign of god (350)
- Local news doesn’t come until 19th century (358)
- In 1835, a journalist asked: “ what is to prevent daily newspaper from being made the greatest organ of social life? Books have had their day; theaters have had their day; religion has had its day… A newspaper can be made to take the lead in all these great moments of human thought” (363)
- By 1792, the English government subsidized half of the country’s press, other pubs extorted public figures. Indecent and unbecoming acts only dissipated when models established (368)
- John Adams: “ there has been more error propagated from the press in the last 10 years than in the 100 years before” (369)
- North America newspapers between 1790-1800: 99 to 230 (370)
