An exploration of the intersections of commerce, institutional power, media and society and their impact on political discourse
Drawn up by the Roman Senate, the Acta Senatus chronicles political matters and actions of the senate. The public is forbidden access.
Carved on stone or metal and posted in public places, historians generally consider these to be the prototype of the modern newspaper. Reporting matters of public interest, they emerge in Rome sometime before 59 BCE.
Originating in the Tang Dynasty, the Diamond Sutra was created with a method known as block printing, which utilized panels of hand-carved wood blocks. The process was elegant, but time-consuming and required high levels of skill. Other block-printed texts have survived from this period, including a calendar, mathematic charts, an etiquette guide, funeral and wedding guides, children’s educational material, dictionaries and almanacs.
As a sutra, "the word of the Buddha" the Diamond Sutra can only be directly accessed by monks. It can be chanted for members of the public, but the public cannot access it directly.
Designed to collect and disseminate official news to the public, the "Information Department" positioned the city of Hangzhou to become "the first center for newspapers and journalism" in the world.
Two types of newspapers are born --"official bulletins," or chaobao, and private, often illegal, publications, or xiaobao.
Expanding on the Chinese block-printing method, Gutenberg materially refines and mechanizes the printing process in 1440, with the invention of the moveable type printing press. He spends the next 10 years preparing it for "mass production."
In refining both the press mechanics, specifically the type keys, as well as inventing special inks and processes to refine paper to accept his inks, Gutenberg puts himself in a position to sell both his press process and the materials he can now print in mass.
Gutenberg himself prints copies of a single book: the Bible. He prints 180 copies of the 1,300-paged book. Each page contains 42 lines of text in Gothic type. Gutenberg creates 300 individual molded letter blocks and uses more than 50,000 sheets of paper. Twenty-one complete copies of the Gutenberg Bible survive, four of them being a very rare version printed on vellum.
Every one of Gutenberg's bibles is pre-sold before its final page is set in print. Those members of the public who can afford to have their own printed Bible, fiercely want one, and competition to purchase is stiff. In later years, Gutenberg is sued by a former business partner, and likely dies impoverished. Nevertheless, his Bible creates a thirst for direct, in-one's-own-hands, knowledge within the learned public. A spark is ignited. Gutenberg's machine is about to change the world.
For 200 years, Gutenberg's press spreads across Europe, creating significant cultural change, and causing political, social and religious upheaval. Literacy rates doubled every century during this period and people demanded regular and accessible news updates. According to the History Channel, in response, "a global news network was launched."
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Already in turmoil, the center of European medieval life, The Catholic Church, dove into engagement with, a sought control of, the presses. Gutenberg's machine allowed for doctrine to be printed efficiently and disseminated even more widely, but it also allowed for greater diversity of thought. Ultimately, the presses played a pivotal role in The Protestant Reformation, forever changing the face of Christianity.
Published in Strasbourg by Johann Carolus, Relation Aller Furnemmen Und Gedenckwurdigen Historien is credited with being Europe's first regular newspaper.
The Courante uyt Italien, Duytslandt, &c.
Corante, or Newes from Italy, Germany, Hungarie, Spaine and France was printed in England by Nathaniel Butter. Earlier editions may have been printed by the earliest surviving copy is dated September 24, 1621.
French physician, philanthropist and journalist, Théophraste Renaudot publishes the first edition of the weekly newspaper, La Gazette.
The printing press was set up in Cambridge on the campus of Harvard College, which had been founded just two years earlier.
Printed in Boston by Richard Pierce, Publick Occurrences, Both Foreign and Domestick, is credited with being the first newspaper published in The Colonies. Its creation heralds an impending explosion of the Colonists' demand for news and information and a robust response from journalists and printers throughout the Colonies.
After its first, and only, edition is published, Publick Occurrences is shut down for violating the Licensing of the Press Act of 1662. The printing of a rumor that the king of France shared a bed with his son’s wife may also play a role in the shuttering. From moment one, the press and institutional power are inextricably linked. The earliest formal journalism in the New World is both reporting important news, and playing to prurient public interest, while institutional power is enacting legal and messaging control. The table is now set for a uniquely American struggle between media, government, commerce and public interest.
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Printed in a British Colony, the paper contains mostly European news, but publishers include "American" in the title and report news from Philadelphia and Boston as well. Media is subtly shaping the way colonists think about themselves.
Boston's third newspaper, The Courant, is founded by James Franklin, Benjamin Franklin's older brother.
With the publishing of the Gazette, print news media has made its way south of the Potomac River.
All 16 papers are weeklies, generally two to four pages in length. At this point in Colonial history, the papers remain primarily focused on reporting European news, but the volume of news from the Colonies increases each year. Even at this early stage, every one of the 16 papers carries paid advertisements.
Now free from the threat of French and Indigenous American hostility, the colonists recognize the full scope of British tyranny.
Growing from £75M in 1754 to more than £133M in 1763, the war explodes the British debt. King George must generate new revenue.
From the Sugar Act to The Tea Act, The Crown layered new tax upon new tax. Of all the new burdens, The Stamp Act polarized the colonists to revolution.
"According to David Ramsay, one of the first historians of the American Revolution, 'in establishing American independence, the pen and press had merit equal to that of the sword.' Because of the unstable and fragile notions of unity among the thirteen American colonies, print acted as a binding agent that mitigated the chances that the colonies would not support one another when war with Britain broke out in 1775."
Driven by coordinated, inspiring language often delivered through newspapers, colonists develop a sense of national identity independent from England. Says John Adams, What do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people. . . . This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution."
Financially burdensome, the act also makes colonists believe they've lost the right to establish their own legislation. Resistance to the act in this moment puts in place structures that will eventually lead to rebellion.
Members of the Continental Congress appreciate the power of the press to connect and motivate Revolutionary fervor. Newspapers become pivotal in their efforts to spread the word of British tyranny and Colonial patriotism and bravery leading up to, and throughout, the revolution.
Newspapers become as important to the Revolution as guns, uniting diverse and distant colonies around central, patriotic themes
Subject to many of the same financial pressures, and motivations, as modern media, colonial newspapers understand, "if it bleeds, it leads."
Animated infographic shows news spread of the Declaration of Independence
The number of newspapers in the newly defined nation materially expands. Magazines and other periodicals emerge and expand media access.
Founders understand the power of the post office to support their fledgling democracy by informing the electorate. "In 1792 they devise a Robin Hood scheme whereby high-priced postage for letters, sent mostly by businessmen and lawyers, can subsidize the delivery of cheap, uncensored newspapers. This policy helps spark America’s lively, disputatious political culture." President George Washington signs The Postal Service Act.
In 1790, there were fewer than 100 newspapers circulating in the new nation. By 1815, there were nearly 400. Thanks to the 1792 act, newspapers are moving by post. In 1800, the US Postal Service circulates 1.9 million newspapers.
Farming becomes an agricultural industry in the south and emerging west, while industry picks up steam in the major cities of the northeast. Regional identities form around culture and commerce. Transportation explodes. While the two ways of life are interdependent, and both critical to the growing economy, political divides emerge, signaling trouble on the horizon.
The number of news media continues to grow rapidly with the expansion of the United States. While similar to all fields, media is dominated by white men, some women and Black Americans engage in the news business. A critical theme is the increasingly politically polarized nature of news media during this period. Political parties are often the major or sole financial backers of media.
By the late 1850s, the US becomes radically divided by regional identities rooted in community but also commerce. Slavery is the most polarizing issue dividing the country, but certainly not the only. Bonds on institutional power at the federal level are fraying. Tensions are rising.
As America moves toward the 1860s, social fractures grow more and more pronounced. The issues are complex but social opinion in the more industrialized north and those in the more agriculturally focused south diverge wildly by the end of the 1850s.
"The Chester County Times in Pennsylvania made no attempt to disguise how it felt about the election of Abraham Lincoln as the nation’s 16th president. “A Clean Sweep!” it exclaimed. “Corruption Ended!! The Country Redeemed! Secession is Rebuked!!! Let the Traitors Rave!” This was a time when newspapers were rigidly aligned with political parties. In Chester County, Lincoln’s win signaled a chance to lay on the exclamation marks. It was also a time when news-hungry citizens relied on newspapers as the primary means of mass communication. Advances in technology—especially the development of the telegraph—made rapid dissemination of the news possible. The Twitter of the era, the telegraph cut days or weeks off the time it took dispatches to reach the public." (Smithsonian Magazine, 2012)
"Confederate newspapers in Virginia during the American Civil War (1861–1865) served as vital, if often flawed, sources of reporting on the conflict, as organs of national propaganda, and as venues in which to attack or defend the administration of Confederate president Jefferson Davis." (Encyclopedia Virginia, 2020)
Both governments fund newspaper expansion before and during the civil war to spread important news, and to serve as vehicles for war propaganda.
"In the 1890s, powerful New York publishers Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst engage in an all-out battle for readers of their respective newspapers, developing a flamboyant, sensational style of coverage today referred to as yellow journalism. This battle between the New York World and the New York Journal will determine the direction of the American media landscape and today we still feel its aftermath -- from melodramatic headlines to the birth of eyewitness reporting and so-called "fake news". (The Bowery Boys, 2020)
Learn how these robber barons forever change the world of journalism from The Bowery Boys podcast series.
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