History of Newspapers -- essays research papers fc

The History of Newspapers Today, people can use newspapers to find out many things. One can use the newspaper to check sports scores, get the day's news, read "feel good" stories, or even find out their horoscope. It was not always that way. From the "Acta Diurna," reported in the ancient Roman empire, to the New York Times, newspapers have come a long way. In this report, the distance that newspapers have traveled since their inception is going to be outlined. Before literacy was commonplace in societies, town criers would announce the news of the land to the land's people. These criers used oratory skills to spread the news on crossroads and the marketplace. Messengers would be commissioned to report to the town after battles to report a victory or a defeat to the townspeople. As people became more civilized and language and literacy was developed, news that was delivered by spoken word was starting to be written down. In 59 BC, Julius Caesar released the "Acta Diurana." This was a daily gazette which was printed and hung in the Roman Forum. This gazette would report news of Rome, such as military campaigns, executions, and trials. The Chinese also started government-produced news sheets called the taipo. While the "Acta" was the news for the entire populace of Rome, the taipo was only for the government officials until about 618 AD Those were the only noted types of printed news until 1456, when Gutenburg invented movable type. Soon after the printing press was invented, there was a written account of a tournament in Rome in about 1470. There were letters written by Christopher Columbus which were circulating Barcelona before Columbus returned from Spain in 1493. For about one-hundred-thirty years, there were pamphlets, sheets of paper, and books being printed and circulated with news events. Although these were written accounts of news utilizing movable type, they were not considered newspapers. Modern newspapers as we know them began in the late1500's. In 1566, the Venetian avisi began. This publication was regularly distributed throughout Venice. There was information about wars and politics in Italy and also the rest of Europe. They were printed weekly. This set the stage for other newspapers to follow the format outlined in those papers. They employed the style of using a dateline... ...than they ever had before, a circulation war was inevitable. As circulation wars heated up, newspapers were in competition to get the best news first. The wire services became born. Edward W. Scripps and William Randolph Hearst developed news services. Scripps started the Associated Press in 1907 and Hearst started the International News Service in 1909. As the country and its settlers realized their manifest destiny, the news services became very important to national news in city papers. After that point not too many events happened that really shaped the newspaper world. The age of the internet and computers has been the first thing to change newspapers in a long time. Now with the internet, the world is at everyone's fingertips. Never before had people had access to all of the information that they have now. It is going to be very interesting to see what is going to be done next. Bibliography Black, Jay; Bryant, Jennings; Thompson, Susan. Introduction to Media Communication. The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. 1998. pp.113-147. Stephens, Mitchell. "History of Newspapers". For Collier's Encyclopedia. Http://www.nyu.edu/classes/stephens/Collier's%20page.htm