History of newspaper publishing

The modern newspaper is a European invention. The oldest direct ancestors of the modern newspaper were the handwritten news sheets that circulated widely in Venice as early as 1566. These weekly news sheets were filled with information on wars and politics in Italy and Europe. The first printed newspapers were published weekly in Germany from 1609. Typically they were heavily censored by the government and reported only foreign news, and current prices. After the English government relaxed censorship in 1695, newspapers flourished in London and a few other cities including Boston and Philadelphia. By the 1830s high speed presses could print thousands of papers cheaply, so low cost daily papers appeared in major cities. Most had political sponsors, but by 1900 advertising revenues became more important than party support> In New York City newspaper wars pushed circulation to the level of a million copies a day. In England and Scotland the tendency was for national newspapers to dominate sales. The rise of radio in the 1930s had a small impact but television from the 1950s onward undercut the audience. Afternoon papers could barely survive. The rise of the internet after 2000 and smart phones after 2010 proved financially crippling to morning papers as advertisers deserted, and subscriptions plunged.

Avvisi, or Gazzettes (not gazettes), were a mid-16th-century Venice phenomenon. They were issued on single sheets, folded to form four pages, and issued on a weekly schedule. These publications reached a larger audience than handwritten news had in early Rome. Their format and appearance at regular intervals were two major influences on the newspaper as we know it today. The idea of a weekly, handwritten newssheet went from Italy to Germany and then to Holland.

The term newspaper became common in the 16th century. However, in Germany, publications that we would today consider to be newspaper publications, were appearing as early as the 16th century. They were discernibly newspapers for the following reasons: they were printed, dated, appeared at regular and frequent publication intervals, and included a variety of news items (unlike single item news mentioned above). The emergence of the new media branch was based on the spread of the printing press from which the publishing press derives it name. Historian Johannes Weber says, "At the same time, then, as the printing press in the physical, technological sense was invented, 'the press' in the extended sense of the word also entered the historical stage. The phenomenon of publishing was born. The German-language Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien, printed from 1605 onwards by Johann Carolus in Strasbourg, was the first newspaper.

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