The Invention of the Newspaper

The Newspaper

                                  

  I would say it is safe to argue that a lot of the world, and most definitely anyone reading this, has picked up a newspaper at some point in their life. Whether it be to read what is going on in the world, to look for job postings, or just simply stop and see the comic strips; but at some point that newspaper was in your hand, even in todays world of technology and medias. Newspaper could be considered one of the greatest medias of all time, due to the impact and longevity of it. Johannes Gutenberg was the father of print, when he invented his printing press in 1440 he established himself as a very important and influential pioneer when essentially creating the world first newspaper. The printing press was comprised of small metal pieces with raised backwards letters, known as movable type, arranged in a frame, coated with ink, and applied to a piece of paper. He created it in Mainz Germany, in roughly 1440 and it took flight in 1450 after the printing of the Bible. From the on print work would continue to grow and evolve into what we know today.

HISTORY OF THE NEWSPAPER

• 1605 - The modern newspaper is born in the autumn on the position of the Holy Roman Empire (Strassburg)

• 1609 - The first weekly newspaper to employ Gutenberg's Printing Press emerges in Germany, and begins to change the way news is being read

• 1621 - For the first time a country other than Germany prints when England prints its first newspaper: "Corante or weekely newes from Italy, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Bohemia, France and the Low Countreys."

• 1641 - By this point in time, a newspaper was printed in almost every country in Europe as publication began to spread towards France, Italy, and Spain. Newspaper followed two formats at this point, the Dutch and the German. The Dutch consisted of a densely packed 2-4 page paper and the German consisted of an expansive 8-24 page paper. Newspapers began printing with the Dutch format, but as they grew, they switched to the German

• 1690 - Newspaper hits the American colonies on September 25th for the first time when Benjamin Harris printed "Public Occurrences: Both Forreign and Domestick." 

• 1791 - The nascent United States of America adopts the First Amendment into the Bill of Rights, essentially giving the people the power to print whatever they would like into the papers.

• 1798 - In response to the free use of words and right to press in the First Amendment that the American citizens have exploited, the government establishes The Sedition Act. The Sedition Act states that any writing, printing, uttering, or publishing of anything false, scandalous, or malicious against the United States government was punishable by fine and imprisonment. 

• 1833 - Newspapers are revolutionized with The Penny Press. In 1883, Benjamin Day creates The Sun, a newspaper in which he prints on small, letter sized pages, and sold them for only a penny.

• Late 1800's - Yellow Journalism is born, thanks to Joseph Pulitzer. Yellow journalism is a style of journalism that focuses the stories on things such as violence, crime, sex, and emotion. However these reports came to be known as inaccurate, misleading, and exaggerated in detail.

Impact of the Newspaper

   

The impact the newspaper had on the world can simply not be understated, as it revolutionized media and acted as a template for technology we still use to this day. When newspapers were first released upon the masses only the elite and upper class were able to read them because of how expensive they were, factors such as the amount of time it took to produce a single paper and the price to make them. Even until the early 1800s newspapers were still really only available to the elite being priced at six cents per copy, a price artisans and working class citizens could not afford. That is until the Penny Press revolutionized newspapers and essentially created mass media. The papers that were available for purchase for a penny as they were creating roughly 18,000 more copies per hour than the traditional press. This allowed anyone to be able to read the newspaper, connecting the world through news. It also ended up the creation of the freedom of press, which is still an ideal this country holds to this day, sorta...

    However, the newspaper is one of the most influential pieces of technology this world has ever seen. Without the creation of the printing press and then eventually the newspaper, the world would have needed to found a completely different way to get not only individual news, but world news in general. The technologies we have today and our fathers had before us are all due to the pioneering of the newspaper.