Newspaper

B

3

Distribution

The circulation department supervises the distribution of the newspaper. Most newspapers offer home delivery. Trucks carry freshly printed papers to regional distribution centers. Newspaper carriers pick up bundles of newspapers from the distribution center, then deliver them to the homes of paying subscribers along a predetermined route. In other cases, distribution trucks deliver bundles of newspapers directly to the carriers. Carriers are paid based on the number of papers they deliver. In some areas, especially small cities and rural areas, mostly middle and high school students deliver papers, often on foot or via bicycle. In large cities, paper carriers are usually adults, who travel their routes by car so they can deliver more papers per day.

Trucks deliver newspapers to newsstands and newspaper dispensing machines located in areas where people congregate, such as airports, bus stations, and train stations. Newsstands and newspaper dispensing machines also dot the street corners of medium- and large-sized cities. Many retail outlets, such as grocery stores and coffee shops, also offer newspapers for sale. The big, catchy headlines on a newspaper’s front page serve to catch the attention of passersby in these and other public venues.

Circulation managers try to increase the number of people who buy the paper because newspapers depend on selling copies of the paper for more than 30 percent of their revenue. They may sponsor special promotional prices for subscription or give away copies of the paper to attract new readers.

IV

Origins of Newspapers

Before the invention of printing machines, people spread news by word of mouth, written letters, or public notices. As more people learned to read and write, news reports gained added reliability. Ancient Rome had a particularly sophisticated system for circulating written news. Its publishing practices centered on acta diurna (daily events), handwritten news sheets posted by the government in the public marketplace from the year 59 bc to at least ad 222. Acta diurna announced news of politics, trials, scandals, military campaigns, and executions. In China, early government-produced news sheets, called tipao, circulated among court officials during the Han dynasty (202 bc-ad 220). At some point during the Tang dynasty (618-907), the Chinese used carved wooden blocks to print tipao, making them the first printed newspapers in history.

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A printing press that employed movable type was developed in Europe in 1450, and European officials soon began using it to publish news (see Printing). Short pamphlets, called news books, informed the public of royal weddings, victorious battles, or other newsworthy events. News ballads recounted news events in verse form. News books and news ballads were circulated sporadically in Europe and the American colonies, usually when officials wanted to inform the public of important events.

V

The First Newspapers

Newspapers published under the same name on a regular schedule first appeared in Venice, Italy, in the 16th century. Handwritten newspapers called avisi, or gazettes, appeared weekly as early as 1566. They reported news brought to Venice by traders, such as accounts of wars and politics in other parts of Italy and Europe. Venetian gazettes established a style of journalism that most early printed newspapers followed—short sets of news items written under the name of the city they came from and the date on which they were sent. The oldest surviving copies of European newspapers are of two weeklies published in German in 1609—one in Strassburg (now Strasbourg, France) by Johann Carolus, the other in Wolfenbüttel, Germany, by Lucas Schulte.

Newspapers spread rapidly throughout Europe. One-page weeklies appeared in Basel, Switzerland, by 1610; in Frankfurt, Germany, and Vienna, Austria, by 1615; in Hamburg, Germany, by 1616; in Berlin, Germany, by 1617; and in Amsterdam, Netherlands, by 1618. The first newspaper printed in England appeared in 1621, and France produced a newspaper in 1631. However, printers in Amsterdam, a center of trade and of political and religious tolerance in the early 17th century, exported weeklies in French and in English as early as 1620. The first continuously published English newspaper was the Weekly News, published from 1622 to 1641. Italy's first printed weekly appeared by 1639, and Spain had one by 1641.

Early English newspapers were generally printed in one of two formats: in the style of the Dutch papers or in the style of the early German weeklies. Dutch-style papers compressed news stories onto four or fewer pages, while news in German-style weeklies covered up to 24 pages. English publishers first used the Dutch style but switched to the German style by 1622.

English newspapers were among the first in the world to use headlines to attract readers and woodcuts to illustrate stories. English newspapers also set new business standards. They hired women as reporters, printed advertisements as a source of revenue, and paid newsboys, or more commonly, newsgirls, to sell papers in the streets.

The fledgling English press faced censorship throughout much of the 17th century. Early newspapers called diurnals—the predecessors of today’s dailies—featured news from all over Europe and occasionally America or Asia. However, government officials discouraged reporting on local matters. In addition, the government tightly regulated print shops. In England, as in most other European countries, the government required printers to have licenses to print the news. Printers could lose their licenses if they published anything offensive to authorities.

The first major change in this arrangement came in the years before the outbreak of the English Civil War (1642-1648). As Parliament, under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell, struggled with King Charles I, national news assumed a new importance. Newspapers, liberated by the breakdown in the king's authority, began to feel free enough to discuss domestic politics. The first English newspaper to attempt to report on national news was the Heads of Several Proceedings in This Present Parliament, a weekly that appeared in 1641. The public’s appetite for domestic news grew steadily, and soon a number of papers covered national politics and other previously censored topics. In 1644 writer John Milton articulated the ideal of freedom of the press with great eloquence in his essay Areopagitica. However, when Oliver Cromwell consolidated his power after Charles I was beheaded in 1649, he cracked down on the press. He allowed only a few authorized newspapers to be printed.

After the monarchy was restored under King Charles II in 1660, the government gradually ended licensing provisions and other restrictions. The English press published in an atmosphere of considerable freedom—as long as it did not criticize the government. During the upheaval of the Glorious Revolution in 1688 (when Parliament deposed King James II in favor of William of Orange), the English press burst free of nearly all government restrictions. The law that required printers to obtain licenses lapsed in 1695. Belief in the right of the press to question and criticize government eventually took hold in England and migrated to its American colonies.

VI

The Newspaper in the United States

The first newspaper published in the American colonies, Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick, launched in 1690 in Boston, Massachusetts. The colonial government suppressed its publication after just one issue. Fourteen years passed before another newspaper was published in the colonies.

A

Colonial Papers

The Boston News-Letter, established in 1704 by John Campbell, became the first regularly published colonial newspaper. The paper contained financial and foreign news from English newspapers and recorded local births, deaths, and social events. It rarely challenged colonial authority because the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony retained the right to censor any of its contents.

The New-England Courant, first printed in 1721 by James Franklin, introduced coverage of political debate in its first issue. The paper presented the controversy surrounding smallpox inoculations, which were used for the first time in Boston that year to fight an epidemic. Cotton Mather, a prominent Congregational minister and scholar, supported inoculation; Franklin did not.

The next year, the Courant took on the colonial government, accusing it of failing to do enough to protect the area from pirates. This crusade landed Franklin in jail. Later a court decreed that Franklin be forbidden to print or publish the Courant. To evade this order, Franklin appointed his younger brother Benjamin, then his apprentice, the paper's official publisher. Benjamin Franklin made the most of this opportunity, publishing humorous social commentary under the pen name Silence Dogwood along with reports on political events. He continued to learn the trades of printer and publisher, and in 1729 he took control of the Pennsylvania Gazette in Philadelphia.

The first New York City newspaper, the Gazette, was founded by William Bradford in 1725. Several others followed, including the New York Weekly Journal, edited by the German-American printer John Peter Zenger. When Zenger published criticism of the British colonial governor of New York and his administration, he was arrested on charges of seditious libel. Zenger was tried and found not guilty. The trial of John Peter Zenger created an important precedent for the establishment of a free press in America.

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