History of American Journalism/Chapter 1

by James Melvin Lee

HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

The desire to hear or to know the new thing is as old as man. It was an instinct even of the most primitive people. Before the men of the Stone Age traded in the products of the soil or of the hand, they exchanged news. But the historian of journalism is interested primarily not in the news which is spoken, but in that which is written. He finds little to attract his attention until he reaches the invention of the written language. Triangular figures chiseled in stone and strange characters pricked on goatskin may give history, but not news. When the first written newspaper—for letters giving the news were sold and circulated long before the invention of the printing-press—appeared is not known. Some say it was in Rome; others assert it was in Venice. Recent investigators of the question have given the honor to China.

On one matter there has been no difference of opinion: in every country the printed has grown out of the written newspaper. Even after the invention of printing it was a comparatively long time before the printing-press was called upon to aid in the dissemination of news. A little thought on the subject will give the reason. Not until printed sheets could be produced cheaper or quicker—in actual practice both—than the written ones did the gatherer and seller of news forsake the latter for the former. Even then, the complete change was not made suddenly. Libraries and museums have in their archives combination sheets, half printed and half written. It was the custom at one time to leave one page free from printing in order that the latest news or freshest advices might be written in by hand.

Politics and finance have always been the two most important topics in Newspaperdom. There was no systematic collection or distribution of news until men had a political interest in the state, or were involved in financial transactions covering a fairly wide area of trade and transportation. In most countries both conditions were present before regular trade in news arose. The walled city required no newspaper: the tower watchman and the king's herald did the reporting. When, however, officials left the city to govern undefended towns, there must be devised some new method of publishing the official proclamations and of giving the gossip of the capital. When commercial houses began to import and export goods, maritime news had a cash value and might be sold.

ROMAN NEWS-LETTERS

By way of illustration, the Republic of Rome may be mentioned. As early as 449 B.C. official protocols of the transaction of the Senate were kept and deposited in the Temple of Ceres, in charge of the police commissioners (oediles). It was permissible to take notes or to have them taken and then to communicate these memoranda to others. When sent to the provincial governors, or tax-farmers, these notes, with their additions of local gossip, became news-letters. Their writers, in the early days of the Republic, were intelligent slaves: later, bonded freemen took up the work and sold their letters to any one who would pay the price. Signs of "courtesy to the press" began to appear about this time, for these news-writers could, upon the presentation of proper credentials, obtain admission to the meetings of the Senate. Wealthy Romans in the provinces continued to supplement these regular news-letters by special reports from their own correspondents, just as the modern newspaper may, in addition to the service of the Associated Press, have its own correspondents at strategic points to send in special items—or "stories" as they are called in the language of the newspaper office.

Antony, for example, was one of these men who kept in touch with the political situation and the financial condition in Rome by means of such news-epistles. In a way, he owned his own newspaper of a single edition, for the man who wrote these letters was not allowed to write to other officials. There were in the city, however, men who sent out two or more news-letters to patrons.

In the year 51 B.C., when Cicero left for Cilicia, his friend Caelius promised "to write a full and careful account" of all that went on in Rome. The latter, being "the laziest man in the world at writing letters," shifted the burden of his correspondence to the shoulders of one of these professional writers of news. Later, Cselius did find time to send this line: "If the news-letters do not give you what you want, let me know, for I do not want to spend my money only to bore you." Cicero's reply was, in modern phraseology, "Stop my paper!" He did not care for the sporting news of gladiatorial matches; he did not want the court news, chronicling the adjournment of trials; he did not read with interest, so he asserted, the news that wasn't fit to write—"such things as nobody ventured to tell" him when he was in Rome. What he desired was the political news of the city, and reports of occurrences where there was something especially affecting himself. In the last suggestion he gave to the professional journalist at Rome a tip which the modern school of journalism follows when it instructs its students to put names into the newspaper.

CAESARS AS JOURNALISTS

First place in Roman journalism, however, belongs to Julius Caesar, another friend of high-school days. One of his first acts after he became Consul in 60 B.C. was to issue a decree that the reports of the doings of the Senate should be daily written and published. Knowing the value of publicity, he hoped in this way to change the crooked politics of the time; at least, he was determined that no secret acts of the Senate should interfere with his plans. The result of Caesar's decree was the establishment of that precursor of the modern daily newspaper, Acta Diurna, or The Daily Acts. At first, this daily compilation was published on a whitened wooden board, called album (white). In other words, the Romans got their news in the Forum, much as we often get an epitome of the latest events by standing and watching the bulletin-boards of the modern newspaper.

The Daily Acts had a special department in which were recorded all the births and deaths of the city. It did not neglect financial news, for it recorded the receipt by the treasury of taxes from the provinces. Like the modern newspaper, it paid special attention to both civil and criminal courts and made a special feature of election news. Everything done by the Imperial family was chronicled faithfully. One other fact must be noticed in passing—both Julius and Augustus Caesar knew how to work the press. The former secured good display in The Daily Acts when he declined the title of king; and the latter promoted his attack on race suicide by inserting items about Romans who had large families. In addition to the bulletin-board edition of The Daily Acts there was a written one for circulation in the home. One Latin author mentioned a Roman lady reading her morning paper, and another said that he would wait at Thessaloniea for The Daily Acts. Seneca once boasted that his liberality was not "written up" in The Daily Acts. Based upon this edition was a still larger written newspaper sent to subscribers outside of Rome. The professional journalist took the items of The Daily Acts, gathered others of his own, and then, mounting a little platform in his shop, dictated the news to a dozen slaves who produced a written newspaper of twelve copies. The size of such an edition was limited only by the number of slaves employed.

ORIGIN OF SENSATIONAL JOURNALISM

The Daily Acts probably continued even after the capital had been moved from Rome to Constantinople. For fifteen centuries little advance was made in the written newspaper unless the ability to manufacture news might in some way be considered a development. The ability to invent news and to mix truth and falsehood became almost a profession (ars) in Rome, and was carried to such an extent that the church was forced to take drastic action. Papal bulls were issued against the writing of such news-letters, under penalties recorded in both temporal and ecclesiastical laws. In 1572 the saintly Pope Pius V threatened "death and confiscation of property," according to "the degree of the offense and the rank of the offender." His successor, Gregory XIII, a great educationist, issued another bull which, while leaving all former laws about the news-letters in full force, declared that writers of lettere d' avvisi should be sent "to the galleys, either for life or for a term, without hope of pardon."

THE WRITTEN NEWSPAPER

The written newspaper spread, chiefly by way of Venice, to other countries. Many fanciful tales are told about the contribution of Venice to journalism. The assertion has been made that that city also had its Daily Acts, for the privilege of seeing which a subscription price of a gazetta was asked, and that from this custom came the name so often applied to newspapers, The Gazette. But these rumors are doubtless highly colored, for this term did not come into general use until a much later date. Venice did have, however, the first press bureau, an organization which gathered and retailed news in a wholesale way. Its newsletters were far more timely in contents than those which had previously gone out from Rome.

By 1600, what might be called epistolary newspapers were appearing in Italy, in France, in Germany, and in England. It was in Germany that such sheets reached their highest development. France, however, led in the spoken newspaper. In Paris there were men who stood at street corners and told the gossip of the city. When they had finished, they passed around the hat. At night they met at a tavern where they swapped news-items gathered during the day.

THE SPOKEN NEWSPAPER

In the Swiss village of Champery the spoken newspaper still survives. Curiously enough, it is a Sunday edition. On that day, immediately after church, the villagers hear The Town Crier. Its editor, literally the publishing bailiff, appears on a balcony overhanging the street and announces the news to those on the village green. First of all, he gives the information about the decisions of the courts and announces the decrees both federal and cantonal. He speaks of the fines and penalties incurred by the citizens of the community and brings to public attention all the official decisions of the civil authorities. All citizens are expected to listen to this spoken newspaper, and no one can fall back, if he transgresses one of the published decrees, on the assertion that he was not present when The Town Crier announced the official decree.

The Town Crier of Champery has its spoken advertising department. Its publisher gives notice, by spoken word, of the public auctions of household goods, cattle, etc., as announced by the Office of Law and Bankruptcy. The Town Crier gives the news of mercantile houses, with the prices of the goods they are offering. It gives notice of lost and found articles and quotes the price paid by local establishments for farm products. In other words, it takes the place of a local printed newspaper, which, up to the present time, has never existed in Champery.

BIRTH OF ENGLISH JOURNALISM

In some respects the evolution of journalism in London was the same as that found in Rome. Men of wealth lived only four or five months in London and spent the rest of the year in the country. While away from the city, they wanted to know the doings of the court and the gossip of the coffee-houses. To keep themselves informed, they hired professional letter-writers who gathered the items and then forwarded the most important by special post. One of the best and hence busiest writers of such letters was one Thomas Archer. So excellent was his service that demand for his letters became larger than he could supply by his pen. To meet this demand he called the printing-press to his aid, and instead of posting items on irregular days of the week, he put them all in one letter, printed it, and mailed it by a certain post. Nathaniel Butter was the first regular publisher of this printed news-letter, The Weekly Newes, and posterity has called him rather than Archer the founder of the English newspaper press. There had been an occasional printed news-sheet or news-book before the appearance of The Weekly Newes, but to Nathaniel Butter belongs the honor of "printing all the news of the day upon a single sheet and publishing it regularly week by week upon fixed days and of giving it a distinctive title at a time when there was nothing that could with strictness be called a newspaper." Papers with dates prior to 1622, when The Weekly

HOGARTH'S HEADING OF JACOBITE'S JOURNAL
The English party organ was started with Henry Fielding as editor to support the House of Hanover after the Rebellion of 1745

Newes first appeared, have come to light from time to time, but they have all proved to be forgeries.

CONDITIONS IN CHINA

In the case of China, however, the change from the written to the printed sheet was abrupt. Chinese publishers wasted no time by printing from movable type, but jumped at once from the hand-written production to the impression from a wooden block. The news was written on a transparent sheet, pasted face downward on a wooden block, and then, save where the Chinese characters showed, the wood was chiseled away. The block was then inked, pressed upon a sheet of white paper, and lo, a printed newspaper!

By way of conclusion, it may be noted that the English term "newspaper" was first used, according to the best information obtainable, in the year 1670, when it appeared in a letter addressed to Charles Perrot, the second editor of The Oxford Gazette. The expression was found in the request, "I wanted your newes paper Monday last post."