their organization for collecting news. Some of them, in fact, were almost exclusively news-sheets, and the journal d’informations—Le Matin or L’Éclair, for instance—took its place beside the journal properly so called, more perhaps as a rival than as a complement. The natural result followed, and the more old-type newspapers took steps to provide their readers with news as well as with leading articles, current and literary topics, society gossip, dramatic criticism and law reports. The most remarkable as well as perhaps the earliest attempt to enlarge the scope of Parisian newspapers was made in 1893 by Georges Patinot, editor of the Journal des Débats. Instead of one edition, that newspaper published two entirely distinct editions, a morning one and an evening one. After some time the plucky attempt had to be given up, and the Journal des Débats became an evening paper. The bold experiment made by the Journal des Débats (which celebrated its centenary in 1889) led the other newspapers to find a happy mean between a four-page paper published twice a day and an eight-page paper on the pattern of English newspapers, and the result was that now most great daily papers in Paris came out with six pages, the Figaro giving the lead. As French newspapers increased in size they reduced their price. Most six-page newspapers, with the exception of Le Figaro, were by 1902 sold at 5 centimes, and the price of 15 centimes, which used to be the rule, became the exception. In 1902 60 Paris papers (daily and weekly) were sold at 5 centimes and 51 at 10 centimes, whilst only 11 cost 15 centimes. In 1880 only 23 were 5-centime papers and 24 were 10-centime papers.
The American style of journalism came into vogue in Paris in the ’eighties, and “interviews” were frequent; but the general tendency of Parisian editors was to adopt the English compromise, and to eschew any extreme sensational methods. Most of the important Parisian newspapers had their special correspondents in the great capitals of Europe, London, Berlin, St Petersburg, Vienna and Rome. Nothing perhaps was so striking after 1890 as the demand of the French public for foreign and colonial news, or the readiness of the papers to supply it by means of special representatives independent of the news agencies.
In home matters the French press made greater progress still in the rapid and accurate collection of news, and in this respect the provincial press showed more enterprise and more ability than that of Paris. Its development was remarkable, for whereas in 1880 the inhabitants of the departments had to await the arrival of the Parisian papers for their news, they now had the advantage of being supplied every morning with local newspapers inferior to none of the best organs of Paris. Among the best provincial papers may be mentioned La Gironde and La Petite Gironde of Bordeaux, La Dépêche of Toulouse, Le Lyon Républicain, L’Écho du Nord of Lille, Le Journal de Rouen, all having a staff in Paris engaged in collecting news, reporting parliamentary proceedings and law cases, telegraphed or telephoned during the night and published early the next morning in their respective localities. Being perfectly independent of purely Parisian opinion or even bias, the decentralization of the French provincial press became complete. The newspapers of the large towns circulated not only in the city in which they were printed but throughout the region of which it was the centre. Thus the Dépêche of Toulouse, with its twelve editions daily, was read in the whole of the departments extending from the Lot to the Pyrenees, whilst the Petite Gironde was found in all south-western France. The influence of the provincial, as of the Paris, press became so great that, as M. Avenel says in his book on the French press, there came a tendency to resent its omnipotence. The power of the newspaper in France differs from that of the English newspaper, in that it seems to act more on the government and the parliament than on public opinion. The French newspapers have taken upon themselves, in many cases, functions which belong more properly to the legislative or to the judicial power than to the press, and the result has not always been successful. The cause of this is that too many men of talent with political ambition look upon journalism as “leading to everything, provided one gets out of it.” and use it alternately as an antechamber of parliament or of the cabinet, and a lounge during their parliamentary or ministerial eclipses.
See generally Hatin, Histoire de la Presse en France (8 vols., 1860–1861); Gallois, Histoire des Journaux et Journalistes de la Révolution (2 vols.); “Journalism in France,” Quarterly Review, lxv. 422-468 (March, 1840); Henri Avenel, La Presse française au vingtième siècle (Paris, 1901).
5. Newspapers of Germany
Printed newspapers in Germany begin with the Frankfurter Journal, established in 1615 by Egenolph Emmel, a bookseller of Frankfort-on-Main. The following year saw the foundation of the Frankfurter Oberpostamtszeitung—continued until the year 1866 as Frankfurter Postzeitung. Fulda appears to have been the next German town to possess a newspaper, then Hildesheim (1619) and Herford (1630). In the course of the century almost all German cities of the first rank possessed their respective journals. The earliest in Leipzig bears the date 1660. The Rostocker Zeitung was founded in 1710. The Hamburgischer Correspondent (1714) was originally published under the name of Holsteinische Zeitungs-Correspondenz, two years earlier, and was almost the only German newspaper which really drew its foreign news from “our own correspondent.” Berlin had in the 18th century two papers, those of Voss (the Vossische Zeitung, 1722) and of J. K. P. Spener (1749–1827; the Spener’sche Zeitung, or Berlinische Nachrichten, 1772). Some half-dozen papers which glimmered in the surrounding darkness were the reservoirs whence the rest replenished their little lamps. On the whole, it may be said that the German newspapers were of very small account until after the outbreak of the French Revolution. Meanwhile the MS. news-letters, as in earlier days, continued to enjoy a large circulation in Germany. Many came from London. The correspondence, for instance, known under the name of “Mary Pinearis”—that, apparently, of a French refugee settled in London—had a great German circulation between 1725 and 1735. Another series was edited by the Cologne gazetteer, Jean Ignace de Rodérique, also a French refugee, and remembered as the subject of a characteristic despatch from Frederick II. of Prussia to his envoy in that city, enclosing 100 ducats to be expended in hiring a stout fellow with a cudgel to give a beating to the gazetteer as the punishment of an offensive paragraph.[1] The money, it seems, was earned, for Rodérique was well-nigh killed. At Berlin itself, Franz Hermann Ortgies carried on a brisk trade in these news-letters (1728–1735), until he too came under displeasure on account of them, was kept in prison several months, and then exiled for life.[2] Nor, indeed, can any journal of a high order be mentioned of prior appearance to the Allgemeine Zeitung, founded at Leipzig by the bookseller Cotta (at first under the title of Neueste Weltkunde) in 1798. Posselt was its first editor, but his want of nerve—and perhaps his weak health—hindered the application of his high powers to political journalism. His articles, too, gave offence to the Austrian court, and the paper had to change both its title and its place of publication. It had been commenced at Tübingen, and removed to Stuttgart; it was now transferred to Ulm, and again to Augsburg. It was Cotta’s aim to make this the organ of statesmen and publicists, to reach the public through the thinkers, to hold an even balance between the rival parties of the day, and to provide a trustworthy magazine of materials for the historians to come; and, in the course of time, his plan was so worked out as to raise the Allgemeine Zeitung into European fame. Cotta was also the founder, at various periods, of the Morgenblatt, which became famous for its critical ability and tact, of Vesperus, of Das Inland, of Nemesis, of the Oppositionsblatt of Weimar (for a time edited by Bertuch), and even of the Archives Parisiennes.
Whilst French influence was dominant in Germany, the German papers were naturally little more than echoes of the Parisian press. But amidst the excitements of the “war of
