Page:The Newspaper and the Historian.djvu/68

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tries.

founded the Gazette de France 25 and proclaimed , “ In one thing only will I yield to nobody - I mean my endeavour to get at the

truth . At the same time I do not always guarantee it, being con vinced that among five hundred despatches written in haste from all countries it is impossible to escape passing something from one correspondent to another which will require correction from Father Time."

Both here and in his discrimination between

history and the press — " History is the record of things accom plished. A Gazette is the reflection of feelings and rumours of the time which may or may not be true” - Renaudot showed himself

far in advance of his day and generation . The newspaper thus did not spring full armed from the head of

Zeus, but as far back as human history can be traced it had its beginnings in the various expedients that provided partial equivalents for gratifying a desire for news, as well as the early awakenings of a desire for an expression of public opinion . It has seemed important to note these antecedents of the modern news paper since many of its features have their lineage in these primitive types . King 's herald and town crier gave the news deemed essential that the public should know and they were the

crude prototypes of modern news-collecting and news-distribut ing agencies. The pasquinade seems the forerunner of the “ colyum .” The carbon and the paper of the nouvelliste were the ancestors of the modern illustrator. Thus from these modest

beginnings of the written news-letter, supplemented by the printed newspaper, has been developed the great metropolitan daily of to-day that may reach in size one hundred and fifty pages,

that may have a daily circulation of more than a million copies,26 that has on its pay -roll eighteen hundred or more persons,27 and

that has become one of the great industries of the world .28 This development of the newspaper has been largely made

the apeRoubaud, Rinaudot moet oncoise,1,03-reginning with

through the accretion of new interests. Beginning with the 25 E . Hatin , Histoire de la presse française, I, 63- 192, 463-472; J. Mac intyre, “ Théophraste Renaudot,” Nineteenth Century, October, 1893 , 34 : 596 -604 ; F . Roubaud, Théophraste Renaudot.

26 The average net daily sale of the London Daily Mail for the first half ooff April, 1921, was 1,365,256 . - F . A . McKenzie, The Mystery of the Daily Mail, p . 128 .

27 Elmer Davis, History of the New York Times, pp. 389, 411 -428. 28 Ib ., pp. 310 - 330 ; 370 -403.