The Invention of News: How the World Came to Know About Itself

Since the Protestant Reformation these systems of pre-publication inspection of copy (more theoretical than practical) had been reinforced by brutal penalties for any who challenged the local orthodoxy. Printers knew they had to tread carefully. But it would be wrong to ascribe the overwhelmingly loyalist tone of the news pamphlets primarily to cen

With so much at stake there were inevitably those who would attempt to steal a march on their competitors. ‘If you engage in trade, and your letters arrive together with others,’ wrote Paolo da Certaldo in a merchants’ handbook of the mid-fourteenth century, always keep in mind to read yours first before passing on the others. And if your letters a

The printed news pamphlets of the sixteenth century were a milestone in the development of the news market, but they further complicated issues of truth and veracity. Competing for limited disposable cash among a less wealthy class of reader, the purveyors of the news pamphlets had a clear incentive to make these accounts as lively as possible. Thi

The Neue Zeitungen were comparatively brief texts, almost invariably continuous pieces of prose devoted to a single news report. This marks them out from the more varied digests of news presented in the merchant correspondence, or in the manuscript newsletters that would be the true ancestors of the newspaper.38 This prose structure did, however, a

as time went by, and the web of negotiation between contesting powers became more intricate, the need for informed assessment of the mood, strength and true intentions of potential allies became ever more acute. Ambassadors were instructed to write home on a regular basis. The art of diplomacy had spawned a whole new medium: political commentary. T

The birth of the newspaper did not immediately transform the news market. Indeed, for at least a hundred years newspapers struggled to find a place in what remained a multi-media business. The dawn of print did not suppress earlier forms of news transmission. Most people continued to receive much of their news by word of mouth. The transmission of

For half a century or more thereafter printers would follow a very conservative strategy, concentrating on publishing editions of the books most familiar from the medieval manuscript tradition.1 But in the sixteenth century they would also begin to open up new markets – and one of these was a market for news. News fitted ideally into the expanding

The broadsheets concentrated on the most arresting cases, such as the man who allegedly disguised himself as the Devil to commit his crimes.38 Cases like this shaded easily into the wider literature of sensational and supernatural events that were the stock in trade of the news broadsheets. Publishers and woodcut artists turned out a steady diet of

Couriers were expected to keep to strict timetables. In the 1420s couriers from Florence were expected to reach Rome in five or six days, Paris in twenty to twenty-two, Bruges in twenty-five and Seville, a journey of two thousand kilometres, in thirty-two days. The annotations on the letters exchanged between Andrea Barbarigo in Venice and correspo