The history of Newspaper (Essay Sample)

The history of Newspaper
Name
Institution
The history of Newspaper
A newspaper refers to a periodical publication that contains news, a wide range of informative articles and advertisements. Newspapers are usually printed daily, weekly or after every two weeks depending on the publication. Most newspaper companies print newspapers daily. Recently, due to advancements in technology, newspapers are also available online via the internet. This paper will give a history of the evolution of newspapers to date.
The history of newspapers can be traced five centuries back. The earliest form of newspaper in Renaissance Europe was handwritten and was used to communicate information about social issues, wars and economic issues among others. Germany was the first to produce a printed newspaper in late 1400’s in the form of broadsides or pamphlets. The content in these newspapers was highly sensitive such as the atrocities against the Germans perpetrated by Vlad Tsepes in Transylvania (Farrell & Cupito, 2010).
According to Mott (2000), in English speaking countries, the earliest forms of newspaper were known as corantos. These were small news pamphlets that were only produced after significant events. In 1622, The Weekly Newes became the first successfully published title followed by other similar publications but with different titles in the 1640’s and 1650’s. In 1666, London Gazette became the first English newspaper to be published.
In 1690, the first newspaper in America was published under the name Publick Occurrences. This newspaper had been published without authority which led to the arrest of the publisher and the confiscation of all copies. The first successful newspaper was published in 1704 by John Campbell was known as the Boston News-Letter. Despite having the support of the colonial government, this newspaper proved to be a near-failure given its limited circulation. By 1720, two more papers appeared in New York and Philadelphia. Newspapers played a very significant role in the American Revolutionary war (Mott, 2000). Revolutionary propagandists used newspapers as avenues to influence public opinion against England’s colonial rule.
By the end of the war, forty three printed newspapers were in circulation. Newspapers were central to the conception of an independent nation. In 1791, the bill of rights gave freedom to the press and newspapers took a fundamental role in national affairs. By 1814, the number of newspapers in America was 346. Technological advancements in the 1830’s contributed a massive growth in the newspaper industry. “Penny press” made it possible to publish newspaper that could sell for a cent for every copy. This changed the trend that had placed newspapers with the wealthy and literate minority in society.
More technological advancements in the industrial revolution led to the transformation of newspaper printing. The number of newspapers, as well as circulations continued to increase. According to Mott (2000), in 1850, the number of newspapers by title was 2,526. By this time, there were advanced printing presses that had the ability to print ten thousand newspapers within one hour. Pictorials were also introduced making news more interesting and illustrative.
Newspaper continued to grow in the post war years. In 1880, the number of papers had risen to a remarkable 11,314 titles. By the 1890’s, circulation figures reached a record of a million copies for every issue. After the end of the World War II, most of the features present in modern newspapers were incorporated. Examples include bold headlines, extensive use of pictures, coverage of sports and funny pages. By 1910’s, all the essential features of the modern paper had been incorporated (Mott, 2000).
With time, newspapers companies became larger especially with the increase of advertisements as an additional source of income. Technological development such as wire services which enabled journalists to gather news from around the globe and send them via telegraph transmission. This enabled newspaper companies to report world news through wire services companies (Farrell & Cupito, 2010). This connected the readers from all over the globe through newspapers. The transformations of the newspaper in terms of efficiency and technology have continued to date.
In the past two decades, the evolution of newspaper has increased at a very fast pace. Advanced teleco...