Can you guess how long the history of newspapers and magazines is? Yes, you have hit the bull’s eye. That was roughly two thousand years ago. Although the printing press itself was not discovered until Middle Ages, newspapers, or their predecessors were known as early as in the 2nd century BC. It was a long way for the newspapers to get the form they have today. What events did they write about? How did they develop?
News only for the chosen ones
According to some sources, the Chinese were the first nation to start the information ‘service’. However, the newspaper called Ti-pao was not mean to be read by lesser mortals. It was only distributed to the rich class. With a few exceptions, it easy true until Middle Ages. The News service was a business of a ruling class, aristocracy and army dignitaries. It was also related to the fact that the rest of the population was illiterate – most people were not able to read or write.
Progressive Romans
The ancient Romans were keen to keep the citizens informed, so in 59 BC, they brought the first periodical newspaper in Europe. It was due to the Emperor Gaius Julius Caesar who ordered to publish reports of the senate sessions. The first wall newspaper Acta Senatus, hung at the entrance to the Senate building, three times a month.
Later, the first “daily newspaper” Acta diurnal populi Romani (Daily News for Roman People) was published. It informed the inhabitants on what was happening in the country and in the imperial court. It is assumed that its later shortened title “diurnal” formed the basis of the words giornale, or journal.
Did you know that …?
The newspaper Acta diurnal had the longest history of any antient and modern newspapers – they had been published continuously for 400 years.
A Newspaper written by hand
Newspaper flyers or flyer newspapers written by hand are considered to be an immediate predecessor of newspapers. In 1566, a political newspaper, or gazette (avisi) started to come out in Venice, Italy. It reported on social events and military conflicts. Flyer newspapers consisted of several reports, whereas newspaper flyers contained only one news item.
Letterpress helped newspaper development
Did Johannes Gutenberg have any idea of how important his invention was to the mankind? It happened between 1440 and 1450 and marked a huge breakthrough in the way of human communication. It was a fundamental assumption for printed information and books to become the most massive and accessible matter. Most important was that the letterpress engendered the development of education.
Did you know that…?
Guttenberg’s printing press could print as many as 4,000 pages a day. That was exactly a thousand times more than writing them by hand.
The first newspapers in Europe and America
The first weekly newspaper dates back to the beginning of the 17th century. Most newspapers that time were published in German. The place of their origin is hard to determine, as it had never been listed due to political persecutions. However, they quickly gained popularity and spread across the whole Europe.
The first newspapers started to be sold in Basel, Frankfurt, Vienna, Hamburg, Berlin and Amsterdam. In England, the first newspaper named Corante was printed in 1621 and by 1641 there was a newspaper in almost every European country. In America, the first newspaper did not appear until the end of the 17th century.
At that time, two forms of newspapers took hold. The first one was the Dutch corante type, which consisted of two to four pages densely packed with news. The second one was the German pamphlet, which had 8 to 24 pages. Although at the beginning, newspapers were mostly published in the corante type, as the demand for current news grew, a lot of printers switched to the larger German format.
The first Slovak newspaper
The Latin newspaper Mercurius Hungaricus (1705) is the oldest newspaper in Slovakia. It was published irregularly and printed in Levoča and Bardejov. The first Slovak weekly newspaper in Hungary, Nova Posoniensia, founded by Mtej Bel in 1721, was also published in Latin.
In the middle of the 19th century, the first German newspaper in Slovakia, Pressburger Zeitung, started to be published. It was Ľudovít Štúr who founded the first Slovak newspaper, Slovenskje národňje novini, in 1845. It was published with a biweekly literary supplement, Orol tatránski.
The Era of the first magazines
In the 17th century, when the printing technology got establihed in Europe, the predecessors of today’s magazines started to emerge. First, they had the form of various irregularly published brochures and almanacs. However, the publishers soon found out that they had steady readers with particular interests. In 1663, the first literary journal was founded in Germany. It was followed by others. All of them reflected a great interest in education of the time.
At the end of the 17th century, the first entertainment periodical, was also founded in France. It contained news, short stories and poems. This form of providing information found its loyal readers. It gave rise to a press that resembles today’s magazines. They didn’t focus on education, but on entertainment. A well-known magazine, the Review, started to be published in England, edited by Daniel Defoe, author of the famous novel Robinson Crusoe.
The oldest Slovak magazine, which was published for only four months, is Noviny o Rolnm a Polnim Hospodářství (Newspaper on Farming and Agriculture) from 1783. However, Hurban’s Slovenskje pohladi na vedi, umeňja a literatury (Slovak Views on Science, Art and Literature) from 1846 claim the first place. It is still published today and is the second oldest literary magazine in Europe.
Tabloid versus serious newspaper
Even at the beginning of the 19th century, printing was still quite expensive. As a copy cost around 6 cents, only the well-off could afford it. Everything changed in 1833 when Benjamin Day founded The New York Sun. He used a steam-powered printing press that could produce up to 18 thousand copies per hour. What’s more, it was printed on small letter-sized pages and had ridiculously low price – one penny. The newspaper was not only cheap, but it was also easy to leaf through and it became a widely available consumer item.
The advent of a smaller format (tabloid in English journalism) is related to the development of tabloid journalism, which created a counterpoint to newspapers delivering serious reports. Intellectual periodicals were published on large broadsheets. Today, however, a lot of opinion-forming media have switched to a smaller format.
Did you know that…?
The end of the 19th century was marked by the era of so-called yellow journalism in America. Using sensation-seeking articles and popular cartoon stories of a yellow character (The Yellow Kid), tabloid magnate William Randolph Hearst’s tabloid Journal and Pulitzer Prize-winning tabloid New York World battled for the favor of readers.
Photos and colours
In 1848, the world’s first photograph also appeared in a newspaper – it was the French weekly L’Illustration. The image depicted street barricades in Paris during a strike for workers’ rights. Of course, the photograph was still in the form of a graphic engraving made in a printing press. Until then, images had to be redrawn in the form of so-called xylographs. They were later replaced by the halftone technique, which was also used to print the first photograph in the New York Daily Graphic.
Photojournalism took on a modern form thanks to more modern technology and cameras. For a change, readers could see the first colour photo in December 1855 in the British newspaper The Illustrated London News. This newspaper also became the world’s first illustrated periodical.
Today’s newspapers and magazines
Today’s newspapers and magazines use modern offset printing technology to produce unlimited number of high-quality copies at a low cost. However, periodicals are fighting for the favour of readers not only among themselves, but also with digital media which have taken the media world by storm in recent years
Printed products are still inimitable for many people. The possibility to grab a magazine and to leaf through it will never be replaced by a screen. In addition to the traditional editions, today’s daily, weekly and monthly periodicals have a number of specialized supplements that focus on a particular topic. In daily periodicals, extra pages on health, school issues, finance, real estate, holiday or lections can be found. Weekly and monthly periodicals tend to contain extra pages on cooking, gardening or seasonal topics.
Special lifestyle supplements, which are not sold separately, have become popular in recent years. They are inserted into specific editions of the newspaper in the form of a several-page colour magazine. They are often weekend specials. In this way, publishers try to offer the readers of opinion-forming periodicals lighter or more detailed topics.
