The Moonspeaker:
Where Some Ideas Are Stranger Than Others...

Origins of the News (2026-01-05)

2021 photograph of an 1885 catalan painting of a newspaper seller, photographer not identified. Image via wikimedia commons.

Sometimes it is important to check on the origins of the various publications vaunted as "the media," especially the examples that seem especially broken. Hence I undertook some basic research to develop a better sense of the origins and development of the things we typically refer to as "newspapers" although they may not literally be printed on paper anymore. I had the definite sense that in the case of english-language papers, broadsheets were in the lineage somewhere, and had already learned that the origin of "yellow journalism" corresponds with the creation of what we now call tabloids. A very impressionistic sort of sketch, plus some information on seventeenth century manuscript sharing practices, which was very much an upper class phenomenon in england, where there was considerable pressure to avoid the appearance of doing anything others might perceive as "work." The thread tying together "newspapers" is of course the notion of "news" and reporting it to an interested group. Interest in "news" and a need or desire to share it is not "new" of course, and it was never dependent on having paper and ink. For a quick and easy proof from europe, a quick web search will soon reveal various online and paper published collections of roman graffiti, much of it devoted to politics, advertising, orders not to pee on that wall, and the inevitable silly and scurrilous stuff added by drunks and teenage boys. Among the most famous examples found in situ are in the former city of pompeii. Graffiti is not generally credited as an ancestral form or contributor to newspapers, especially since the romans had officially published notices called acta diurna. These began as announcements of public business, and apparently developed into something more like a modern day gossip column or tabloid later. Since I did not opt to dig into non-english language sources too much on this topic, I will continue following the european line here.

The loose consensus of reasonably solid online sources is that the earliest newspaper-like things were the roman acta diurna dating from roughly the first century, followed by gazettes of political and military happenings for the upper classes in sixteenth century venice. With the Gutenberg printing press spreading around europe through the 1600s, weekly papers rapidly followed alongside a burgeoning struggle over control of the printing presses and what their owners printed. It seems at first european governments were especially averse to the reproduction of what we would consider "daily news" and of course anything to with the growing controversies among christians about their religion. But even in these early days, these were not exactly the ubiquitous items on or offline of today. They were all subscription-based, including the early english "newsbook" which the british library traces from the early to mid 1600s. The creative commons licensed textbook chapter I read about this, Culture and Media: 4.1 History of Newspapers digs into the gradual shift in formats and introduction of illustrations to newspapers, as well as a shift in price and the role of subscriptions. It marks the advent of the penny press, which was the first substantially advertising supported, non-subscription, daily sort of newspaper. The penny press is the real ancestor of today's newspapers, and they established the degradation path we have now seen go even further in the online versions. The Flaneur's Alley blog includes a 2019 post Neal Gabler on The Troublesome Origins and History of Newspapers that provides some additional information on the specific role of entertainment as a goal of presenting "the news." Gabler quotes sociologist Robert E. Park from a 1927 publication, in which Park declared "[T]he reason we have newspapers at all in the modern sense of the term, is because about one hundred years ago, in 1835 to be exact, a few newspaper publishers in New York City and in London discovered (1) that most human beings, if they could read at all, found it easier to read news than editorial opinion and (2) that the common man would rather be entertained than edified." The blogger bolded this quote, and I agree it is important, but not for the reasons either Park, Gabler, or the blogger do.

Now, before the creation of the penny press, newspapers were subscription-based. A regular reader had to have enough income to subscribe directly to the paper, a subscription to a reading room or library with newspapers in their collection, work for one, or be part of a circle of people (yes, in those early days this would usually mean men) who paid for a subscription together. Such circles could include illiterate members, to whom the literate members could read articles aloud. Yes, poorer people did these things if they could manage it and found that following news of some sort in this manner made sense. The penny press began in a key era of industrial capitalism, when capitalists began to seek other means to extract from the wages they did pay to the working class than the company store or various fines. But how to tap into this massive population, and their meagre pocket money? Whatever the means, it couldn't cost much, and it couldn't prioritize a subscription model, because people in such precarious economic conditions would avoid any subscription like the plague. This was a social group presumed at best to be too exhausted for "editorials" and intolerant of articles written with the condescending idea of "bettering" them. More commonly, they were like sociologist Park, inclined to presume most people are simply too stupid to cope with any writing of substance. However, capitalists generally prefer the lowest classes not have too much ability to read or hear meatier stuff, that might help them do radical things like organize and win better wages and conditions. Better they be no more than entertained, and preferably repeatedly told how awful the world generally is, so they are encouraged to believe their lives could be worse. I can see why people would choose some cheap entertainment to help them through tough times, working poor or not. And it is true the competitive pressure of the penny press accidentally spurred the invention of investigative reporting, which is a genuine good all too necessary in the world.

Today it is quite easy to find multiple articles bemoaning the state of newspapers today, complaining that people refuse to pay for them, won't subscribe, and so on. I have written about this complaint before, so I won't say too much about that except to reiterate the point that most newspapers today emit outright trash that is so contemptuous of the reader it can't even entertain. Newspapers reflect assumptions about class, sex role stereotypes, and the social conditions their desired audience must cope with. Apparently a perennial common perception among newspaper management and owners is that their product must be somehow addictive for the potential buyers, nowadays not the readers so much as the advertisers.

Previous Thought Pieces