-
Skip These Ads
-
Skip These Ads|
|
 |
Click here and add this page to your favorites!
|
Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: NAN-NEW |
|
|
NEWSPAPERS . The word " newspaper," as now employed, covers so wide a field that it is difficult, if not impossible, to give it a precise definition. By the English " Newspaper Libel and Registration Act " of 1881 it is defined as " any paper containing public news, intelligence or occurrences, or any remarks or observations therein printed for sale, and published periodically or in parts or numbers at intervals not exceeding twenty-six days "; and the British Post Office defines a newspaper as " any publication "to summarize the wording" printed and published in numbers at intervals of not more than seven days, consisting wholly or in part of political or other news, or of articles relating thereto or to other current topics, with or without advertisements." In ordinary practice, the " newspapers," as distinguished from other periodicals
For the laws regulating the conduct and contents of newspapers see PRESS LAws and allied articles. The two real essentials of a " newspaper " are that it contains " news," and is issued at regular intervals. But the course of history has involved considerable changes both in the mode of issue and in the conception of what " news " is. For purposes of modern usage we have to distinguish historically between the product of a printing-press which is manifolded by that means, and a mere manuscript sheet which is only capable of being copied by hand. " News" again varies both according to the appetite and according to its method of collection and presentation. A distinction ought perhaps to be made between literary and pictorial news, but this is almost impossible in practice. 1. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS So far as very early forms of what we now recognize as corresponding to a " newspaper " are concerned, involving public reports of news, the Roman Ada Diurna and the Chinese Peking Gazette may be mentioned here, if only on account of their historical interest. The Ada Diurna (" Daily Events ") in ancient Rome (lasting to the fall of the Western Empire), were short announcements containing official intelligence of battles, elections, games, fires, religious rites, &c., and were compiled by the actuarii officers appointed for the purpose; they were kept as public records, and were also posted up in the forum or other places in Rome, and were sometimes copied for despatch to the provinces. Juvenal speaks of a Roman lady passing her morning in reading the paper, so that it appears that private copies were in vogue. In China the Peking Gazelle, as foreigners call it, containing imperial rescripts and official news, has appeared regularly ever since the days of the Tang dynasty (A.D. 618-905). Even older than it, as is alleged, is the monthly Peking News (Tsing-Pao)now in appearance an octavo book of 24 pages in a yellow coverwhich, according to M. Huart, French Consul at Canton, was founded early in the 6th century. But it is not of any real moment to do more than refer to such publications as these, which have little in common with the ideas of Western civilization. The -" newspaper " in its modern acceptation can only be properly dated from the time when in Western Europe the invention of printing made a multiplication of copies a commercial possibility in any satisfactory sense. On the point of terminology, Mr J. B. W. Williams, in his History of English Journalism to the Foundation of the Gazette (1908), the first scholarly account of the early evolution of the Press in England, describes the Oxford Gazette of 1665 (the original of the London Gazette) as the first English " newspaper " in the precise sense, i.e. a " paper " of news;' for it was a half-sheet in folio, two pages, and not a " pamphlet " as previous periodicals
1 For the earliest known use of the term " newspaper " he cites a letter in 1670 to Charles Perrot, second editor of the Gazette: " I wanted your newes paper Monday last past."unbound sheets of paper folded in quarto, and these earlier periodicals were called " news books." The term " news sheet," again, had implied, up to that time, a written letter of newsa " newsletter " as it came afterwards to be called. But it is hardly necessary to insist here on the distinction between a " news book " and a " newspaper," interesting as it is to note that the English inclusion of newspapers among " books " for the purpose of the law of copyright is strictly justified by the original nomenclature. The " newsbook " made what is for modern purposes the essential advance upon either the written " newsletter " or the isolated printed announcement of some event, in being both printed and also issued in a series at regular and continuous intervals. Yet both these forms of publication were in the direct ancestry of the newspaper. The writing of " letters of news " or "letters of intelligence" was a regular profession before the printed newspaper was introduced, and lasted as such for some time afterwards, having indeed the advantage of being outside the necessity of obtaining a licence, which hampered the printed publication; and the profession of " scrivener " naturally suggested that of the later type of journalist. Of what used, again, to be called a " relation," i.e. a statement of an isolated piece of news, there are various printed examples as early as during the latter part of the 15th century. For instance, an official manifesto of Archbishop Dietrich of Cologne was printed at Mainz in 1462. A French pamphlet giving an account of the surrender of Granada to Ferdinand and Isabella" le premier jour de janvier dernierement passe "appeared in 1492. Precisely at what point, and in what instance, it can be said that a continuous series of news-pamphlets started, which can therefore be called the earliest newspaper, is hard to decide, upon the materials now available. But it was on the continent of Europe, and not in England; and probably in the Nether-lands. We have, for instance, pamphlets in the British Museum, which contain news-items and suggest periodical publication, though they are not actually known to form copies of a regular series. A Newe Zeytung; Die Schlact des turkischen Keysers, &c., dates from 1526; another Newe Zeytung, still more varied in its contents, contains a letter from Winchester dated July 24, 1554. In Germany alone about 800 examples of such news-pamphlets dating earlier than 1610 are known. The effect of the Cologne Mercurius Gallobelgicus (1594) on English purveyors of " relations " is dealt with below (under United Kingdom); but this was rather a book than a newspaper. The earliest plainly periodical publication containing " news of the day " was, how-ever, the German Frankfurter Journal, a weekly started by Egenolph Emmel in 1615. The Antwerp Nieuwe Tijdinghen followed in 1616; and in 1622 the history of English newspapers begins with the Weekly Newes published in London by Archer and Bourne. From this point we are on firmer ground, and the evolution of the modern Press in the different countries, as traced below, can be continuously followed. It is worth noting that a link in the history of journalism with the Roman Acta Diurna is provided by the Venetian government written gazelti (from which comes our " gazette ") of the 16th century, official bulletins or leaflets dealing with public affairs, which were avowedly based on the ancient Roman model. Italy indeed originated not only the title " gazette " (probably derived from the Gr. ya4"a, i.e. treasury of news), but also that of " coranto " (Fr. courant; also early anglicized as " current," i.e. a " running " relation), both of which are familiar in the history of the English and foreign Press. The art and business of journalism, as now understoodtaking " journalism " here in the sense of the production of the literary contents of a newspaper, and not the production and distribution of the printed sheet itselfis a /omur.na/-combination of the mere recording or reporting of news and of its presentation in such a way, and with such comment, as to influence the minds of readers in some particular direction. The history of the " leading article " as a great factor in the shaping of public opinion begins with Swift, Defoe, Bolingbroke and Pulteney, in the many English newspapers, from the Review and the Examiner to the Craftsman, by which was waged the keen political strife of the years 1704-1740. There is no counter-part to it in France until the Revolution of 1789, nor in Germany until 1796 or 1798. It was a Frenchman who wrote" Suffer yourself to be blamed, imprisoned, condemned; suffer yourself even to be hanged; but publish your opinions. It is not a right; it is a duty." It was in England that the course so pithily described was actually taken, in the face of fine, imprisonment and pillory, at a time when in France the public had to depend upon foreign journals illicitly circulated, when its own chief writers resorted to clandestine presses, to paltry disguises, and to very poor subterfuges to escape the responsibilities of avowed authorship, and when in Germany there was no political publicity worthy to be named. When the Mercure de France (1672), after a long period of mediocrity, came into the hands of men of large intellectual faculty, they had the most cogent reasons for exerting their powers upon topics of literature rather than upon themes of politics. True political journalism dates in France only from the French Revolution (see, for instance, MALLET D11 PAN), and it then had a very brief existence. It occupied a cluster of writers, some of whom left an enduring mark upon French literature. A term of high aspiration was followed quickly by a much longer term of frantic licence and of literary infamy. Then came the long rule of a despotic censorship; and cycles of licence followed by cycles of repression. In 187o indeed the democratic government at Bordeaux issued against journals of high aims and of unspotted integrity, but opposed to its pretensions, edicts as arbitrary as the worst acts in that kind of Napoleon I., and unparalleled in the whole course of the government of Napoleon III. In all the other countries of Europe political journalism, in any characteristic sense, was the creation of the 19th centurysomewhat earlier in the century in northern Europe, somewhat later in southern. The Ordinarie Post-Tidende of Stockholm dates indeed from 1643, but until recent times it was a mere news letter. Denmark had no sort of journal worth remark until the foundation in 1749 of the Berlingske Tidende, and that too attained to no political rank. The Gazette (Viedomosti) of St Petersburgthe patriarch of Russian newspapersdating from the 16th of December 1702, is a government organ, and nearly synchronizes with the Boston News-Letter (1704), the first. successful attempt at a newspaper in the British colonies in America. Journalism in Italy begins with the Diario di Roma in 1716, but in politics the Italian press remained a nullity for all practical purposes until nearly the middle of the 19th century, when the newspapers of Sardinia, at the impulse of Cavour, began to foreshadow the approach of the influential Italian press of a later day. In Spain no rudiments of a newspaper press can be found until the 18th century; the Gaceta de Madrid started about 1726. As late as in 1826 an inquisitive American traveller recorded his inability to lay his hands, during his Peninsular tour, upon more than two Spanish newspapers. While originally the newspaper depended entirely on its own reporters and correspondents for news, and still largely does so, the widening of the field of modern journalism is largely due to collective enterprise, by which outside organizations known as " news agencies " send a common service of news to all papers which arrange to take it. The first of the great collecting and distributing news agencies, Reuter's Agency, was founded by Julius Reuter, a Prussian government-messenger, who was impressed by the common interest roused by the revolutionary movements of 1848. In 1849 he established a news-transmitting agency in Paris, with all the appliances that were then available. Between Brussels and Aix-la-Chapelle he formed a pigeon-service, connecting it with Paris and with Berlin by telegraph. As the wires extended, he quickly followed them with agency-offices in many parts of the continent. He then went to London, where his progress was for a moment held in check. Mr Walter of The Times listened very courteously to his proposals, but (on that first occasion) ended their interview by saying, " We generally find that we can do our own business better than anybody else can." He went to the office of the Morning Advertiser, which had then the next largest circulation to that XIx. 18of The Times, and had better success. He entered into an agreement with that and afterwards with other London journals, including The Times, and also with many commercial corporations and firms. The newspapers, of course, continued to employ their own organizations and to extend them, but they found great advantage in the use of Reuter's telegrams as supplementary. Within a few years the business is said to have yielded the founder some 25,000 a year, and in 1865 it was transferred to a limited company. In later years this type of news-agency operating all over the world was repeated by others, and also by agencies operating mainly or exclusively only in one country. It is no longer possible nowadays to confine the meaning of " journalism " merely to the work of those who write for the Press. Properly it may be said to include the whole intellectual work comprised in the production of a newspaper; and although the designation of " journalist " is generally applied only to editors and to writers, and would not be extended at all to the purely mechanical staffthe compositors, foundry-men and machinistsnor even to the proof-readers, whose sphere is analogous rather to the sub-editorial than to the mechanical departments, the modern tendency has nevertheless been, not only to install mere reporting (q.v.) in a place of high importance, but to give increased weight in journalism to those who occupy what may be called the " managerial " offices, the business side of making a paper pay having itself developed into an art on its own account. To be a great " journalist " was once, but is hardly now, the same as being a great " publicist." The publicist proper is he who delivers his views on public affairs in the Press; but the excellence of his articles may nevertheless be consistent with the journal being a disastrous failure, and his reputation as a journalist is then but poor. The great journalist is he who makes the paper with which he is connected a success; and in days of competition the elements necessary for obtaining and keeping a hold on the public are so diverse, and the factors bearing on the financial success, the business side, of the paper are so many, that the organization of victory frequently depends on other considerations than those of its intrinsic literary excellence or sagacity of opinion, even if it cannot be wholly independent of these. The modern newspaper, moreover, depends for its financial success no longer primarily on its receipts from circulation, but on its receipts from advertisements; and though these can only ultimately be secured on the basis of circulation (the number of people who buy and read the paper), the establishment of the paper as the organ of a large body of readers for whose custom it is desirable to advertise often involves other capacities than those of the great publicist; and even in so far as the circulation depends on the attractiveness of its " news," the direction given to the supply of news may be managerial rather than editorial. Thus, in the division of labour, the editorial functions, formerly supreme and all-embracing, because the excellence of the contents of the paper made its success, have gradually, by a fissiparous process, yielded some of their authority to the managerial functions, and these have grown into an in-dependence whichsince editorial possibilities ultimately depend on financial resourceshas given increased importance in journalism to the business side. It must suffice here to say therefore that the work of journalism may be broadly divided into its editorial and managerial sides. And apart from exceptional cases of a working proprietor who is both editor and manager, or of a managing-editor, or of a great manager who exercises editorial functions, or a great editor who exercises managerial functions, the ordinary course is to keep them fairly distinct. The managerial side involves the business work of a paper, including the obtaining of advertisements and all the operations directly connected with producing it and making it pay as a commercial enterprise. The editorial side is engagedhowever much managerial exigencies may dictate its policyin providing the " reading matter " which forms its contents, other than such as is of the nature of advertising. The editorial staff includes editors and assistant-editors, sub-editors (in Great Britain a term usually restricted in daily journalism to those engaged in the " news " oeparements). leader-writers, critics,'reporters (more narrowly considered part of the " sub-editorial " staff), &c. The actual owner of the paper, the proprietor, may or may not take part in either side, but in law his authority is delegated to those who produce it. The older ideas of journalistic management survive in making the editor, publisher and printer, but curiously not the " manager," liable in a writ for libel, contempt of court, &c:, together with the proprietor in English law. But no satisfactory legal definition of " editor," still less of " manager," is possible, since their positions and powers vary according to circumstances. So far as the general relations of the staff of a paper with its proprietor are concerned, we may briefly note that engagements are contracts for personal service; they will not therefore be specifically enforced, and the remedy for injury is dismissal or action for damages; and they must be in writing and stamped, to be evidence in law, if for a year or longer. The editor is the agent of the proprietor, and binds him for acts within the scope of editorial authority (which includes, the insertion of any matter in the paper). Being an agent he can have no power as against the proprietor, but unreasonable interference on the latter's part may entitle an editor to an action for breach of contract or for damage to his professional reputation: while gross misconduct on the part of an editor might similarly entitle the proprietor to damages. Letters, manuscripts, &c., come into the editor's hands as agent for his proprietor, and are the latter's property. Uninvited contributors send him articles at their own risk, but the sending to them of a type-set proof has been held to be evidence of acceptance. Apart from special terms, the editor is entitled to " edit " such articles, i.e. use them wholly or in part, or alter them; he has a free hand to do so in the case of anonymous articles; in the case of signed articles it is clearly his duty to keep them free from libel or illegality, but the right to edit is limited in so far as his alterations might attribute to the writer anything which would give the latter a claim for damages. Though the highest function of an editor is embodied in the etymology of the word (a " bringer forth " or producer), as one who acts as the literary midwife in the literary setting forth of ideas, it is probably his use of the proverbial blue-pencil, altering or deleting, which is generally associated with the word "to edit." Each aspect, however, of editorial work has its own importancethe organization and inspiration on-the one hand, the moulding into shape on the other. And " good " editing is necessarily relative, depending to a certain extent on the character of the paper which it is intended to produce. See PRESS LAWS, LIBEL, COPYRIGHT, &c.; and generally, for law, Fisher and Strachan, Law of the Press (2nd ed., 1898). The history of the Newspaper Press is told for various countries of importance under their respective sections below. The practical development of the 'modern newspaper is indeed due to a union of causes, largely mechanical, that may well be termed marvellous. A machine (see PRINTING) that, from a web of paper 3 or 4 M. long, can, in one hour, print, fold, cut and deliver many thousand perfected broadsheets, is, however, not so great a marvel as is the organizing skill which collects information by conversation, post or telegraph, from all over the world, and then distributes these communications in cheap printed copies regularly every day to an enormous public, sifted, arranged and commented upon, in the course of a few hours. But for a high ideal of public responsibility and duty, conjoined with high culture and with great " staying-power," in the editorial rooms, all these marvels of ingenuitywhich now combine to develop public opinion on great public interests, and to guide itwould be nothing better than a vast mechanism for making money out of man's natural aptitude to spend his time either in telling or in hearing some new thing. A newspaper, after all, is essentially a business, conducted by its proprietors for gain. That the commercial motive is a danger to honest journals is obvious, were it not indeed that here as elsewhere honesty is in the long run the best commercial policy. The example of American journalism has so greatly affected the developments in England and other countries since about 1890, that it is important to realize the conditions under which, in the United States, the newer type of journalism arose.' In substance very much the same causes produced very much the same effects, though at a slower rate, in England; but British conservatism operated here as elsewhere. Several circumstances combined in the last quarter of the 19th century to Promote The account which follows is reproduced from Mr Whitelaw Reid's article in the loth edition of the Ency. Brit.great changes in the condition and character of American newspapers. (I) Paper was enormously cheapened. Before and during the Civil War it cost large New York newspapers at times 22 cents per lb for even a poor quality. In 1864 it cost 16 cents in February, and ran up a cent every month till in mid-summer it touched 21 and 22 cents. As late as 1873 it was still sold at from 12 to 13 cents. As new materials were found and machinery was improved, the price slowly declined. When the manufacture from wood-pulp was made commercially successful, the profits tempted great investments of new capital; bigger mills were built, competition became keen, and new inventions cheapened the various processes. Thus in New York in 1875 the average price for the year for fair " news " paper was 8.53 cents per lb; in 1880, 6.92; in 1885, 5.16; and in 1890, 3'38. At last, about 1897, large contracts for a good average quality, delivered at the press-room, were made in New York at as low a figure as 1.5 cents per lb. Subsequently advances in raw materials, one or two dry seasons which curtailed the water-power, and combinations resulting from over-competition, caused some reaction. Yet it could still be said in 1900 that prudent publishers could buy for $I as much paper as would have cost them $3 twenty years earlier, or $Io about 1875. (2) Printing machinery for great newspaper offices was transformed. Instead of the old cylinder presses fed by hand, with the product then folded and counted by hand, machines came into common use to print, fold, cut, paste and count and deliver in bundles, ready either for the carrier or the mail, at rates of speed formerly not dreamed of. The size of the paper could 'be increased or diminished at will, as late news might require, within an hour of the time when it must be in the hands of its readers. Instead of cutting down other news to make room for something late and important, more pages were added, and this steadily increased the tendency to larger papers. Devices were also found for printing the same sheet in different colours at the same rate of speed; and in this way startling headlines were made more startling in red ink, or a piece of news for which special attention was desired was made so glaring that no one could help seeing it. (3) Hand-setting (for great newspapers) was practically abolished. Instead of the slow gathering of single types by hand separate lines were now produced and cast by machines, capable when pushed to their utmost capacity of doing each the work of five average compositors. Thus between 1880 and 1900 there were reductions in the cost(1) of the raw material for the manufacture of newspapers from two-thirds to three-fourths; (2) of printing, at least as much; and (3) of composition, at least one-half, while the facilities in each department for a greater product within a given time were enormously increased. The obvious business tendency of these changes was either a reduction in price or an increase of size, or both.Electricity became the only news- carrier . New ocean cables broke down the high rates charged at the outset. The American news appetite, growing by what it fed on, soon demanded far fuller cablegrams of European news; and the wars in which Great Britain and the United States were involved accelerated the movement
Photography and etching were added to the office equipment. Various " process " methods were found, by which the popular desire for a picture to make the news clearer could be gratified. Drawings were reproduced successfully in stereotype' plates for The influence of American journal-ism. the fastest rotary presses. The field of political caricature had heretofore belonged exclusively to the weekly papers, but the great dailies now seized upon it, and commanded the service of the cleverest caricaturists. Newspapers found a way to put the " half-tone " etching of a photograph, such as had heretofore been printed only on slow flat presses, bodily into the stereotype plate for the great quadruple and octuple presses; and there-after portraits and photographs of important groups on notable occasions began to appear, embodied in the text describing the occurrences, a few hours after the camera had been turned on them, in papers printed at the rate of thirty and forty thousand an hour. In this development of illustrated daily journalism America rapidly went far beyond other countries. News agencies multiplied and gave chdaper service. The New York Associated Press had been the chief agency for the whole country. It admitted new customers with great caution, and its refusal to admit was almost prohibitory, while its withdrawal of news from established papers was practically fatal. It was owned by the leading New York journals. Their disagreements led to the success of a rival, the United Press. The New York Associated Press finally dissolved, most of the New York members became connected with the United Press, and many of their Western and Southern clients organized the Associated Press of Illinois, more nearly on a mutual plan. The United Press finally failed, and most of its New York members went into the Associated Press of Illinois, which in turn was forced into plans for reorganization by decisions of Illinois courts against its rules for confining its services to its own members. One result of these successive changes was to en-courage new papers by making it easy for them to secure a comprehensive news service, and thus to threaten the value of the old papers. Another was the struggle to increase the volume of the service, leading to reports of multitudes of occurrences formerly left without notice in the great news centres, and ex-tension of agencies into the remotest hamlets, and less scrupulous care in the consideration and preparation of the reports filed at many points for transmission. News syndicates for special purposes also developed, as well as small news associations, sometimes with a service sufficient for the wants of many papers. The almost official authenticity which the public formerly attributed to an Associated Press despatch measurably declined; and the dailies found more difficulty in sifting and deciding upon the news that came to them, and incurred more individual responsibility for what they printed. The great accumulation of private fortunes also changed the newspapers. Millionaires came to think it advantageous to own newspapers, openly or secretly, which could be conducted without reference to direct profits, for the sake primarily of political, social or business considerations. To secure large circulations for such enterprises they were willing to sell the paper for long periods at much below the cost of manufacture, and to spend money for news and writers more lavishly than the legitimate business of established journals would allow. Great business corporations seeking for favourable or fearing adverse legislation sometimes made secret newspaper investments for the same purpose. These various new conditions, affecting the newspaper press of the United States with ever-increasing force, gradually changed the average character of the papers and their effect upon their readers. A large circulation became the only evidence of success and the only way to make the sale of a newspaper below cost ultimately a source of profit. A disposition to lower the character in order to catch the largest audience naturally followed. Criminal news was reported more fully than formerly, with more piquant details. Competitors outdid each other in the effort to treat all news with unprecedented sensationalism. The lowest possible price was regarded as essential to the largest possible circulation, and so i1 favourite price even for large newspapers became one cent to the public, and consequently only half a cent to the publishers, whose business was practically all at wholesale with dealers and news companies. The feeling that the most must be given for the money prompted also thegreat increase in size, only made possible by the reductions in paper, composition, presswork, &c., already noted. Yet mere quantity and mere sensation after a time palled on the jaded appetite, and the spice of intense personality became necessary. As most people like to see their names in print, and can bear criticism of their neighbours with composure, these two chords of human nature were incessantly played upon. The principal feature in the development of modern news-papers is the importance attached to obtaining, and prominently displaying, " news " of all sorts, and incidentally ctrarscthere has been a considerable change of view as to what terstks sort of news should be given prominence. Sport and of modern finance are treated at greater length and more popu- newslarly; and, partly owing to the largely increased papers. number of papers and consequent greater competition, partly to a desire to appeal to the larger public, which is now able to read and ready to buy reading-matter, there has been a tendency to follow the tastes of the vast number of people who can read at all rather than of those to whom reading means a very high standard of literary and intellectual enjoyment. This has involved a more popular form of presenting news, not only in a less literary style and by the presentation of " tit-bits " of information with an appeal to cruder sentiments, but also in a more liberal use of headlines and of similar devices for catching the eye of the reader. " Personal journalism," i.e. paragraphs about the private life or personal appearance of individualseither men or womenof note or notoriety in society or public affairs, has become far more marked; and in this respect, as in many others, encouragement has been given to a spirit of inquisitiveness, and also to a widespread inclination either to flatter or be oneself flattered, the latter desire being indeed conspicuously prevalent in these "democratic days" even among the classes which once affected to despise such publicity. The modern impulse, culminating in England in the last decade of the 19th century in what was then called the "New Journalism," was a direct product of American conditions and ways of life, but in Great Britain it was also the result of the democratic movement
From the highest class of paper downwards, however, real newsand especially early newshas been more and more sought after, and all the force of organization both within individual newspaper offices and outside them in the shape of news agencies, has been applied to the purpose of obtaining early news and publishing it as quickly as possible. In this matter the Press has certainly been helped most materially not only by the advance in telegraphic facilities (see REPORTING) but by all the other new rapid methods of production in Type-setting (see TYPOGRAPHY) and Press-work (see PRINTING) which have been the feature of the modern period. The vastly increased amount of telegraphic work now done has perhaps not been all pure gain to the best sort of journalism. It has to some extent weakened the effect of the considered article, and led to hasty conclusions and precipitate publication, with results that sometimes cannot be compensated for by any later contradiction or modification. In some cases a reaction ensued. Take for instance the case of war correspondence. The prestige of the " war correspondent " became at one time enormous, and his evolution from the days of H. Crabb Robinson, who wrote to The Times from Spain in 1807-1809, has been traced by busy pens with all the precision of a special interest in history. Certainly nothing finer in active English journalism was ever done than in W. H. Russell's letters to The Times from the Crimea, or the work of Archibald Forbes and others in the Franco-Prussian War; but more recently, although first-rate abilities have been forthcoming, the news agencies, often favoured by the military Press censor, have generally been ahead of the " specials," and the individual work that might have been done for isolated papers has been much hampered by restrictions. This is due partly to the increased competition, partly to military jealousy and officialism, partly to the vital importance of secrecy in modern warfare: but the result has been to a considerable extent to reduce the value of the " war correspondent " as compared with what was done in the Press in the days of Russell and Forbes. A letter arriving weeks after the telegraphic account, however meagre, is largely shorn of its interest. Given a brilliant foreign correspondent, the form of letters sent home from abroad on general subjects is still, no doubt, very effective. But the telegram is necessarily the backbone of the news service of the daily paper. The Press, be it added, is frequently able to acquaint the public with what is going on while a government itself is still uninformed. The work of officials and statesmen is admittedly increased and sometimes embarrassed by the new strain imposed upon them in consequence, but the public are on the whole well served by their emancipation from the obscurity of purely official intelligence and by the obligation of straightforward dealing imposed upon governments, which in their nature are apt to be secretive. Connected with the increased attention given to news is the greater vogue of the newspaper " poster " or contents-bill, which is exhibited in the streets. The poster has acquired commercial importance for indicating the possession of some special news without revealing its whole nature, and the tendency has been to have fewer lines and fewer words in larger type, in order to catch the eye more impressively. Rotary machines for printing these posters enable them to be turned out with greater rapidity; and in the case especially of evening papers it is possible at any time during the afternoon, should important news arrive, to issue a new poster and thus secure a large street sale by the insertion of a few words only in the " stop press " or " fudge " without the necessity of changes in the plates. The catch-penny style of the poster has transferred itself also to the newspaper itself, in the shape of the " scare " headlines. And there has been a tendency for the news to be so " displayed " in the headlines as to make any further reading unnecessary. Apart from the publication of " news " and reports, and occasional original articles of a descriptive and miscellaneous character, the chief function of a newspaper is criticism, whether of politics or other topics of the moment, or of the drama, art, music, books, sport or finance. As regards sport, the comments of the various newspapers are mainly descriptive; but a prominent feature in the United Kingdom has been the attention paid to " tipping " probable winners on the Turf, and the insertion of betting news. The publication of the " odds " some time before a race, and of starting-prices, undoubtedly helped to foster the increase of this form of gambling, as was pointed out in the report of the Select Committee on Gambling in England in 1902, but the efforts to induce the English newspapers to keep such matter out of their columns have not had much success. The Daily News (London) in 1902 started on a new proprietorship under Mr Cadbury with a declared policy of not referring to horse-racing or betting; but when its principal proprietors in 1909 became largely concerned also in the Star and Morning Leader, they were apparently content to retain the " tipster " elements which bulked large in them, and this inconsistency aroused considerable comment. The sporting interest (i.e. the desire to know results of racing and cricket, &c.) largely inflates the circulation of most of the London and provincial halfpenny evening papers. Between about 1870 and i88o the English newspapers began to pay increased attention to literary and artistic criticism; and gradually the daily Press, which formerly applied itself mainly to recording news, and to political, social and financial subjects, became a formidable rival in this sphere to the weekly reviews and the monthly and quarterly magazines. Books are "re-viewed " in the Press partly for literary reasons, partly as a quid pro quo for publishers' advertisements; and the desire for " something to quote," irrespectively of the responsible nature of the criticism, became in the early 'nineties a mania with publishers, who in general appear to have considered that their sales depended upon their catching a public which would be satisfied by seeing in the advertisement that such and such a book was pronounced by such and such a paper to be " indispensable to any gentleman's library." Unfortunately the enormous output of books made it impossible for editors to have them all reviewed, and equally impossible for them to be certain of discriminating properly between those which were really worth reviewing or not. The result has been that the work of book-reviewing in the newspapers is often hastily and poorly or very spasmodically done. But there have been some honourable exceptions. The " Literary Supplement " (since 1901) to The Times is the most ambitious attempt made by any daily paper to deal seriously with literature. The Daily Chronicle started a " literary page " in 1891, and it was imitated in varying degrees by other English papers. The Scotsman and some other provincial papers have also for some time devoted much space to excellent literary criticism. The " literary supplement " has also been developed to excellent effect in some journals in the United States, such as the New York Times, where this feature was indeed originally started. As a form of serious criticism, however, the review has, in the general newspapers of later years, taken a lower place than must be desirable, partly owing to the cause named, partly to a tendency among reviewers either to indiscriminate praise or to irresponsible irrelevance, partly to a suspicion of " log-rolling "; and to a large extent it has become the practice merely to treat the appearance of new books as so much news, to be chronicled, with or without extracts, according as the subject makes good " copy," like any other event of the day. The modern tendency, resulting from the enormous amount of newspaper production, has been to make journalism less literary and at the same time literature more journalistic. Either as reviewers, leader-writers or editors, many of the principal " men of letters " have worked for longer or shorter periods as writers for some newspaper or other, and much of the published literature of the time has appeared originally in the columns of the newspapers, in the form of essays, poems, short stories or novels (in serial form). Publication in this shape has many advantages for an author besides that of additional remuneration; it offers an opportunity for a new writer to try his wings, and it helps to introduce him at once to a large public. Moreover, the newspapers read by the educated classes profit by the superior class of journalist represented by writers of a literary turn. But the increased popularity of the news-paper, and the close tie between it and the literary world, have on the whole impressed a journalistic stamp upon much of the literature of the day. However popular at the moment a writer may be, the infection with journalistic methodswhile rightly employed by journalists, as such, in dealing with contemporary events and for strictly contemporary purposesis apt to be responsible for something wanting in his work, the loss of which deprives him of the permanent literary or scientific rank to which he might otherwise aspire. The new point of departure for the more popular style of English journalism (apart from the influence of American models) is really to be found in the publication of Sir George (then Mr) Newnes's Tit-Bits in 1881. This penny weekly paper, with its appeal to the masses, who liked to read snippets of information brightly put together, showed what enormous profits were to be made by this style of enterprise; and the multiplication of journals of this descriptionnotably Mr Alfred Harmsworth's (Lord Northcliffe's) Answers (1888) and Mr C. Arthur Pearson's Pearson's Weekly (189o)had a further influence on public taste; so that even the classes above that which primarily enjoyed these publications were affected in the same direction. A new note was thus introduced into English daily journalism in England. Whereas before 1885 the chief feature in London journalism, outside The Times and other great morning papers, had been the literary brilliance of the Saturday Review and its evening paper analogues, the Pall Mall and St James's Gazettes, in the early 'nineties came a craze for " actuality." Mr T. P. O'Connor, with his vivid pen (first in the Star, then in the Sunday Sun and elsewhere), set the pace for a crowd of imitators; the successful establishment of the Daily Mail in 1896, with its system of compressing the news of the day briefly and pointedly into short paragraphs, while at the same time catering for all tastes and employing first-rate correspondents and reporters to supply it with special information, gave a distinct shake-up to the older traditions of daily journalism. The old tendency had been to rely for, success either on writers of exceptional knowledge or capacity, men who were essentially amateurs, or on a class of professional journalists who at all events had a literary tradition behind them. A different sort of amateur now arose, and a different sort of professional. Even when an attempt was made to provide for a literary public, success came to be generally sought by popular rather than by literary methods. The literary public in the proper sense of the word is inevitably a small one, and the greater part of the Press deals with literature on lines more suited to a larger and less refined clientele. It may be claimed, no doubt, that the best sort of journalism shows a high, and sometimes the highest, literary standard, but the fact remains that for the bulk of modern journalism its conductors realize only too well that their business is to appeal to the masses, and to a standard of education and taste which falls far short of anything that can be called intellectual. It is often said that the leading articles or " editorials," expressing the attitude of the paper towards important subjects of the day, have lost their importance, but this is only a half-truth. Allowance being made for changes in literary style, the actual amount of good writing in this department in the great organs of opinionwell-informed, scholarly and incisivemay justly be considered equal to anything done in what are sometimes considered its palmy days.' On the other hand, it is undoubtedly the case that in the newer type of newspaper, which appeals rather on the score of its tit-bits of news and rapid readableness to a more casual and less serious public, the whole raison d'etre of the old-fashioned leading article has disappeared, and its place is taken by a few brief notes, merely indicating the attitude of the paper, and not seeking to discuss any subject comprehensively at all. The " leader " is to some extent a form of newspaper routine, but on the whole it is a routine which has proved its value by experience. The continuous high standard of tone, maintained by so many great journals, depends more largely than is sometimes realized on the regular industry and skill of those whose business it is to discuss the latest developments of affairs every day or every week in a manner which gives reasonable men something fresh to think about, or interprets for them the thoughts which are only vaguely floating in their minds. The liberty of the Press enables every sort of view, right or wrong, to be discussed in this prominent form, and thus every aspect of a question is brought out in public, to be accepted or rejected according to the weight of evidence and of argument. The same end is assisted by the devotion of so much space to " lett~r~ to the editor." It is sometimes said that in England the London rimes owes its position largely to the fact that if any individual grievance is felt it is generally ventilated by a letter to The Times. Whatever may be the organization of the ' It must be remembered that the style of public speeches has also altered. Nobody thinks of quoting the classics nowadays in the House of Commons. A more business-like form of speech is adopted in public life, and the Press reflects this change. Press for reporting the news of the day, the resources of no newspaper staff are great enough to cover an area of information as large as that represented by its readers; and the value of the outlet for opinion and information afforded by the correspondence columns cannot be overstated. Most people probably read more papers than is compatible with a healthy mental digestion, but the Press, as such, has to-day an enormousand none the less real because subtleinfluence; and this is largely due to the reputation maintained by its higher representatives. While, individually, the great papers wield considerable influence, due partly to real sagacity and authority, partly to the psychological effect produced by mere print or by reiterated statement, collectively the Press now represents the Public, and expresses popular opinicn more directly than any representative assembly. The multiplication of " Press-cutting agencies," and of such essentially " newsy " publications as Who's Who (the English form of which originated with Mr Douglas Sladen in 1897) and similar biographical reference booksall tending to increase. the publicity of modern lifehas contributed materially to the pervading influence of journalism in everyday life and the constant dependence of society in most of its manifestations on the activity of the " Fourth Estate." (H. Cu.) From the introduction of low rates for telegraphy and from the increase of mechanical methods of production, and of the desire to read and the growth of advertising (see ADVERTISEMENT), the modern low-priced newspaper has resulted. But it is by no means a recent development merely. In France, Theophrastus Renaudot's Gazette de Paris (1631) was started at the price of six centimes. In England we find the first mention of inexpensive news-sheets towards the close of the 17th century, when a number of half-penny and farthing Posts sprang into existence, and appeared at more or less irregular intervals. These consisted of small leaflets, containing a few items of newssometimes accompanied by advertisementsand were commonly sold in the streets by hawkers. The rise in cost was really due to artificial causes. The increase of these newspapers, and especially the growing practice of inserting advertisements, led the legislature to con-template a stamp tax of a penny per sheet on all news publications. As a protest, a curious pamphletof which a copy is preserved in the British Museumwas issued in 1701, and it sheds an interesting light upon this early phase of cheap journal-ism. The pamphlet is entitled Reasons humbly offered to the Parliament on behalf of several persons concerned in the paper-making, printing and publishing of the halfpenny newspapers. It states that five master printers were engaged in the trade, which used 20,000 reams of paper per annum. The journals are described in the following terms: " The said newspapers have been always a whole sheet and a half, and sold for one halfpenny to the poorer sort of people, who are purchasers of it by reason of its cheapness, to divert themselves, and also to allure herewith their young children and entice them to reading; and should a duty of three halfpence be laid on these mean news-papers (which, by reason of the coarseness of the paper, the generality of gentlemen are above conversing with), it would utterly extinguish and suppress the same:" The pamphlet goes on to say that hundreds of families, including a considerable number of blind people, were supported by selling the half-penny journals in the streets. In 1712 a tax of a halfpenny per sheet was imposed, and the cheap newspapers at once ceased to exist. This tax on the press was increased from time to time, till in 1815 it stood at fourpence per sheet. The usual price of newspapers was then sevenpence a copy. From these facts it seems highly probable that, had not the stamp tax been imposed, the halfpenny paper would soon have become the normal type, and would have continued so to this day. In 1724 a committee of the House of Commons sat to consider the action of certain printers who were evading the stamp tax by publishing cheap newspapers under the guise of pamphlets. They found that there were then two Halfpenny Posts published in London, one by Read of Whitefriars. and the Peke of news-papers. other by Parker of Salisbury Street. There were also three weekly papers issued at a halfpenny a copy. The tax, after several reductions, was finally repealed on 15th June 1855, and a rush of cheap papers immediately followed. A penny became the usual price for London daily papers, with the exception of The Times, and halfpenny papers soon became common. The growth of the cheap newspaper has since been practically a simultaneous one throughout the civilized world. This has been notably the case in the United States, France and Great Britain. The general tendency in newspaper production, as in all other branches of industry, has in recent times been towards the lowering of prices while maintaining excellence of quality, experience having proved the advantage of large sales with a small margin of profit over a limited circulation with a higher rate of profit. The developmentand indeed the possibilityof the cheap daily paper was due to a number of causes operating together during the latter half of the 19th century. Among these, the first place must undoubtedly be given to the cheapening of paper, through the introduction of wood pulp and the perfecting of the machinery used in the manufacture. From 1875 to 1885 paper cheapened rapidly, and it has been estimated that the introduction of wood pulp trebled the circulation of news-papers in England. Keen competition in the paper trade also did much to lower prices. At the same time the prime cost of newspaper production was increased by the introduction of improved machinery into the printing office. The growth of advertisements must also be taken into account in considering the evolution of the halfpenny journal. The income from this source alone made it possible to embark upon journalistic enter-prises which would otherwise have been simply to court disaster. The popular journal of the present day does not, however, owe its existence and success merely to questions of diminished cost and improved methods of production. A change has come over the public mind. The modern reader likes his news in a brief, handy form, so that he can see at a glance the main facts without the task of reading through wordy articles. This is especially the case with the man of business, who desires to master the news of the past twenty-four hours as he travels to his office in the morning. It is to economize time rather than money that the modern reader would often prefer a halfpenny paper; while the man of leisure, who likes to peruse leading articles and full descriptive accounts, finds what he needs in the more highly priced journals. The halfpenny paper in England has not had to contend with the opposition that the penny newspaper met from its threepenny contemporaries in the 'fifties and 'sixties. This is largely due to the fact that in most cases the contributors, paper, printing and general arrangement of the cheaper journal do not leave much room for criticism. Mr G. A. Sala once complained that the reporters of the older papers objected to work side by side with him when he represented the first penny London daily (the Daily Telegraph), through fear of losing caste, but this does not now apply, for in the United Kingdom, France and the United States the cheap journals, owing to their vast circulation, are able to offer the best rates of remuneration, and can thus command the services of some of the best men in all the various departments of journalism. (N.) Another aspect of the newspaper which may here be considered is the introduction of pictorial illustrations (see also ILLUSTRA- T1oN). The earliest attempts at popular illustration pap rrsarea of news events took the form in England of " broad- sides." One broadside dated 1587 recounted the Valiant Exploits of Sir Francis Drake; another dated 1607 gave an account of A wonderful flood in Somersetshire and Norfolk. The series of murder broadsides which lasted almost to our own time commenced in 1613 with one that gave an account of the murder of Mr William Storre, a clergyman of Market Rasen, in Lincolnshire, by Francis Cartwright. Early in the reign of Charles I. there appeared a broadside which described a fall of meteors in Berkshire. A little laterin 1683the Weekly News came out with the picture of an island which was supposed to have risen from the sea on the French coast. The execution of Strafford in 1641 was made the subject of a picturepamphlet that is to be seen in the British Museum, and in 1642 the first attempt to portray the House of Commons appeared in A Perfect Diurnall of the Passages in Parliament. In 1643 a pamphlet was published, called The Bloody Prince; or a Declaration of the Most Cruel Practices of Prince Rupert and the rest of the Cavaliers in fighting against God and the True Ministers of His Church. This contains a woodcut representation of Prince Rupert on his charger, one of the first attempts at providing the public with a portrait of a contemporary celebrity. Soon after this there appeared a journal, entitled Mercurius Civicus, which frequently gave illustrations, and, allowing for the Weekly News with its one attempt at an illustration above mentioned, must be counted the first illustrated paper. Mercurius Civicus, however, only gave portraits; it published Charles I. and his queen, Prince Rupert, Sir Thomas Fairfax and all the leading men on both sides in the Civil War. Perhaps the most interesting illustration of the next four years was that contained in a tract intended to evoke sympathy for the con-' quered and captured king. It represented Charles in Carisbrooke Castle in 1648. There were many later attempts to depict the tragedy of Charles I.'s execution, and several woodcuts present to us also the execution of the regicides after Charles II. came to the throne. A broadside of the reign of the second Charles shows the Frost Fair on the Thames in 1683, and with a broad-side describing Great Britain's Lamentations, or the Funeral Obsequies of that most incomparable Protestant PrincessQueen Mary, the wife of William III., in 1695we close the illustrated journalism of the 17th century. Curiously enough, the 18th century, so rich in journalistic enterprise and initiative so far as the printed page was concerned, did less than the previous century to illustrate news. In 1731, however, in the Grub Street Journal, there appeared the first illustration of the Lord Mayor's procession. In 1740 another journal, the Daily Post, gave an illustration of Admiral Vernon's attack on Porto Bello. The narrative was introduced by the editor with the information that the letter that he is printing is from a friend who witnessed the conflict between the English and the Spaniards. The writer of the letter, who must be put on record as the father of war correspondents, signed himself " William Richardson." There were some interesting efforts to illustrate magazines about this time. In the Gentleman's Magazine for 1746 there was a lengthy account of the famous rising of 1745, and a map was given of the country round Carlisle, showing the route of the Scottish rebels; and in the same volume there was a portrait of the duke of Cumberland. In 1747 the Gentleman's gave a bird's-eye view of the city of Genoa, illustrating the account of the insurrection there, and so on year by year there were further pictures. In 1751 an obituary notice was illustrated by a portrait .of a certain Edward Bright of Maldon, Essex. Mr Bright died at the age of thirty, and his interest to the public was that he weighed 422 stones. There were a number of magazines besides the Gentleman's that came out about this time and continued well into the next century. In the Thespian Magazine for 1793, for example, there is an illustration of a new theatre at Birmingham. Then there were the English Magazine, the Macaroni Magazine, the Monstrous Magazine. Every one of these contained illustrations on copper, more or less topical. William Clement, the proprietor of the Observer, the first number of which was published in 1791, was the first real pioneer of illustrated journalism, although his ideals fell short in this particular, that he was never prepared to face the illustration of news systematically; he only attempted to illustrate events when there was a great crisis in public affairs. In 1818 Abraham Thornton, who was tried for murder, appealed to the wager of battle, which after long arguments before judges was proved to be still in accordance with statute law, and he escaped hanging in consequence. Thornton's portrait appeared in the Observer. Clement owned for some time Bell's Life and the Morning Chronicle. All his journals contained occasional topical illustrations. The Observer's illustration of the house where the Cato Street conspirators met is really sufficiently elaborate for a journal of to-day, and in 1820 it gave its readers " A Faithful Reproduction of the Interior of the House of Lords as prepared for the Trial of Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Caroline." In 1821 it published an interior of the House of Commons with the members in. their places. The Observer of 22nd July 1821the Coronation numbercontained four engravings. Of the George IV. Coronation number Mr Clement f sold 6o,000 copies, but even that was nothing to the popularity that this journal secured by its illustrations of the once famous murder of Mr Weare and the trial of the murderer Thurtell. The Observer in 1838 gave a picture of the Coronation of Queen Victoria. In 1841 there was a fire at the Tower of London, when the armoury was destroyed. The Observer published three illustrations of the fire; it further published an emblematic engraving on the birth of the prince of Wales, and issued a large page engraving of the christening ceremony in the following January. Thus it had in it all the elements of pictorial journalism as we know it to-day. The weekly Illustrated London News was, however, the first illustrated newspaper by virtue of its regularity. It was the first illustrated paper, because all the illustrations to which we have referred as appearing in the Observer and other publications were irregular. They came at intervals; they were quite sub-ordinate to the letterpress of the paper; they were given only occasionally in times of excitement, with a view to promoting some little extra sale. That they did not really achieve the result hoped for to any great extent may be gauged by the fact that from 1842 to 1847 the Observer published scarcely any illustrations at all, and in the meantime the Illustrated London News had taken an assured place as a journal devoted mainly to the illustration of news week by week. That is why its first publication marked an epoch in journalism. The casual illustration of other journals still went on: the Weekly Chronicle, for example, still published a number of pictures; the Sunday nines, also a very old paper, illustrated in these early days many topical subjects. In 1834, indeed, it pictured the ruins of the House of Commons, when that building was burned down. A paper started in 1837 called the Magnet gave illustrations, one of them of the removal from St Helena and delivery of the remains of the emperor Napoleon to the prince de Joinville in 184o. The first number of the Illustrated London News appeared on 14th May 1842. Its founder was Herbert Ingram (r8i1-i86o), who was born in Boston, Lincolnshire, and started life amid the most humble surroundings, what education he ever received having been secured at the free school of his native town. Apprenticed at fourteen to a printer in Hull, he later settled in Nottingham as a printer and newsagent in a small way. It was during his career as a newsvendor at Nottingham that he was seized with the belief that it was possible to produce a paper entirely devoted to illustration of news. In the first number of the Illustrated London News, however, there was not a single picture that was drawn from actual sight, the factor which is the most essential element of the illustrated journalism of to-day. Sir John Gilbert (1817-1897), the artist, has stated that not one of the events depicted by hima state ball at which the queen and the prince consort appeared, the queen with the young prince of Wales in her arms, and other incidental illustrationswas taken from life. The Illustrated London News had not been long in existence before there were many imitators, in America Harper's Weekly, in France L'Illustration and in Germany Uber Land and Meer, and from that day there has been constant development, the Illustrated Zeitung of Leipzig being perhaps the most striking. In America the use of illustrations in the daily papers has become a regular feature, culminating in the bulky Sunday editions of the principal journals; and the practice of presenting the news in pictorial form has increased continuously even in England. In 19ro three London daily newspapers were principally devoted to illustrationthe Daily Graphic, the Daily Mirror and the Daily Sketch, while most of the penny and halfpenny journals included some form of pictorial matter. This change was dueto the ever-Increasing cheapening and ever-growing celerity of manufacture of what are known as half-tone blocks. It was in 1890 that the application of photography to illustrated journalism began in England, and by 1910 it had grown to enormous dimensions, but the first newspaper photographs (mainly portraits) had to be engraved on wood, although the use of half-tone came in well-nigh simultaneously. Up to 18go illustrated journalism was in the hands of the artists, and the artists were in the hands of the wood engravers, who reproduced their work sometimes effectivelyoften inefficiently. But in the course of twenty years the wood engraver had been utterly superseded so far as illustrated journalism was concerned. The further developments of journalism seemed likely to be entirely in the direction of coloured reproductions, block
(C. K. S.) It is almost impossible by any statistical detail to give an idea of the advances made by the newspaper press as a whole; Com but an outline of the general results for 1828, 1866 and ttve 1882, together with a fourth, as given in the loth edition ttstics. of this encyclopaedia for 1900, may have its utility. The earliest summary is that of Adrien Balbi. It was published in the Revue encyclopedique for 1828 (vol. i. pp. 593-603), along with much matter of more than merely statistical interest. The numbers of newspapers published in different countries at that date are given as follows: France, 490; United Kingdom, 483; Austria, about 8o; Prussia, 288; rest of the Germanic Confederation, 305; Nether-lands, 15o; Spain, 16; Portugal and the Azores, 17; Denmark, Sweden and Norway, 161; Russia and Poland, 84. The respective proportions of journals to populations werefor Prussia I to 41,500, German states I to 45,300, United Kingdom I to 46,000, France i to 64,000, Switzerland r to 66,00o, Austria I to 400,000, Russia I to 565,000. Europe had in all 2142 newspapers, America 978, Asia 27, Africa 12 and Oceania 9; total 3168. Of these, 1378 were published in English-speaking countries (800 of them in the United States), having a population of 154 millions, and 1790 in other countries, with a population of 583 millions. The second summary (1886) is that given by Eugene Hatin in an appendix to his valuable Bibliotheque de la presse periodique. His enumeration of newspapers is as follows: France, 164o; United Kingdom, 126o; Prussia, 700; Italy, 500; Austria-Hungary, 365; Switzerland, 300; Belgium, 275; Holland, 225; Russia, 200; Spain, 200; Sweden and Norway, 150; Denmark, too; United States, 4000. Here the proportions of papers to population areSwitzerland and United States t to 7000, Belgium r to 17,000, France and the United Kingdom I to 20,000, Prussia I to 30,000, Spain I to 75,000, Austria t to 100,000, Russia I to 300,000. Hatin assigns to Europe a total of 7000, to America 5000 and to the rest of the world 250, making in all 12,500. The third summary is taken from that of Henry Hubbard, published,in his Newspaper Directory of the World (New Haven, Connecticut, 1882). Its scope embraces a considerable number of serial publications which cannot be classed as newspapers. Still Hubbard's figures, which were collected (chiefly by the American consuls and consular agents in all parts of the world) about 188o, cannot be disregarded. The following are his general results: Daily ~ Other Tlewspapers. Publications. Europe I 2403 10,730 Asia 154 337 , Afrisiaca . . . . 25 125 . N. America 1136 9,656 S. America 208 427 Australasia 94 471 Total . . 4 _ 4020 21,746 The following summary for 1900, given in the loth edition of the Ency. Brit., and compiled by G. F. Barwick and Dorset Eccles, of the British Museum, included everything in the nature of a news-paper, as distinct from periodicals. Totals of Newspapers, 1900. Great Britain and Ire- Belgium . Holland . Luxemburg Russia . Italy .. Spain .. Portugal Switzerland Greece . Rumania . Servia . land .. United States France Germany Austria Hungary Sweden Denmark . Iceland and Faroe Islands Norway 171 213 145 3 132 . 2,902 .15,904 . 2,400 . 3,278 393 290 312 I2 28o 25I 338 600 47 47 24 2. BRITISH NEWSPAPERS United Kingdom.' The first regular English journalists may be identified with the writers of manuscript " news-letters," originally the depend- ants of great men, each employed in keeping his own master or patron well-informed, during his absence from court, of all that happened there. The duty grew at length into a calling. The writer had his periodical subscription list, and instead of writing a single letter wrote as many letters as he had customers. Then one more enterprising than the rest established an " in- telligence office," with a staff of clerks, such as Ben Jonson's Cymbal depicts from the life in The Staple of News, acted in 1625, which is the best-known dramatic notice of the news-sheets. " This is the outer room where my clerks sit, And keep their sides, the register in the midst; The examiner, he sits private there within; And here I have my several rolls and files Of news by the alphabet, and all put up Under their heads." Of the earlier news-letters good examples may be seen in the Paston Letters, and in the Sydney Papers. Of those of later date specimens will be found in Knowler's Letters and Despatches of Strafford, and other well-known books. Still later examples may be seen amongst the papers collected by the historian Thomas Carte, preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. Of these, several series were addressed to the first duke of Ormond, partly by correspondents in England and Ireland, partly by correspondents in Paris; others were addressed to successive earls of Huntingdon; others, again, to various members of the Wharton family. And similar valuable collections are to be seen in the library of the British Museum, and in the Record Office in London. In Edinburgh the Advocates' Library possesses a series of the 16th century, written by Richard Scudamore to Sir Philip Hoby during his embassy to Vienna. The MS. news-letterssome of them proceeding from writers of marked ability who had access to official information, and were able to write with greater freedom and independence of tone than the compilers of the printed newsheld their ground, although within narrowing limits, until nearly the middle of the 18th century. The distinction between the news- letter and the newspaper is pointed out in the preceding section. It was at one time believed that the earliest regular English newspaper was an- English Mercurie of 1588, to which George Chalmers, the political writer and antiquarian, referred Early in his Life of Ruddiman (1794) as being (with others of papers. the same date) in the British Museum. The falsehood of this supposition, which was long accepted on Chalmers's authority, was, however, pointed out by Thomas Watts, of the British Museum, in 1839, in a volume with the title Letter to Antonio Panizzi on the Reputed earliest printed Newspaper, and again in 185o, in an article in the Gentleman's Magazine (n.s. xxxiii. 485-491). The documents in question are (I) a MS. unnumbered issue of the English Mercurie, dated " Whitehall, July 26th, 1588 "; (2) a printed copy, No. 50, of ' In the following account of early British newspapers certain portions of the article by E. Edwards in the 9th ed. of the Ency. Brit. have been incorporated.[BRITISH July 23, 1588; (3) a printed copy of No. 51; (4) a printed copy of No. 54, of November 24, 1588; (5) and three other MS. copies. These were included in a collection bequeathed to the Museum of Dr Birch (1766), and are incontestably 18th-century forgeries. The handwriting of the spurious MSS. was identified by a letter among Dr Birch's correspondence as that of Philip Yorke, afterwards 2nd Lord Hardwicke, and there were trifling corrections in Dr Birch's handwriting, showing that he was a party with Yorke, the author, to the mystification. No information is forthcoming as to the object of it, but it is worth mentioning that Yorke and his brother also published a clever jeu d'esprit called The Athenian Letters, purporting to be a transcript from a Spanish translation of letters written by a Persian agent during the Peloponnesian War; so that it may be inferred that this sort of thing recommended itself to Yorke, and not necessarily for any deception. Various English pamphlets, as well as French, Italian and German, occur in the 16th century with such titles as Newes from Spaine, and the like. In the early years of the 17th century they became very numerous; the Charles Burney collection in the British Museum is particularly valuable for this early period, the newsbooks and newspapers in it commencing with a " relation " of 1603. In 1614 we find Burton (the author of the Anatomy of Melancholy) pointing a sarcasm against the non-reading habits of " the major part " by adding, " if they read a book at any time . . . 'tis an English chronicle, Sir Huon of Bordeaux, Amadis de Gaul, &c., a play-book, or some pamphlet of news." But up to 1641, owing to the fact that to print domestic news was barred by the royal prerogative, the English periodicals which are to be considered as strictly the forerunners of the regular newspaper were only translations or adaptations of foreign periodicals containing news of what was going on abroad. There is in the British Museum a Mercurius Gallobelgicus; Sive rerum in Gallia et Belgio potissimum, Hispania quoque, Italia, Anglia, Germania, Polonia, Vicinisque Locis ab anno 1588 usque ad Martium anni praesentis 1594 gestarum, nuncius. Opusculum in Sex libris qui totidem annos complectuntur, divisum auctore D. M. Jansonio Doccomensi Frisio. Editio altera. Coloniae Agrippinae. Apud Godefridum Kempensem. Anno MDXCI V. This production of Janson's at Cologne is a fairly thick octavo book, giving a Latin chronicle of events from 1587 to 1594, and is really a sort of annual register. It was continued down to 1635. The Mercurius Gallobelgicus is chiefly interesting because, by circulating in England, it started the idea of a periodical supplying foreign news, and apparently became to English contemporaries a type of the newfangled news-summaries.' In 1614 there was published in London a little square book ',45 pp.), by Robert Booth, A Relation of all matters passed ... since March last to the present 1614, translated according to the originall of Mercurius Gallobelgicus, which has the running title Mercurius Gallobelgicus his relation since March last. From a repetition of such " relations " at irregular intervals, to the periodical publication of news-books with a common title in a numbered series, was a natural development. Thus on the 1st of June 1619 Ralph Rounthwaite entered at Stationers' Hall A Relation of all matters done in Bohemia, Austria, Poland, Sletia, France, &c., that is worthy of relating, since the 2nd of March 1618 (1619 N.S.) until the 4th of May.2 Again at the beginning of November 1621 Bartholomew Downes and another entered in like manner The certaine and true newes from all parts of Germany and Poland, to this present 20 of October 1621? No copy of either of these papers is now known to exist. Nor is any copy known of the Courant or Weekly Newes from foreign parts of October 9, 1621" taken out of the High Dutch,"mentioned by John Nichols.4 But in May 1622 we arrive at a regular weekly newspaper which may still be seen in the British Museum. ' The title Mercurius or Mercuryas representing the messenger of the godsthus became a common one for English periodicals. 2 Registers of the Stationers' Company, as printed by Edward Arber, iii. 302. 2 Ibid. iv. 23. 552 Bulgaria .. Montenegro . Turkey Persia Syria . India . Ceylon China .. Siam . .. Straits Settlements . Cochin China. . Japan . East Indies . South Africa West Africa . Central Africa, &c. . Egypt .. Canada .. 15 2 22 3 6 boo IO 40 5 I2 4 150 39 I09 IO 76 2I 742 Central and West Indies South American Republics Australasia New South Wales . 227 Queensland. . . 109 South Australia . 44 Victoria 310 West Australia . 18 Tasmania . 18 New Zealand Otago . . 28 Wellington . . 29 Auckland . . 17 Hawkes Bay . It Canterbury 23 Sundry . . . 36 129 340 31,026 Total . Early news-letters. news- 4 Literary Anecdotes, iv. 38. The Stationers' Registers contain an entry on May 18th of A Currant of generall newes. Dated in 14th May last; no copy of this issue is preserved, but what is presumably the next number is to be found in the Burney collection. It is entitled " The 23rd of MayThe Weekely Newes from Italy, Germany, &c., London, printed by J. D. for Nicholas Bourne and Thomas Archer." On many subsequent numbers the name of Nathaniel Butter appears in connexion sometimes with Bourne and some-times with Archer; so that there was probably an eventual partnership in the new undertaking. Archer is known as a publisher of " relations " since 1603; he died in 1634. Butter had published Newes from Spaine in 1611, and he continued to be a publisher of news until 1641, if not later,' and died in 1664. For details of the history of the development of the news-book down to 164r, and thence to the starting of the London Gazette in 1665, reference should be made to Mr J. B. Williams's History of English Journalism (1908), already referred to. Mr Williams, by his study of the materials preserved in the British Museum in the Burney and Thomason 2 collections, has considerably modified many of the previously accepted views as to the affiliation and authorship of these early English periodicals. The leading facts can only be summarized here. The Weekely Newes (1622), though the first English " Coranto," had no regular title connecting one number with the rest; it was simply the news of the week, and so described. The first periodical with a title was a Mercurius Britannicus published by Archer (1625; the earliest copy in existence being No. 16, April 7th), which probably lasted till the end of 1627. But the activity of the Coranto-makers was checked by the Star Chamber edict in 1632 against the printing of news from foreign parts. The next step in the evolution of the newspaper was due to the abolition of the Star Chamber in 1641, and the consequent freeing of the Press; and at last we come to the English periodical with domestic news. In November 1641 begins The Head of severall proceedings in the present parliament (outside title) or Diurnal Occurrences (inside title), the latter being the title under which it was soon known as a weekly; and on Jan. 31st 1642 appeared A Perfect Diurnal of the Passages in Parliament. These were printed for William Cooke, and were written apparently by Samuel Pecke, " the first of the patriarchs of English domestic journalism " (Williams). It is unnecessary here to mention every domestic journal which played its part in the verbal warfare in the Great Rebellion. The weekly Diurnals were soon copied by other booksellers. At first they were naturally on the side of the parliament. In January 1643, however, appeared at Oxford the first Royalist diurnal, named Mercurius Aulicus (continued till September 1645, and soon succeeded by Mercurius Academicus), which struck a higher literary note; its chief writer was Sir John Birkenhead. Mercurius Civicus, the first regularly illustrated periodical in London, was started by the parliamentarian Richard Collings on May lith, 1643 (continued to December 1646); Collings had also started earlier in the year the Kingdome's Weekly Intelligencer, which lasted till October 1649. In September 1643 appeared another Puritan opponent of M. Aulicus in the Mercurius Britanicus (sic) of Captain Thomas Audley, which temporarily ceased publication on September 9th, 1644, only to be revived on September 3oth by Marchamont (or Marchmont) Nedham, a writer who plays a prominent part in the journalism of this period, and to be continued till May 18th 1646. In January 1647 was started the Perfect Occurrences by Henry Walker (" Luke Harruney "), who was not only a great journalist It is to him that a passage in Fletcher's Fair Maid of the Inn (Act iv. Sc. 2) obviously refers (written in 1625) : " It shall be the ghost of some lying stationer. A spirit shall look as if butter would not melt in his mouth; a new Mercurius Gallo-Belgicus." The quotation also illustrates the contemporary regard paid to the Mercurius Gallobelgicus. 2 George Thomason (d. 1666) was a London bookseller who in 1641 began collecting contemporary pamphlets, &c. His collection was ultimately bought by George III. and presented to the British Museum in 1762. A catalogue was completed in 1908, with introduction by Dr G. K. Fortescue. There is also a catalogue of early English newspapers in the Bibliotheca Lindesiana, Collections and Notes No. 5, of Lord Crawford (r9or).on the parliamentary side but is important as having originated the introduction of advertisements into the news-books. Later in the year a number of new Royalist Mercuries came into the field from which Aulicus and Academicus had now withdrawn: the first was Mercuricus Melancholicus (until 1649), and the most important were Mercurius Pragmaticus (Sept. 1647 to May 1650) and Mercuricus Elencticus (Nov. 1647 to Nov. 1649). M. Pragmaticus was not, as has been stated, originated by Marchamont Nedham (who about this time turned his coat and became Royalist), but in 1648-1649 he was its writer until he again turned parliamentarian; " history," says Mr Williams, " has no personage so shamelessly cynical as Marchamont Nedham, with his powerful pen and his political convictions ever ready to be enlisted on the side of the highest bidder; he even wrote for Charles II. in later years." Against the unlicensed Royalist Mercuries in London, where the people were on the king's side, the parliament waged active war, but some of them managed to come out, although writer after writer was imprisoned, until the middle of 1650. Meanwhile from October 1649 to June 1650, by a new act of parliament, the licensed press itself was entirely suppressed, and in 1649 two official journals were issued, A Brief Relation (up to October 1650) and Severall Proceedings in Parliament (till September 1655), a third licensed periodical, A Perfect Diurnall (till September 1655), being added later in the year, and a fourth, Mercurius Politicus (of which Milton was the editor for a year or so and Marchamont Nedham one of the principal writers), starting on June 13th, 1650 (continuing till April 12th, 166o). After the middle of 165o there was a revival of some of the older licensed news-books; but the Weekly Intelligence of the Commonwealth (July 165o to September 1655), by R. Collings, was the only important newcomer up to September 1655, when Cromwell suppressed all such publications with the exception of Mercurius Politicus and the Publick Intelligencer (October 1655 to April 1660), both being official and conducted by Marchamont Nedham. Till Cromwell's death (Sept. 3rd. 1658) Nedham reigned alone in the press, but with the Rump he fell into disgrace, and in 1659 a rival appeared in Henry Muddiman (a great writer also of " news-letters "), whose Parliamentary Intelligencer, renamed the Kingdom's Intelligencer (till August 1663), was supported by General Monck. Nedham's journalistic career came finally to an end (he died in 1678) at the hand of Monck's council of state in April 1660. The following announcement was published in the Parliamentary Intelligencer: " Whereas Marchmont Nedham, the author of the weekly news-books called Mercurius Politicus and the Publique Intelligencer is, by order of the council of state, discharged from writing or publishing any publique intelligence; the reader is desired to take notice that, by order of the said council, Giles Dury and Henry Muddiman are authorized henceforth to write and publish the said intelligence, the one upon the Thursday and the other upon the Monday, which they do intend to set out under the titles of the Parliamentary Intelligencer and of Mercurius Publicus." This arrangement with Muddiman lasted till 1663, when he was supplanted by Sir Roger L'Estrange, who was appointed " surveyor of the Press." On him was conferred by royal grantand, as it proved, for only a short period" all the sole privilege of writing, printing, and publishing all narratives, advertisements, mercuries, intelligencers, diurnals and other books of public intelligence; ... with power to search for and seize the unlicensed and treason-able schismatical and scandalous books and papers." L'Estrange discontinued Mercurius Politicus and Kingdom's Intelligencer and substituted two papers, the Intelligencer (Aug. 1st) and the Newes (Sept. 3rd) at a halfpenny, the former on Mondays and the latter on Thursdays; they were continued till January 29th, 1666, but from the beginning of 1664 the Intelligencer was made consecutive with the N ewes, numbered and paged as one. We come now to the origin of the famous London Gazette. Muddiman, obliged to devote himself solely to his news-letters, was associated with Joseph Williamson (under-secretary and afterwards secretary of state), who was for a time L'Estrange's assistant in the compilation of the Intelligencer.' Muddiman organized for himself a far-spread foreign correspondence, and carried on the business of a news-letter writer on a larger scale than had till then been known. Presently L'Estrange, whose monopoly of printing was highly unpopular, found his own sources of information much abridged, while Williamson, for his own ambitious purposes, entered into a complicated intrigue (analysed in detail by Williams, op. cit. pp. 190 seq.) for getting the whole business into his hands, with Muddiman as his tool and with Muddiman's clients as his customers. To L'Estrange's application for renewed assistance Williamson replied that he could not give it, but would procure for him a salary of ioo a year if he would give up his right in the news-book.2 The Intelligencer appealed (Oct. 1665) to Lord Arlington, and pathetically assured him that the charge for " entertaining spies for information was 500 in the first year."3 But L'Estrange boasted that he had " doubled " the size and price of the book,' and had brought the profit from 200 to 400 or 500 a year.' The appeal was in vain. At that time the great plague had driven the court to Oxford. The first number of the bi-weekly Oxford Gazette, licensed by Arlington and written by Muddiman, was published on the 16th November 1665. It was a " paper " of news, of the same size and shape as Muddiman's news-letters. With the publication of the 24th number (Monday, February 5th, 1665-1666 O.S.) the Oxford Gazette became the London Gazette. After the 25th number Muddiman, who saw that he was not safe in Williamson's hands, seceded. Williamson had the general control of the Gazette, and for a considerable time Charles Perrot, a member of Oriel College, was the acting editor.' L'Estrange was soon driven out of the field, being solaced, on his personal appeal to the king, with a charge of boo a year on the news-books (henceforth " taken into the secretaries' office ") and a further 200 out of secret service money for his place as surveyor of the press. Muddiman, meanwhile, attached himself to the other secretary of state, Sir W. Morice, and he was authorized to issue an opposition official paper, which appeared as Current Intelligence (June 4-Aug. 20, 1666); and though the Great Fire, which burnt out all the London printers, resulted in the reappearance, after a week's interval, of the Gazette alone, Muddiman's unrivalled organization of news-letters remained; and they continued, till his death in 1692, to be the more popular source of information. The Gazette, however, now remained for some time the only " newspaper " in the strict sense already mentioned. For several years it was regularly translated into French by one Moranville. During the Stuart reigns generally its contents were very meagre, although in the reign of Anne some improvement is already visible. More than a century after the establishment of the Gazette, we find Secretary Lord Weymouth addressing a circular' to the several secretaries of legation and the British consuls abroad, in which he says, " The writer of the Gazette has represented that the reputation of that paper is greatly lessened, and the sale diminished, from the small portion of foreign news with which it is supplied." He desires that each of them will send regularly all such articles of foreign intelligence as may appear proper for that paper, " taking particular careas the Gazette is the only paper of authority printed in this countrynever to send anything concerning the authenticity of which there is the smallest doubt." From such humble beginnings has arisen the great repertory of State Papers, now so valuable to the writers and to the students of English history.. The London Gazette has appeared twice a week (on Tuesday and Friday) in a continuous series ever since 8 The editorship is a government appointment. i This help seems to have been given at the request of the secretary of state, Lord Arlington (then Sir H. Bennet), in 1663; State Papers, Domestic, Charles II., lxxix. 112, 113. 2 State Papers, Domestic, Charles II., exxxiv. 103 (Rolls House). Ibid. 117. In 1664 he had halved them, so that this really only means he had now restored the original size. 5 State Papers, Domestic, Charles II., cxxxv. 24. ' Anthony Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, " Perrot." Calendar of Home-Office Papers, 1766-1769, p. 483 (1879). s A complete set is now of extreme rarity. We come now to the Revolution. The very day after the departure of James II. was marked by the appearance of three newspapersThe Universal Intelligence, the English Courant and the London Courant. Within a few days more these were followed by the London Mercury, the Orange Gazette, the London Intelligence, the Harlem Currant and others. The Licensing Act, which was in force at the date of the Revolution, expired in 1692, but was continued for a year, after which it finally ceased. On the appearance of a paragraph in the Flying Post of 1st April 1697, which appeared to the House of Commons to attack the credit of the Exchequer Bills, leave was given to bring in a bill " to prevent writing, printing or publishing of any news without licence "; but the bill was thrown out in an early stage of its progress. That Flying Post which gave occasion to this attempt was also noticeable for a new method of printing, which it thus announced to its customers" If any gentleman has a mind to oblige his country friend or correspondent with this account of public affairs, he can have it for twopence . . . on a sheet of fine paper, half of which being left blank, he may thereon write his own affairs, or the material news of the day." In 1696 Edward Lloydthe virtual. founder of the famous " Lloyd's " of commercestarted a thrice-a-week paper, Lloyd's News, which had but a brief existence in its first shape, but was the precursor of the Lloyd's List of the present day. No. 76 of the original paper contained a paragraph referring to the House of Lords, for the appearance of which a public apology must, the publisher was told, be made. He preferred to discontinue his publication (February 1697). Nearly thirty years afterwards he in part revived it, under the title of Lloyd's Listpublished at first weekly, afterwards twice a week.' This dates from 1726. It is now published daily. It was in the reign of Queen Anne that the English newspaper press first became really eminent for the amount of intellectual power and of versatile talent which was employed upon it. It was also in that reign that the press was first fettered by the newspaper stamp. The accession of Anne was quickly followed by the appearance of the first successful London daily newspaper, the Daily Courant (1rth of March 1702-1703). Seven years earlier, in 1695, the Postboy had been started as a daily paper (actually the first in London), but only four numbers appeared. The Courant was published and edited by the learned printer Samuel Buckley, who explained to the public that " the author has taken care to be duly furnished with all that comes from abroad, in any language.... At the beginning of each article he will quote the foreign paper from which it is taken, that the public, seeing from what country a piece of news comes, with the allowance of that government, may be better able to judge of the credibility and fairness of the relation. _ Nor will he take upon himself to give any comments, . . . supposing other people to have sense enough to make reflexions for themselves." Then came, in rapid succession, a crowd of new competitors for public favour, of less frequent publication. The first number of one of these, the Country Gentleman's Courant (1706), was given away gratuitously, and made a special claim to public favour on the ground that " here the reader is not only diverted with a faithful register of the most remarkable and momentary [i.e. momentous] transactions at home and abroad, . . but also with a geographical description of the most material places mentioned in every article of news, whereby he is freed the trouble of looking into maps." On the 19th of February 1704, whilst still imprisoned in Newgate for a political offence, Defoe (q.v.) began his famous paper, the Review. At the outset it was published weekly, afterwards twice, and at length three times Reviews Review. a week. It continued substantially in its first form until July 29, 1712; and a complete set is of extreme rarity. From the first page to the last it is characterized by the manly ' Frederick Martin, History of Lloyd's, 66-77 and 107-120. The great collection of newspapers in the British Museum contains only one number of Lloyd's News; but sixty-nine numbers may be seen in the Bodleian Library. Of the List, also, no complete series is known to exist; that in the library of Lloyd's begins with 1740. The London Gazette. First London daily. boldness and persistent tenacity with which the almost unaided Briton, the Grub Street Journal, the Weekly Register, the Universal Spectator, the Auditor, the Weekly Miscellany, the London Crier, Read's Journal, Oedipus or the Postman Remounted, the St James's Post, the London Evening Post and the London Daily Post, which afterwards became better known as the Public Advertiser. Part of this increase may fairly be ascribed to political corruption. In 1742 the committee of the House of Commons appointed to inquire into the political conduct of the earl of Orford reported to the House that during the last ten years of the Walpole ministry there was paid, out of public money, no " less a sum than 50,077, 18s. to authors and printers of newspapers, such as the Free Briton, Daily Courant, Gazetteer and other political papers."3 But some part' of the payment may well have been made for advertisements. Towards the middle of the century the provisions and the penalties of the Stamp Act were made more stringent. Yet the number of newspapers continued to rise. Dr Johnson, who in 1750 started his twopenny bi-weekly Rambler, and o6nson,s in 1758 his weekly Idler, writing in the latter bears time. testimony to the still growing thirst for news: " Jour- nals are daily multiplied, without increase of knowledge. The tale of the morning paper is told in the evening, and the narratives of the evening are bought again in the morning. These repetitions, indeed, waste time, but they do not shorten it. The most eager peruser of news is tired before he has completed his labour; and many a man who enters the coffee-house in his nightgown and slippers is called away to his shop or his dinner before he has well considered the state of Europe." Five years before (i.e. in 1753) the aggregate number of copies of news-papers annually sold in England, on an average of three years, amounted to 7,411,757. In 1760 it had risen to 9,464,790, and in 1767 to 11,300,980. In 1776 the number of newspapers published in London alone had increased to fifty-three. When Johnson wrote his sarcastic strictures on the newspapers that were the contemporaries and, in a sense, the rivals of the Idler, the newswriters had fallen below the standard of an earlier day. A generation before the newspaper was often much more of a political organ than of an industrial venture. All of the many enterprises of Defoe in this field of journalism united indeed both characteristics. But if he was a keen tradesman, he was also a passionate politician. And not a few of his fellow workers in that field were conspicuous as statesmen no less than as journalists. Even less than twenty years before the appearance of Johnson's remarks, men of the mental calibre of Henry Fielding were still to be found amongst the editors and writers of newspapers. The task had fallen to a different class of men in 1750. The history of newspapers during the long reign of George III. is a history of the struggle for freedom of speech in the face e+' repeated criminal prosecutions, in which individual writers and editors were defeated and severely punished, Press prosecu while the Press itself derived new strength from the tons. protracted conflict, and turned ignominious penalties into signal triumphs. From the days of Wilkes's North Briton onwards (see WILKES, JOHN: it was started in 1761), every conspicuous newspaper prosecution gave tenfold currency to the doctrines that were assailed. In the earlier part of this period men who were mere traders in politicswhose motives were obviously base and their lives contemptiblebecame for a time powers in the state, able to brave king, legislature and law courts, by virtue of the simple truth that a free people must have a free press. One of the minor incidents of the North Briton excitement (Wilkes's prosecution in 1763) led indirectly to valuable results with reference to the much-vexed question of parliamentary reporting. During the discussions respecting the Middlesex election, Almon, a bookseller, collected from members of the House of Commons some particulars of the debates, and published them in the London Evening Post. The success which attended these reports induced the proprietors of the St James's Chronicle to employ a reporter to collect notes3 " Fourth Report of the Committee of Secrecy," &c., in Hansard's Parliamentary History, xii. 814. author utters and defends his opinions on public affairs against a host of able and bitter assailants. Some of the numbers were written during travel, some in Edinburgh. But the Review appeared regularly. When interrupted by the pressure of the Stamp Act (which came into force on the 1st of August 1712), the writer modified the form of his paper, and began a new series (August 2, 1712, to June 1t, 1713). In those early and monthly supplements of his paper which he entitled " Advice from the Scandalous Club," and set apart for the discussion of questions of literature and manners, and sometimes of topics of a graver kind, Defoe to some extent anticipated Richard Steele's Taller (1709) and Steele and Addison's Spectator (1711). In 1705 he severed those supplements from his chief newspaper, and published them twice a week as the Little Review. But they soon ceased to appear. It may here be added that in May 1716 Defoe began a new monthly paper under an old title, Mercurius Politicus, . . . "by a lover of old England." This journal continued to appear until September 1720. The year 1710 was marked by the appearance of the Examiner, or Re-marks upon Papers and Occurrences (No. 1, August 3), of which thirteen numbers appeared by the co-operation of Bolingbroke, Prior, Freind and King before it was placed under the sole control of Swift. The Whig Examiner, avowedly intended " to censure the writings of others, and to give all persons a rehearing who had suffered under any unjust sentence of the Examiner," followed on the 1st September, and the Medley three weeks afterwards. This increasing popularity and influence of the newspaper press could not fail to be distasteful to the government of the day. Prosecutions were multiplied, but with small stamp success. At length some busy projector hit upon tax of 1712. the expedient of a newspaper tax. The paper which seems to contain the first germ of the plan is still preserved amongst the treasury papers. It is anonymous and undated, but probably belongs to the year 1711. " There are published weekly," says the writer, " about 44,000 newspapers, viz. Daily Courant, London Post, English Post, London Gazette, Postman, Postboy, Flying Post, Review and Observator."1 The duty eventually imposed (1712) was a halfpenny on papers of half a sheet or less, and a penny on such as ranged from half a sheet to a single sheet (10 Anne, c. xix. rot). The first results of the tax cannot be more succinctly or more vividly described than in the following characteristic passage of Swift's Journal to Stella (August 7, 1712) : " Do you know that Grub Street is dead and. gone last week? No more ghosts or murders now for love or money. I plied it close the last fortnight, and published at least seven papers of my own, besides some of other people's; but now every single half-sheet pays a halfpenny to the queen. The Observator is fallen; the Medleys are jumbled together with the Flying Post; the Examiner is deadly sick; the Spectator keeps up, and doubles its priceI know not how long it will hold. Have you seen the red stamp the papers are marked with? Methinks the. stamping is worth a halfpenny." Swift's doubt as to the ability of the Spectator to hold out against the tax was justified by its discontinuance in December 1712, Steele starting the Guardian in 1713, which only ran for six months. But the impost which was thus fruitful in mischief, by suppressing much good literature, wholly failed in keeping out bad. Some of the worst journals that were already in existence kept their ground, and the number of such ere long increased.' An enumeration of the London papers of 1714 comprises the Daily Courant, the Examiner, the British Merchant, the Lover, the Patriot, the Monitor, the Flying Post, the Postboy, Mercator, the Weekly Pacquet and Dunton's Ghost. Another enumeration in 1733 includes the Daily Courant, the Craftsman, Fog's Journal, Mist's Journal, the London Journal, the Free 1 " A Proposition to Increase the Revenue of the Stamp-Office," Redington, Calendar of Treasury Papers, 7708-7774, p. 235. The stamp-office dated from 1694, when the earliest duties on paper and parchment were enacted. 2 See the Burney collection of newspapers in the British Museum; and Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, iv. 33-97. in the lobby and at the coffee-houses. This repeated infraction editor. At length the Morning Chronicle ended in the Bankruptcy of the privilege of secret legislation led to the memorable proceed- ings of the House of Commons in 1771, with their fierce debates, angry resolutions and arbitrary imprisonmentsall resulting, at length, in that tacit concession of publicity of discussion which in the main, with brief occasional exceptions, has ever since prevailed. Evening journalism in England started originally with supple-mental editions of the morning papers, giving the latest foreign war news. In July 1695, when William III. was evendon fighting France in the Netherlands, a " Postscript to pass, the Pacquet-boat from Holland to Flanders was published with special advices from the seat of war; and from that time there were frequent afternoon issues of morning journals, giving war news. In August 1706 a " Six at Night " evening paper was started in London. The first London evening paper of any importance, however, was the Courier (1792), which during the latter part of the Napoleonic War, with Mackintosh, Coleridge and Wordsworth among its contributors, became one of the chief papers of the day. It was edited successively by Daniel Stuart, William Mudford, Eugenius Roche, John Galt, James Stuart and Laman Blanchard. In 1827 a twenty-fourth share in the paper sold for 5000 guineas, but it gradually declined and came to an end in 1842, when it was incorporated by the Globe (still existing). The principal metropolitan newspapers at different periods of George III.'s reign were the Public Advertiser, the Morning London Post, the Morning Chronicle, the Morning Herald press to and finally The Times. Of these the Morning Post Qeorge and The Times, still existing, are dealt with later. Of in.'s the three which eventually ceased to exist, the first reign. was known in 1726 as the London Daily Post and General Advertiser. In 1738 the first part of this title was dropped, and in 1752 General Advertiser was altered into Public Advertiser, a name which the letters of Junius made so famous. Many of these had appeared before the smallest perceptible effect was produced on the circulation of the paper; but when the " Letter to the King " came out (19th December 1769, almost a year from the beginning of the series) it caused an addition of 1750 copies to the ordinary impression. The effect of subsequent letters was variable; but when Junius ceased to write the monthly sale of the paper had risen to 83,950. This was in December 1771. Seven years earlier the monthly sale had been but 47,515. It now became so valuable a property that shares in it were sold, according to John Nichols, " as regularly as those of the New River Company." But the fortunes of the Advertiser declined almost as rapidly as they had risen. It continued to appear until 1798, and then expired, being amalgamated with the commercial paper called the Public Ledger (dating from 1759). Actions for libel were brought against the paper by Edmund Burke in 1784, and by William Pitt in 1785, and in both suits damages were given. The Morning Chronicle was begun in 1769. William Woodfall was its printer, reporter and editor, and continued to conduct it until 1789. James Perry succeeded him as editor, and so continued, with an interval during which the editorship was in the hands of Mr Sergeant Spankie, until his death in 1821. Perry's editorial -functions were occasionally discharged in Newgate in consequence of repeated prosecutions for political libel. In 1819 the daily sale reached nearly 4000. It was sold in 1823 to Mr Clement, the purchase-money amounting to 42,000. Mr Clement held it for about eleven years, and then sold it to Sir John Easthope for 16,000. It was then, and until 1843, edited by John Black, who numbered amongst his staff Albany Fonblanque, Charles Dickens and John Payne Collier, the circulation being about 6000. The paper continued to be distinguished by much literary ability, but not by commercial prosperity. In 1849 (the circulation having fallen to 3000) it became the joint property of the duke of Newcastle, Mr W. E. Gladstone and some of their political friends; and by them, in 1854, it was sold to Mr Sergeant Glover. From 1848 to 1854 Douglas Cook (afterwards of the Saturday Review) was Court, after an existence of more than ninety years. The Morning Herald was founded and first edited by Henry Bate (Sir Henry Bate Dudley) in 1781, and came to an end at the close of 1869; for some time it was a popular Tory paper, and from 1835 to 1845 had a circulation of about 6000. The development of the Press was enormously assisted by the gradual abolition of the " taxes on knowledge," and also by the introduction of a cheap postal system. In Abortion 1756 an additional halfpenny was added to the tax ottnxes of 1712. In 1765 and in 1773 various restrictive on know-regulations were imposed. In 1789 the three-halfpence ledge. was increased to twopence, in 1798 to twopence-halfpenny, in r8o4 to threepence-halfpenny, and in 1815 to fourpence, less a discount of 20%. Penalties of all kinds were also increased, and obstructive regulations were multiplied. In the course of the struggle between this constantly enhanced taxation and the irrepressible desire for cheap newspapers, more than seven hundred prosecutions for publishing unstamped journals were instituted, and more than five hundred were imprisoned, sometimes for considerable periods. As the prosecutions multiplied, and the penalties became more serious, Poor Man's Guardians, Democrats, Destructives and their congeners multiplied also, and their revolutionary tendencies increased in a still greater ratio. Blasphemy was added to sedition. Penny and halfpenny journals were established which dealt exclusively with narratives of gross vice and crime, and which vied with each other in every kind of artifice to make vice and. crime attractive. Between the years 1831 and 1835 many scores of unstamped newspapers made their appearance. The political tone of most of them was fiercely revolutionary. Prosecution followed prosecution; but all failed to suppress the obnoxious publications. To Bulwer Lytton, the novelist and politician (Baron Lytton), and subsequently to Milner Gibson and Richard Cobden, is chiefly due the credit of grappling with this question in the House of Commons in a manner which secured first the reduction of the tax to a penny on the 15th of September 1836, and then its total abolition at last in 1855. The measure for the final abolition of the stamp tax was substantially prepared by W. E. Gladstone during his chancellorship of the exchequer in 1854, but was carried by his successor in 1855. The number of news-papers established from the early part of 1855, when the repeal of the duty had become a certainty, and continuing in existence at the beginning of 1857, amounted to 107; 26 were metropolitan and 81 provincial. Of the latter, the majority belonged to towns which possessed no newspaper whatever under the Stamp Acts, and the price of nearly one-third of them was but a penny. In some cases, however, a portion of these new cheap papers of 1857 was printed in London, usually with pictorial illustrations, and to this was added a local supplement containing the news of the district. Amongst the earliest results of the change in newspaper law made in 1855 was the establishment in quick succession of a series of penny metropolitan local papers, chiefly suburban, of a kind very different from their unstamped forerunners. They spread rapidly, and attained considerable success, chiefly as advertising sheets, and as sometimes the organs, more often the critics, of the local vestries and other administrations. One of them, the Clerkenwell News and. Daily Chronicle, so prospered in the commercial sense, being crowded with advertisements, that it sold for 30,000, and was then transformed into the London Daily Chronicle (28th May 1877). Another conspicuous result of the legislation of 1855 was an enormous increase in the number and influence of what are known as " class papers " and professional and trade papers. The duties on paper itself were finally abolished in 1861. " Taxes on knowledge " having thus been abolished, the later developments in newspaper history are mainly connected with the increase in number, due largely to the spread of education, the improvements in machinery and distribution and in collection of news, the constant adaptation to the new demands of a wider public, and the progress in the art of advertising editorial duties on others, at first Sir William Hardman, and then as applied to the Press. The following sections on the more successively Mr A. K. Moore, Mr Algernon Locker, Mr James Nicol I Dunn (from 1897 to 1905; afterwards editor of the Manchester important newspapers in London and the Provinces fill in the I Courier) and Mr Fabian Ware; under them the literary standard of remaining details of the history of the British Press, so far the paper was kept at a high level, and constant improvements were as they are substantially important or interesting. Much that introduced; and the staffincluded a number of well-known writers, is in its nature ephemeral or trivial is necessarily passed notably Mr Spencer Wilkinson (b. 1853), who in 1909 was appointed professor of military history at Oxford. From 1897 till his death in 1905, at the age of thirty-two, Lord Glenesk's son, Oliver Borthwick, had much to do with the managerial side. On Lord Glenesk's own death on the 24th November 1908, the proprietorship passed to the trustees of his only surviving child, a daughter, who in 1893 had married the 7th Earl Bathurst. The Times' is usually dated from the 1st of January 1788, but was really started by John Walter on the 1st of January 1785, under the title of The London Daily Universal Register, printed logographically. On its reaching its 94oth issue its name The was changed. The logographic or "word-printing" process Times." had been invented by a printer named Henry Johnson several years before, and found a warm advocate in John Walter, who expounded its peculiarities at great length in No. 510 of his Daily Universal Register. In a later number he stated, very amusingly, his reasons for adopting the altered title, which the enterprise and ability of his successors (see WALTER, Jo11N) made world-famous. Within two years John Walter had his share in the Georgian persecutions of the press, by successive sentences to three fines and to three several imprisonments in Newgate, chiefly for having stated that the prince of Wales and the dukes of York and Clarence had so misconducted themselves " as to incur the just disapprobation of his Majesty. In 1803 the management was transferred (together with the join;, proprietorship of the journal) to his son, John Walter (2), by whom it was carried on with extraordinary energy and consummate ability, and at the same time with marked independence. To Lord Sid-mouth's government he gave a general but independent support. That of Pitt he opposed, especially on the questions of the Catamaran expedition and the malversations of Lord Melville. This opposition was resented by depriving the elder Walter of the printing for the customs department, by the withdrawal of government advertisements from The Times, and also, it is said, by the systematic detention at the outports of the foreign intelligence addressed to its editor. John Walter the Second, however, was strong and resolute enough to brave the government. He organized a better system of news transmission than had ever before existed. He introduced steam-printing (1814) and repeatedly improved its mechanism (see PRINTING) ; and although modern machines may now seem to thrust into insignificance a press of which it was at first announced as a notable triumph that " no less than 1100 sheets are impressed in one hour," yet the assertion was none the less true that The Times of 29th November 1814 " presented to the public the practical result of the by them; and in that year the management was entrusted to Peter greatest improvement connected with printing since the discovery Borthwick (1804-1852), a Scotsman who, after graduation both at of the art itself." The effort to secure for The Times the best attain-Edinburgh and Cambridge , had taken to politics in the Conservativeinterest and had sat in parliament for Evesham from 1835 to 1838 and from 1841 to 1847, when he was almost ruined by fighting an election petition in which he was unseated. Peter Borthwick took the task of reviving the paper seriously in hand, and in a few years was already improving its position when he fell ill and died; and he was succeeded in 1852 by his son Algernon Borthwick, afterwards Lord Glenesk (1830-1908). The later history of the paper is primarily connected with its practical re-establishment and successful conduct under the latter. Algernon Borthwick had been its Paris correspondent from 1850, and had shown social gifts and journalistic acumen of great promise. When he became managing editor in 1852 he devoted himself with such energy to the work that in seven years the debt on the business had been paid off. He gave the paper a strong political colour, Conservative, Imperialist and Protectionist; and in the 'fifties and 'sixties Borthwick was a keen supporter of Lord Palmerston. After the death of Mr Crompton, his nephew, Mr Rideout, the principal surviving partner in the paper manufacturing firm, was so impressed with Borthwick's success that he vested the entire control of the paper in him for life; and on Mr Rideout's death in 1877, Borthwick was enabled, by the help of his friend Andrew Montague, to buy the property and become sole proprietor. The Morning Post had now become, largely through Borthwick's own social qualities, the principal organ of the fashion-able world; but in 1881 he took what was then considered the hazardous step of reducing its price from threepence to a penny, and appealing no longer to the " threepenny public " with The Times but to a wider clientele with the Daily Telegraph and Standard. The result was a ten-fold increase in circulation and a financial success exceeding all anticipations. Borthwick himself, who was knighted in 1880, and was created a baronet in 1887, had entered parliament in 1880 for Evesham, and from 1885 to 1895 sat for South Kensington, being finally raised to the peerage in 1895. His political gifts naturally increased the influence of the paper; he supported the " Tory democracy " and was an active worker for the Primrose League, of which he was three times chancellor; and the Morning Post, under his control, became one of the great organs of opinion on the Conservative side. From 1880 onwards he devolved the over. Modern London Newspapers. The Morning Post (oldest of existing London daily papers) dates from 1772. For some years it was in the hands of Henry Bate "Morning (Sir Henry Bate Dudley), and it attained some degree of Post." temporary popularity, though of no very enviable sort. In 1795 the entire copyright, with house and printing materials, was sold for L600 to Peter and Daniel Stuart, who quickly raised the position of the Post by enlisting Sir James Mackintosh and the poet Coleridge in its service, and also by giving unremitting attention to advertisements and to the copious supply of incidental news and amusing paragraphs. There has been much controversy about the share which Coleridge had in elevating the Post from obscurity to eminence. That he greatly promoted this result there can be no doubt. His famous " Character of Pitt," published in 1800, was especially successful, and created |
