William Lyne, Home Secretary, represented New South Wales, were sworn in at Sydney amidst great rejoicings. Large contingents of troops from New South Wales were sent to South Africa during 1899 and 1900. (G. C. L.)
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 (q.v.), mean the daily or (at most) weekly publications which are principally concerned with reporting and commenting upon general current events. 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 Acta Diurna and the Chinese Peking Gazette may be mentioned here, if only on account of their historical interest. The Acta 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 Gazette, 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 cover—which, 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;[1] for it was a half-sheet in folio, two pages, and not a “pamphlet” as previous periodicals of news had been. A pamphlet (q.v.) was one or more 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 news—a “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 dernièrement passé”—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 Netherlands. 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, however, 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 gazetti (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. γάζα, 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 understood—taking “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 itself—is a combination of the mere recording or reporting of news and of its presentation in such a way, and with such comment, Journalism. 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
- ↑ 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.”
