Newspaper

a printed sheet giving the news. Newspapers may be classed as general or special. General newspapers give not only local news, but the doings of the world at large. They contain usually local news and announcements, press dispatches, correspondence, editorial comment, and advertisements. Special newspapers are devoted to some particular subject as Presbyterianism, coal mining, the grocery trade, temperance, law, literature, etc. A daily newspaper contains frequently as much reading material as the ordinary volume of fiction that lists for a dollar and a half, but it differs from the magazine and the book in that it is never bound.

The modern newspaper has grown out of official bulletins issued by various governments. The Romans were accustomed to post bulletins giving an account of the progress of wars, the acts of the Senate, the opinions of public speakers, and a record of trials, punishments, deaths, public sacrifices, and the like. Proceedings were taken down by shorthand writers and were afterward written out by clerks for posting.

The earliest printed newspaper was the Pekin Gazette first issued about 1340. It is still printed. It is an official journal having rather the form of a pamphlet. It contains from twenty-five to eighty leaves of coarse paper, printed on one side with rude wooden type. The earliest European newspapers were published in Germany. They appeared somewhat irregularly at Augsburg, Vienna, Ratisbon, and Nuremberg. Among other news was an announcement of the discovery of America and a discussion of its importance, or otherwise, to the rest of the civilized world. A file of sixteenth century Venetian papers covering a period of sixty years is preserved in a library at Florence. Regular newspapers were established in Germany before they were in France and England. The Frankfurter Zeitung was established in 1615. At the end of the seventeenth century, there were thirty daily newspapers in Germany. The Allgemeine Zeitung, founded in 1798, is probably the most important German newspaper. German papers do not rank high, however, either in number, efficiency, or popularity.

Printed bulletins seem to have appeared in England as early as 1462. There were several newspapers in Cromwell's time. Commercial advertisements appeared as early as 1652. The first London daily, the Daily Courant, appeared in 1709. The Tatler, The Spectator, The Rambler, and other sheets famous in literature appeared in newspaper form. The London Times, said to be the most influential paper in the world, was founded under another name January 18, 1785. Other important English papers are The Chronicle, The Post, The Telegraph, The Standard, The Graphic, The Pall Mall Gazette, etc.

The Dublin News-Letter, the first paper appearing in Ireland, was established in 1685. Passing by other Scotch papers, it may be said that the Edinburgh Gazette was founded in 1699 and the Glasgow Herald in 1782. The first French newspaper dates from 1631. The most important paper in France is probably the Temps. Le Petit Journal has a daily circulation of a million copies.

The first American newspaper appeared at Boston September 25, 1690. It was printed on a single sheet, eleven by fourteen inches, and was folded once. Three pages were printed, the fourth page was plain. There were in all six eleven-inch columns of reading matter. The editor called it Publick Occurrences. He proposed to furnish the country with the newspaper once a month, or, "if any glut of occurrences appear, oftener." Anticipating the difficulty of getting reliable information he proposed naively to print from time to time the names of such as gave him false information. Some words in the paper being construed as a reflection upon the British authorities, he was forbidden to continue the publication. The publication of the Boston News-Letter was begun April 24, 1704, by John Campbell, postmaster and bookseller. It was printed on a sheet of foolscap paper. It appeared regularly. Inside of forty years the subscription list had run up to three hundred. In 1719 Campbell lost his office. His successor began the publication of a rival paper, the Boston Gazette. A war of editors set in and continued until the News-Letter went out of existence, which it did when the British evacuated Boston in 1776. In 1721 the New England Courant was established in Boston. It is of interest because it was published by a brother of Benjamin Franklin and was printed in the office in which young Benjamin learned his trade.

Speaking for the United States alone, the first daily paper appeared in Philadelphia in 1784. It published Washington's farewell address. The first paper in the Northwest Territory was The Sentinel, founded at Cincinnati in 1793. The first religious newspaper was The Recorder, published at Chillicothe, Ohio, in 1814. The first agricultural paper, The American Farmer, was established in 1818, at Baltimore. The first anti-slavery paper, The Genius of Universal Emancipation, was published in 1821 at Mount Pleasant, Ohio. The first penny paper was The Sun, published in New York in 1833. The first American newspaper boys were employed to sell The Sun. It was at first a little sheet about ten inches square. The first illustrated daily, The Daily Graphic, was launched in New York in 1873. The oldest newspaper in the United States still published is said to be the Maryland Gazette of Annapolis, founded in 1745. Next in order is the Hampshire Gazette, founded at Portsmouth in 1756. The Pittsburg Gazette and the Cincinnati Gazette are the oldest papers published west of the Alleghany Mountains. As late as 1810, there were no newspapers west of the Mississippi and no dailies in the United States that had a circulation greater than nine hundred.

When the first number of Publick Occurrences is held in mind, the present magnitude of the newspaper and periodical business in the United States is startling. According to the last census report capital to the amount of $240,000,000 is invested in the business of newspaper and periodical publication. The circulation of newspapers and periodicals for the year 1905 was 10,325,000,000 copies. The amount received from advertising was $145,000,000, and the amount from subscriptions and sales $111,000,000. According to statistics for 1908 the states having over a thousand weekly and daily newspapers are New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa, and Missouri. There are five English newspapers in the Philippines. Alaska has twenty-three. The white paper of a leading New York daily costs $25,000 to $40,000 a day. In 1905 the American press used 1,821,000,000 pounds of paper valued at $309,000,000.

There are in round numbers about 60,000 newspapers in the world, distributed as follows:

The number is growing rapidly in the newly settled portions of the world. About half of the world's newspapers are printed in English.

See Periodical; Books