Blog #4: EOTO- Newspaper

Early Newspapers

The newspaper wasn't invented at a specific time or place, but it evolved into its creation with the development of technology. One of the earliest forms of newspaper was in Ancient Rome in 59 BCE, called Acta Diurna. 

These were daily government news updates that were handwritten and posted publicly. Information such as events, births, deaths, daily gossip, military campaigns, executions, and more were shared with the people.

A similar system occurred in 1556 in Venice, Italy. This newspaper, also known as Avisi, was centered on military and political notices.

Both of these newspapers were handwritten by scribes since the printing press was not yet invented, or widespread. Scribes could only write a limited number of copies by hand. Therefore, it was common for some community members to be uninformed.

Impact of the Movable Type Printing Press

The world of newspaper was forever changed when Johannes Gutenberg created the movable type printing press, a machine that could print many copies of paper quickly at a large rate. This was revolutionary compared to the block printing method, where the writing would be carefully carved into a block of wood before being transferred onto the paper in ink. It was laborious and time consuming. 

In contrast, the movable type sparked efficiency with the individual metal letters and symbols that could be arranged quickly to form any message. This was incredibly useful because the printer operators spent far less time carefully making the message into the wood, and they were able to focus on maximizing their output of copies.

Gutenberg's innovation was a game-changer and began the Printing Revolution. The mass production of newspapers allowed for the thorough dissemination of information.

The Penny Press

Newspapers in America were quite costly for the time, generally six cents. The high expense was another obstacle to distributing newspapers and having a well informed society.

In 1833, Benjamin Day took note of the high price and created a New York City newspaper called The Sun. His paper found major success because he sold each one for only one cent to gain a larger working class audience. This became known as the Penny Press.

Comic Strips

In 1896, comic strips were introduced into newspapers. Publishers wanted to attract more customers to their papers by including comics for immigrants and non-English speakers to look at, since they could not understand the written news.

Yellow Journalism

While the newspaper is a fundamental step in the progression of communication in society, one downside is the spread of misinformation. Publishers and editors became greedy for more people to buy and be interested in their newspapers, so they wrote deceiving titles. These titles make the story seem intriguing and tempt people to buy it to find out more information.

Known as Yellow Journalism, Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph created the term as two opposing publishers who would alter the information and exaggerate for a larger profit.

Click Baiting

This reminded me of the very common concept of click baiting today. Click baiting is when titles of videos or online articles entice the viewer to click on them by exaggerating or rephrasing information. Often, when the viewer is baited in and clicks on the title, they do not find anything about what the title insinuates. This strategy uses its misleading nature to achieve more viewers, which is similar to Yellow Journalism in the newspaper industry.