# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Newspapers

See also Newspaper on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​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; 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 ​keen political strife of the years 1704–1740. There is no counterpart 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 du 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 1870 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 century—somewhat 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 Petersburg—the patriarch of Russian newspapers—dating 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 of 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 staff—the compositors, foundry-men and machinists—or 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 independence which—since editorial possibilities ultimately depend on financial resources—has 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 engaged—however much managerial exigencies may dictate its policy—in 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” departments), ​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 importance—the 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 ingenuity—which now combine to develop public opinion on great public interests, and to guide it—would 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 The influence of American journalism. 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 great changes in the condition and character of American newspapers. (1) Paper was enormously cheapened. Before and during the Civil War it cost large New York newspapers at times 22 cents per ℔ for even a poor quality. In 1864 it cost 16 cents in February, and ran up a cent every month till in midsummer 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 ℔; 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 ℔. 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 $1 as much paper as would have cost them $3 twenty years earlier, or $10 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. The establishment of a strong telegraph company, capable of efficient competition with the one which practically controlled the inland service in 1880, likewise cheapened domestic news by telegraph and increased its volume. The companies presently recognized their interest in encouraging rival news associations, and so getting double work for the wires, while promoting the establishment of new papers. Wild competition between news agencies was thus encouraged (even in the cases of some already known to be bankrupt) to the extent of credits of a quarter or half a million dollars on telegraphic tolls. The rapid spread of long-distance telephone lines further contributed to this tendency to make the whole continent a whispering gallery for the press. Every great paper had both telegraph and telephone wires run directly into its newsroom.
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 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 thereafter 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 cheaper 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 encourage 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 extension 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 a 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 the great 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 newspapers is the importance attached to obtaining, and prominently displaying, “news” of all sorts, and incidentally there has been a considerable change of view as to what sort of news should be given prominence. Sport and finance are treated at greater length and more popularly; Characteristics of modern newspapers. and, partly owing to the largely increased 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 individuals—either men or women—of 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 produced by the Education Act of 1870 and the Reform Act of 1885; and it affected more or less all countries which came within the influence of free institutions. The most generally adopted American innovation (for, though not known before even in England, it was practically a new thing as carried out in American newspapers) was the “interview” (the report in dialogue form of a conversation with some prominent person, whose views were thus elicited by a reporter), which during the early ’nineties was taken up in varying degrees by English newspapers; it was “cheap copy”—the word “copy” covering in journalistic slang any matter in the shape of an article—and could easily be made both informing and interesting; and “interviewing” caused a large increase in the journalistic profession, notably among women. The rage for the “interview” again declined in vogue outside American journalism in proportion as people of importance became less ready to talk for publication—or for nothing.
From the highest class of paper downwards, however, real news—and especially early news—has 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 Typesetting (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 1880 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 “reviewed” 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 newspaper, 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 methods—while rightly employed by journalists, as such, in dealing with contemporary events and for strictly contemporary purposes—is 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 description—notably Mr ​Alfred Harmsworth’s (Lord Northcliffe’s) Answers (1888) and Mr C. Arthur Pearson’s Pearson’s Weekly (1890)—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 clientèle. 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 opinion—well-informed, scholarly and incisive—may 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’être 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 “letters to the editor.” It is sometimes said that in England the London Times 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 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 enormous—and none the less real because subtle—influence; 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 opinion 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 books—all tending to increase the publicity of modern life—has 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. Ch.)
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 Price of newspapers. 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 halfpenny and farthing Posts sprang into existence, and appeared at more or less irregular intervals. These consisted of small leaflets, containing a few items of news—sometimes accompanied by advertisements—and 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 contemplate a stamp tax of a penny per sheet on all news publications. As a protest, a curious pamphlet—of which a copy is preserved in the British Museum—was issued in 1701, and it sheds an interesting light upon this early phase of cheap journalism. 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 newspapers (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 halfpenny 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 ​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 development—and indeed the possibility—of 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 newspapers 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 enterprises 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 Illustration). The earliest attempts at popular illustration of news events took the form in England of “broadsides.” One broadside dated 1587 recounted the Valiant Exploits of Sir Francis Drake; another dated 1607 Illustrated papers. 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 later—in 1683—the 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 picture pamphlet 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 conquered 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 broadside describing Great Britain’s Lamentations, or the Funeral Obsequies of that most incomparable Protestant Princess—Queen Mary, the wife of William III., in 1695—we 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 421/2 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 1821—the Coronation number—contained four engravings. Of the George IV. Coronation number Mr Clement sold 60,000 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 subordinate 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 Times, 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 1840.
The first number of the Illustrated London News appeared on 14th May 1842. Its founder was Herbert Ingram (1811–1860), 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 him—a 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 illustrations—was 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 Über Land und 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 1910 three London daily newspapers were principally devoted to illustration—the 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 due, to 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 halftone came in well-nigh simultaneously. Up to 1890 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 effectively—often 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-making and machinery for facilitating their production having made particularly rapid strides.  (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; but an outline of the general results for 1828, 1866 and 1882, together with a fourth, as given in the 10th edition of this encyclopaedia for 1900, may have its utility.Comparative statistics.
The earliest summary is that of Adrien Balbi. It was published in the Revue encyclopédique 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 80; Prussia, 288; rest of the Germanic Confederation, 305; Netherlands, 150; Spain, 16; Portugal and the Azores, 17; Denmark, Sweden and Norway, 161; Russia and Poland, 84. The respective proportions of journals to populations were—for Prussia 1 to 41,500, German states 1 to 45,300, United Kingdom 1 to 46,000, France 1 to 64,000, Switzerland 1 to 66,000, Austria 1 to 400,000, Russia 1 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 Eugène Hatin in an appendix to his valuable Bibliothèque de la presse périodique His enumeration of newspapers is as follows: France, 1640; United Kingdom, 1260; Prussia, 700; Italy, 500; Austria-Hungary, 365; Switzerland, 300; Belgium, 275; Holland, 225; Russia, 200; Spain, 200; Sweden and Norway, 150; Denmark, 100; United States, 4000. Here the proportions of papers to population are—Switzerland and United States 1 to 7000, Belgium 1 to 17,000, France and the United Kingdom 1 to 20,000, Prussia 1 to 30,000, Spain 1 to 75,000, Austria 1 to 100,000, Russia 1 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 1880, cannot be disregarded. The following are his general results:—
The following summary for 1900, given in the 10th 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 newspaper, as distinct from periodicals.
Totals of Newspapers, 1900. :
| Great Britain and Ireland | 2,902 | Belgium | 290 |
| United States | 15,904 | Holland | 312 |
| France | 2,400 | Luxemburg | 12 |
| Germany | 3,278 | Russia | 280 |
| Austria | 393 | Italy | 251 |
| Hungary | 171 | Spain | 338 |
| Sweden | 213 | Portugal | 79 |
| Denmark | 145 | Switzerland | 600 |
| Iceland and Faroe Islands | 3 | Greece | 47 |
| Norway | 132 | Rumania | 47 ​ |
| Servia | 24 | Central and West Indies | 129 |
| Bulgaria | 15 | South American Republics | 340 |
| Montenegro | 2 | Australasia— | |
| Turkey | 22 | New South Wales | 227 |
| Persia | 3 | Queensland | 109 |
| Syria | 6 | South Australia | 44 |
| India | 600 | Victoria | 310 |
| Ceylon | 10 | West Australia | 18 |
| China | 40 | Tasmania | 18 |
| Siam | 5 | New Zealand— | |
| Straits Settlements | 12 | Otago | 28 |
| Cochin China | 4 | Wellington | 29 |
| Japan | 150 | Auckland | 17 |
| East Indies | 39 | Hawkes Bay | 11 |
| South Africa | 109 | Canterbury | 23 |
| West Africa | 10 | Sundry | 36 |
| Central Africa, &c. | 76 | | |
| Egypt | 21 | | |
| Canada | 742 | Total | 31,026 |
2. British Newspapers
United Kingdom.
The first regular English journalists may be identified with the writers of manuscript “news-letters,” originally the dependants 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 “intelligence 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 Early news-letters. 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-letters—some 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 news—held 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 in his Life of Ruddiman (1794) as being (with others of the same date) in the British Museum. The falsehood of this supposition, which was long accepted on Early newspapers. 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 1850, in an article in the Gentleman’s Magazine (n.s. xxxiii 485-491). The documents in question are (1) a MS. unnumbered issue of the English Mercurie, dated “Whitehall, July 26th, 1588”; (2) a printed copy, No. 50, of 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 MDXCIV. 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. 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. But in May 1622 we arrive at a regular weekly newspaper which may still be seen in the British Museum. ​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 May—The 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 sometimes 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 1641, 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 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 11th, 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 30th 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 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, 1660). After the middle of 1650 there was a revival of some of the older licensed news-books; but the Weekly Intelligence of the Commonwealth (July 1650 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 grant—and, 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 treasonable 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 Newes, 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 The London Gazette. 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 £100 a year if he would give up his right in the news-book. 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.” 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 £100 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 care—as the Gazette is the only paper of authority printed in this country—never 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. The editorship is a government appointment.
We come now to the Revolution. The very day after the departure of James II. was marked by the appearance of three newspapers—The 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 Lloyd—the virtual founder of the famous “Lloyd’s” of commerce—started 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 List—published 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 First London daily. the first successful London daily newspaper, the Daily Courant (11th 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 a week. It continued substantially in its first form until July 29, 1712; and a complete set is of extreme rarity. Defoe’s Review. From the first page to the last it is characterized by the manly ​boldness and persistent tenacity with which the almost unaided 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 11, 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 Tatler (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 Remarks 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 success. At length some busy projector hit upon the expedient of a newspaper tax. The paper which seems to contain the first germ of the plan is still Stamp tax of 1712. 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.” 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. § 101). 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 price—I 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 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.” 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 Dr Johnson’s time. newspapers continued to rise. Dr Johnson, who in 1750 started his twopenny bi-weekly Rambler, and in 1758 his weekly Idler, writing in the latter bears testimony to the still growing thirst for news: “Journals 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 newspapers 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 of repeated criminal prosecutions, in which individual writers and editors were defeated and severely punished, while the Press itself derived new strength from the protracted conflict, and turned ignominious penalties Press prosecutions. 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 politics—whose motives were obviously base and their lives contemptible—became 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 notes ​in the lobby and at the coffee-houses. This repeated infraction of the privilege of secret legislation led to the memorable proceedings of the House of Commons in 1771, with their fierce debates, angry resolutions and arbitrary imprisonments—all 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 supplemental editions of the morning papers, giving the latest foreign war news. In July 1695, when William III. was fighting France in the Netherlands, a “Postscript to the Pacquet-boat from Holland to Flanders” was published with special advices from the seat of war; London evening press. 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 Post, the Morning Chronicle, the Morning Herald and finally The Times. Of these the Morning Post and The Times, still existing, are dealt with later. Of the three which eventually ceased to exist, the first London press in George III.’s 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 editor. At length the Morning Chronicle ended in the Bankruptcy 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 1756 an additional halfpenny was added to the tax of 1712. In 1765 and in 1773 various restrictive regulations were imposed. In 1789 the three-halfpence ledge Abolition of taxes on knowledge. was increased to twopence, in 1798 to twopence-halfpenny, in 1804 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 newspapers 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 as applied to the Press. The following sections on the more important newspapers in London and the Provinces fill in the remaining details of the history of the British Press, so far as they are substantially important or interesting. Much that is in its nature ephemeral or trivial is necessarily passed 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 (Sir Henry Bate Dudley), and it attained some degree of temporary popularity, though of no very enviable sort. In 1795 the entire copyright, with house and printing materials, was sold for £600 to Peter and Daniel Stuart, who quickly “Morning Post.” 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 a demand for the particular number in which it appeared that lasted for weeks, a thing almost without precedent. Coleridge wrote for this paper from 1795 until 1802, and during that period its circulation in ordinary rose from 350 copies, on the average, to 4500. Whatever the amount of rhetorical hyperbole in Fox’s saying—recorded as spoken in the House of Commons—“Mr Coleridge’s essays in the Morning Post led to the rupture of the treaty of Amiens,” it is none the less a striking testimony, not only to Coleridge’s powers as a publicist, but to the position which the newspaper press had won, in spite of innumerable obstacles at that time. The list of his fellow-workers in the Post is a most brilliant and varied one. Besides Mackintosh, Southey and Arthur Young, it included a galaxy of poets. Many of the lyrics of Moore, many of the social verses of Mackworth Praed, some of the noblest sonnets of Wordsworth, were first published in the columns of the Post. And the story of the paper, in its early days, had tragic as well as poetic episodes. In consequence of offence taken at some of its articles, the editor and proprietor, Nicholas Byrne (who succeeded Daniel Stuart), was assaulted and murdered whilst sitting in his office.
Up to about 1850 the history of the Morning Post offers little to record; with the Morning Chronicle and Morning Herald, and having a smaller circulation than either of them, it was being rapidly eclipsed in London journalism by The Times (see below), and in 1847 only sold some three thousand copies. Heavily in debt to Messrs J. and T. B. Crompton, the paper manufacturers, it had been taken over by them; and in that year the management was entrusted to Peter Borthwick (1805–1852), a Scotsman who, after graduation both at Edinburgh and Cambridge, had taken to politics in the Conservative interest 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 fashionable 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 clientèle 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 editorial duties on others, at first Sir William Hardman, and then successively Mr A. K. Moore, Mr Algernon Locker, Mr James Nicol Dunn (from 1897 to 1905; afterwards editor of the Manchester Courier) and Mr Fabian Ware; under them the literary standard of the paper was kept at a high level, and constant improvements were introduced; and the staff included a number of well-known writers, 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 940th issue its name was changed. The logographic or “word-printing” process had been invented by a printer named Henry Johnson several years “The Times.” 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, John) 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 joint 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 Sidmouth’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 greatest improvement connected with printing since the discovery of the art itself.” The effort to secure for The Times the best attainable literary talent in all departments kept at least an equal pace with those which were directed towards the improvement of its mechanical resources. And thus it came to pass that a circulation which did not, even in 1815, exceed on the average 5000 copies became, in 1834, 10,000; in 1840, 18,500; in 1844, 23,000; in 1851, 40,000; and in 1854, 51,648. In the year last named the average circulation of the other London dailies was—Morning Advertiser, 7644; Daily News, 4160; Morning Herald, 3712; Morning Chronicle, 2800; Morning Post, 2667; so that the supremacy of The Times can readily be understood.
Sir John Stoddart, afterwards governor of Malta, edited The Times for several years prior to 1816. He was succeeded by Thomas Barnes, who for many years wrote largely in the paper. When his health began to fail the largest share of the editorial work came into the hands of Captain Edward Sterling—the contributor about a quarter of a century earlier of a noteworthy series of political letters signed “Vetus,” the Paris correspondent of The Times in 1814 and subsequent eventful years, and afterwards for many years the most conspicuous among its leader-writers. From 1841 to 1877 the chief editor was John Thadeus Delane, who had his brother-in-law G. W. Dasent for assistant-editor, and another brother-in-law, Mowbray Morris, as business manager. By the time of the second John Walter’s death (1847) the substantial monopoly of The Times in London journalism had been established; and under the proprietorship of the third John Walter the result of the labour of Delane as editor, and of the brilliant staff of contributors whom he directed, among whom Henry Reeve was conspicuous as regards foreign affairs, ​was to turn the “favourite broadsheet” of the English public into the “leading journal of the world.” When Delane retired, he was succeeded as editor by Thomas Chenery, and on his death in 1884 by George Earle Buckle (b. 1854). At the beginning of 1908 considerable changes took place in the proprietorial side of The Times, which was converted into a company, with Mr A. F. Walter (chief proprietor since 1891) as chairman and Mr C. Moberly Bell (b. 1847; manager since 1890) as managing director; the financial control passing into the hands of Lord Northcliffe.
In the history of The Times its influence on the mechanical side of newspaper work was very great. The increasing circulation of The Times between the years 1840 and 1850 made an improvement in the printing-presses necessary, as sometimes the publication could not be completed before the afternoon. To meet this want the Applegath vertical press was introduced in 1848 and the American Hoe ten-feeder press in 1858. Meanwhile the idea of stereotyping from the movable types had been making steady progress. About the year 1856, however, a Swiss named Dellagana introduced to The Times Kroning’s idea of casting from papier-mâché instead of plaster, and was allowed to experiment in The Times office. After a time the invention was so much improved that matrices of pages could be taken and the stereotype plates fixed bodily on the printing machine in place of the movable type. This cleared the way for the introduction of the famous Walter press. Hitherto only one set of “formes” could be used, as the type was set up once only—one side of the paper being worked on one machine and the sheets then taken to another machine to be “perfected.” Stereotyping enabled the formes to be multiplied to any extent, as several plates could be cast from one matrix. Mr MacDonald, the manager of The Times, had devoted himself for several years to the production of a press which could print papers on both sides in one operation from a large reel of paper, the web of paper being cut into the required size after printing, instead of each sheet being “laid on” by a man and then printed. After years of experiment the Walter press was introduced into the Times machine-room in 1869, and the question of printing great numbers in a short time was solved. Each press turned out 12,000 sheets per hour, and it was therefore only a question of multiplying the stereo plates and presses to obtain any number of printed papers by a certain time. Meanwhile Messrs Hoe had set about producing something even quicker and better than the Walter press. They succeeded in accomplishing this by multiplying the reels of paper on each press, and also adding folders and stitchers. The result was the production of over 36,000 sheets per hour from each machine. These presses were adopted by The Times in 1895.
In 1868 the question of composing machines for the quicker setting-up of type was taken up by The Times. A German named Kastenbein had an invention which he brought to the notice of The Times, and arrangements were made for him to continue his experiments in The Times office. In a couple of years a machine was made, which was worked and improved until in 1874 several machines were ready to set up a portion of the paper; but it was not until 1879 that the arrangements were sufficiently advanced to make certain that they could do all that was wanted from them. The introduction of composing machines, and the necessary alterations in the office arrangements which followed, led to some trouble among the compositors, which in 1880 culminated in a partial strike; but a part of the staff remaining loyal, the printer was able by extra effort to produce the paper at the proper time on the morning following the strike. Various improvements were made, until one machine was able to set up as many as 298 lines of The Times in one hour, equal to 16,688 separate types. A system of telephoning the parliamentary report from the House of Commons direct to the compositor was begun in 1885, and was continued until the House decided to rise at midnight, which enabled the more economical method of composing direct from the “copy” to be resumed.
Ever since the introduction of the composing machines the business had been much hampered by the question of “distribution”—that is, the breaking-up and sorting of the types after use. Kastenbein had invented a distributing machine to accompany his composing machine, but it proved to be unsatisfactory. Various systems were tried at The Times office, but for many years the work of the composing machines was to some extent crippled by the distribution difficulty. This had been recognized by Mr Frederick Wicks (d. 1910), the inventor of the Wicks Rotary Type-casting Machine, who for many years had been working at a machine which would cast new type so quickly and so cheaply as to do away with the old system of distribution and substitute new type every day. In 1899 his machine was practically perfect, and The Times entered into a contract with him to supply any quantity of new type every day. The difficult question of distribution was thus surmounted, and composition by machines placed on a satisfactory basis.
Thus during the last half of the 19th century The Times continued to take the lead in new inventions relating to the printing of a newspaper, just as it had in the fifty years preceding. The three most important advances during the later period were practically worked out at The Times office—namely, fast-printing presses, stereotyping and machine composing, and without these it is safe to say that the cheap newspaper of the present day could not exist. Further indications of the enterprise of The Times in taking up journalistic novelties may also be seen in its organizing a wireless telegraphy service, with a special steamer, in the Far East, at the opening of the Russo-Japanese War.
The price at which The Times has been sold has been changed at various dates: in 1796 to 41/2d., 1799 to 6d., 1809 to 61/2d., 1815 to 7d., 1836 to 5d., 1855 to 4d., 1861 (Oct. 1) to 3d., and in 1904 (still remaining at 3d.) it started a method of payment by subscription which gave subscribers an advantage in one form or another and thus in reality reduced the price further. In 1905 this advantage took the form of the price (3d.) covering a subscription to The Times Book Club, a circulating library and book-shop on novel lines (see Bookselling and Publishing).
The first number of the paper contained 57 brief advertisements, but as it grew in repute and in size its advertising revenue became very large, and with the growth of this revenue came pari passu the means of spending more money on the contents. As far back as 1861 a single issue had contained 105 columns of advertisements, and another 98. Prior to 1884 the paper had only on two occasions consisted of 24 pages in a single issue. Between that year and 1902 more than 80 separate issues of this size were published, many of them containing over 80 columns of advertisements. Of two issues, one containing the news of the death and the other the account of the funeral of Queen Victoria, 140,000 copies were printed. From that time issues of 20 pages and over became an ordinary matter: and on May 24, 1909 (Empire Day), The Times signalized the occasion by bringing out a huge supplement of 72 pages full of articles on Imperial topics.
The Times has long stood in a class by itself among newspapers, owing to its abundance of trustworthy news, its high literary standard and its command of the ablest writers, who, however, are generally anonymous in its columns. It has always claimed to be a national rather than a party organ. It was Liberal in its politics in the Reform days, but became more and more Conservative and Imperialist when the Unionist and anti-Home Rule era set in. On the conversion of Mr Gladstone to Home Rule, The Times was, indeed, largely instrumental in forming the Liberal-Unionist party. In the course of its vigorous campaign against Irish Nationalism it published as part of its case a series of articles on “Parnellism and Crime,” including what were alleged to be facsimile reproductions of letters from Mr Parnell showing his complicity with the Phoenix Park murders. The history of this episode, and of the appointment of the Special Commission of investigation by the government, is told under Parnell. One of the strongest features of The Times has been always its foreign correspondence.
Among leading incidents in the history of The Times a few may be more particularly mentioned. In 1840 the Paris correspondent of the paper (Mr O’Reilly) obtained information respecting a gigantic scheme of forgery which had been planned in France, together with particulars of the examination at Antwerp of a minor agent in the conspiracy, who had been there, almost by chance, arrested. All that he could collect on the subject, including the names of the chief conspirators, was published by The Times on the 26th of May in that year, under the heading “Extraordinary and Extensive Forgery and Swindling Conspiracy on the Continent (Private Correspondence).” The project contemplated the almost simultaneous presentation at the chief banking-houses throughout the Continent of forged letters of credit, purporting to be those of Glyn & Company, to a very large amount; and its failure appears to have been in a great degree owing to the exertions made, and the responsibility assumed, by The Times. One of the persons implicated brought an action for libel against the paper, which was tried at Croydon in August 1841, with a verdict for the plaintiff, one farthing damages. A subscription towards defraying the heavy expenses (amounting to more than £5000) which The Times had incurred was speedily opened, but the proprietors declined to profit by it; and the sum which had been raised was devoted to the foundation of two “Times scholarships,” in connexion with Christ’s Hospital and the City of London School. Three years afterwards The Times rendered noble public service in a different direction. It used its vast power with vigour—at the expense of materially checking the growth of its own advertisement fund—by denouncing the fraudulent schemes which underlay the “railway mania” of 1845. The Parnell affair has already been mentioned. And more recently the “book war,” arising out of the attack by the combined publishers on The Times Book Club in 1906, was prosecuted by The Times with great vigour, until in 1908 it came quietly to an end.
Various adjuncts to The Times, issued by its proprietors, have still to be mentioned. The Mail, published three times a week at the price of 2d. per number, gives a summary of two days’ issue of The Times. The Times Weekly Edition (begun in 1877) is published every Friday at 2d., and gives an epitome of The Times for the six days. The Law Reports (begun in 1884) are conducted by a special staff of Times law reporters. Commercial Cases deals with cases of a commercial nature. Issues is a useful half-yearly compilation of all the company announcements and demands for new capital, taken from the advertisement columns of The Times.
In 1897 The Times started a weekly literary organ under the title of Literature. In 1901, however, a weekly literary supplement to The Times was issued instead, and Literature passed into the hands of the proprietor of the Academy, with which paper it was incorporated. The “Literary Supplement,” which appears each Thursday ​(at first on Fridays), is printed in a different form, and separately paged. In 1904 a “Financial and Commercial Supplement” (at first on Mondays, and later on Fridays) was added; in 1905 an “Engineering Supplement” (Wednesdays), and in 1910 a “Woman’s supplement.”
The publishing department of The Times also invaded several new fields of enterprise. The Times Atlas was first published in 1895. and this publication was supplemented by that of The Times (previously Longmans’) Gazetteer. A much larger and more important venture was the issue in 1898 of a reprint of the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica at less than half the original price, on a new system of terms (known as The Times system) that enabled the purchaser to receive the whole work at once and to pay for it by a series of equal monthly payments. This was followed by a similar sale of the Century Dictionary and of a reprint of the first fifty years of Punch; and eleven new volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, supplementing the ninth edition, and forming with it the tenth edition, were issued by The Times in 1902 on similar terms (see Encyclopaedia).
In 1895 The Times, through its Vienna correspondent, purchased from Dr Moritz Busch the MS. and entire copyright of his journals, containing a very minute record of his intimate relations with Bismarck. It was stipulated in the contract that these were not to be published until after the death of the prince. That event occurred on the 30th July 1898, and on the 12th September of the same year The Times published through Messrs Macmillan (in 3 vols.) Bismarck: Some Secret Pages of his History, by Dr Moritz Busch.
The Times History of the War in South Africa arose out of a desire to preserve in a more readable form the excellent work done by the numerous Times correspondents in South Africa. When originally projected in the early days of 1900 it was hoped that the war would be of short duration, and that the history of it could be rapidly completed. The length of the war naturally upset all these calculations, and eventually the sixth and last volume was only issued in 1909.
For a long period after the establishment of The Times, no effort to found a new daily London morning newspaper was ever conspicuously successful. Among unfruitful attempts were—(1) the New Times, started by Dr (afterwards Sir John) Stoddart, upon his departure from Printing-House Square; (2) the Representative (1824), established by John Murray, under circumstances which seemed at the outset exceptionally promising; (3) the Constitutional, begun in 1836 and carried on for eight months by a joint-stock company, exceptionally favoured in having for editor and subeditor Laman Blanchard and Thornton Hunt, with a staff of contributors which included Thackeray, Douglas Jerrold and Bulwer; (4) the Morning Star, founded in 1856, and kept afloat until 1870, when it was merged in the Daily News; (5) in 1867, the Day, for six weeks only; (6) in 1873 the Hour, for three years; (7) in 1878, the Daily Express, which soon failed.
A measure of greater success followed the establishment (1794) of the Morning Advertiser, under special circumstances. It was the joint-stock venture of a large society of licensed victuallers, amongst whom subscription to the paper was the condition of membership. For nearly sixty years its circulation lay almost entirely in public-houses and coffee-houses, but “Morning Advertiser.” amongst them it sold nearly 5000 copies daily, and it yielded a steady profit of about £6000 a year. Then, by the ability and enterprise of an experienced editor, James Grant (1802–1879), it was within four years raised to a circulation of nearly 8000, and to an aggregate profit of £12,000 a year. In 1891 its price was reduced from threepence to a penny.
The history of the Daily News, founded in 1846, has been told by Mr Justin McCarthy and Sir John R. Robinson in a volume of “political and social retrospect” published in 1896 on the occasion of its jubilee. It could boast of having continuously been the champion of Liberal ideas and principles—of what (so long as Mr Gladstone lived) might be called “Daily News.” official Liberalism at home and of liberty abroad. It became a penny paper in 1868. Its only rival in the history of Liberal journalism in London for many years was the Morning Star, which in 1870 it absorbed. Notably, it led British public opinion in foreign affairs as champion of the North in the American Civil War, of the cause of Italy, of the emancipation of Bulgaria from the Turk and of Armenia. Its early editors were Charles Dickens (21st January–March 1846), John Forster (March–October 1846), E. E. Crowe (1847–1851), F. K. Hunt (1851–1854), W. Weir (1854–1858), T. Walker (1858–1869). In 1868 the price was reduced to a penny, and it came under the management of Mr (afterwards Sir) John R. Robinson (1828–1903), who only retired in 1901. Its later editors included (1868–1886) Mr F. H. Hill (the brilliant author of Political Portraits), and subsequently Sir John Robinson, as managing editor, in conjunction with Mr P. W. Clayden (1827–1902), the author of Life of Samuel Rogers, England under the Coalition and other able works, as political and literary editor, down to 1896, and Mr E. T. Cook from 1896 to 1901. Mr Cook, during the negotiations with the Boer government in 1899, strongly supported Sir Alfred Milner; and under him the Daily News, as an exponent of Lord Rosebery’s Liberal Imperialism, gave no countenance to the pro-Boer views of some of the more active members of the Liberal party. In 1901, however, the proprietary changed, and Mr George Cadbury became chief owner of the paper. Mr E. T. Cook, who had shown brilliant ability as a publicist, but whose views on the Boer War were not shared by the new proprietor, retired, subsequently joining the staff of the Daily Chronicle; the journal then became an organ of the anti-imperialist section of the Liberal party. Mr A. G. Gardiner became editor in 1902; and in 1904 considerable changes were made in the style of the paper, which was reduced in price to a halfpenny. The influence of Mr Cadbury, and of the group of Quaker families—largely associated with the manufacture of cocoa—who followed his example in promoting the publication of Liberal and Free Trade newspapers, led in later years to somewhat violent attacks from political opponents on the so-called “Cocoa Press,” with the Daily News at its head.
The first number of the Daily Telegraph was published on 29th June 1855, as a twopenny newspaper. Its proprietor was Colonel Sleigh. This gentleman soon found himself in pecuniary straits, and in satisfaction of the debt for the printing of the paper it was transferred to Mr Joseph Moses Levy in the following September. On 17th September Mr Levy “Daily Telegraph.” published it as a four-paged penny journal, the first penny newspaper produced in London. His son, afterwards Sir Edward Lawson (b. 1833), who was created Baron Burnham in 1904, immediately entered the office, and after a short time became editor, a post which he only abandoned in 1885, when he became managing proprietor and sole director. From the outset Mr Levy gathered round him a staff of high literary skill and reputation. Among the first were Thornton Hunt, Geoffrey Prowse, George Hooper and Sir Edwin Arnold. E. L. Blanchard was among the earliest of the dramatic critics, and Alexander Harper the City editor. Later there came George Augustus Sala (q.v.), then one of Charles Dickens’s young men; Clement Scott (1841–1904), at one time a clerk in the War Office; and Edward Dicey (b. 1832), then fresh from Cambridge. The Hon. Frank Lawley turned to journalism from official life; and among the most remarkable of the early contributors to the paper was J. P. Benjamin, the great Anglo-American lawyer. H. D. Traill was a leader-writer for well-nigh a quarter of a century. J. M. Le Sage (b. 1837), for many years the managing editor, began his connexion with the paper under Mr Levy. Others prominently associated with the paper have been W. L. Courtney (b. 1850), a distinguished man of letters who, after several years of work as tutor at New College, Oxford, joined the staff in 1890, and in 1894 also became editor of the Fortnightly Review; E. B. Iwan-Müller (d. 1910) and J. L. Garvin (from 1899), afterwards (1904) editor of the Observer. After 1890 Mr H. W. L. Lawson, Lord Burnham’s eldest son and heir, assisted his father in the general control of the paper.
The Daily Telegraph may be said to have led the way in London journalism in capturing a large and important reading-public from the monopoly of The Times. It became the great organ of the middle classes, and was distinguished for its enterprise in many fields. In June 1873 the Telegraph despatched George Smith to carry out a series of archaeological researches in Nineveh, which resulted in the discovery of the missing fragments of the cuneiform account of the Deluge, and many other inscriptions. In co-operation with the New York Herald it equipped H. M. Stanley’s second great expedition to Central Africa (1875–1877). Another geographical feat with which the name of the Daily Telegraph is associated was the exploration of Kilimanjaro (1884–1885) by Mr (afterwards Sir) Harry Johnston, whose account of his work appeared in the Daily Telegraph during 1885. And Mr Lionel Decle’s march from the Cape to Cairo, in 1899 and 1900, was also undertaken under the auspices of the paper. The Telegraph raised many large funds for public purposes. Almost the first was the subscription for the relief of the sufferers by the cotton famine in Lancashire, in the winter of 1862–1863; the fund in aid of the starving and impoverished people of Paris at the close of the siege in 1871; the prince of Wales’s Hospital Fund in commemoration of the jubilee of 1897; and the Shilling Fund for the soldiers’ widows and orphans in connexion with the Boer War. An undertaking of a more festive kind was the fête given to 30,000 London school children in Hyde Park on the occasion of Queen Victoria’s jubilee in 1887.
In politics the Daily Telegraph was consistently Liberal up to 1878, when it opposed Mr Gladstone’s foreign policy as explained in his Midlothian speeches. After 1886 it represented Unionist opinions. Among special feats of which it can boast was the first news brought to England of the conclusion of peace after the Franco-German War.
Prior to 1874 the Daily Telegraph was printed by eight- and ten-feeder machines, through which every sheet had to be passed twice to complete the impression. Under these conditions it was necessary to start printing one side of the paper as early as ten or eleven o’clock. The handicap which this imposed on the satisfactory production of a newspaper was removed by the introduction of Hoe’s web machines at the end of 1874. No further change took place until 1891, when they were superseded by others built by the same makers capable of printing a 12-page paper at the rate of about 24,000 an hour, cut, folded, delivered and counted in quires. In 1896 they were modified so as to be suitable for turning out an 8-, 10-, 12-, 14- or 16-page paper. Up to 1894 the setting of type had been done entirely by hand, but in that year the linotype, after an experimental trial, was introduced on a large scale.
​The Standard was established as an evening paper in the Tory interest (as the express organ of the opponents of the measure for removing Roman Catholic disabilities) in 1827, its first editor being Stanley Lees Giffard, father of the first earl of Halsbury, who had Alaric Watts and Dr William Maginn, famous as one of the originators of Fraser’s Magazine, as The Standard. his chief helpers. In the course of two or three years it became a pecuniary, as it had from the first been a political, success, and gradually ousted the Courier, which was for a time conducted by William Mudford, whose son half a century later became the most distinguished editor of the Standard. In course of time the latter became the property of Mr Charles Baldwin, whose father was proprietor of the Morning Herald, and when the father died the son found himself in possession of both a morning and an evening journal. In his hands neither of them prospered, although the Standard retained a large circulation and constantly printed early and accurate political information. At length, midway in the ’fifties, both papers were purchased by Mr James Johnstone, Mr John Maxwell, the publisher, being for a time associated with him in the ownership. Mr Johnstone realized that he had before him a great opportunity, and at once set to work to grasp it. He brought out the Standard as a morning paper (29th June 1857), increased its size from four to eight pages, and reduced the price from fourpence to twopence. One of the most curious features of the early numbers was a novel by William Howard Russell. The evening edition was continued. In February 1858 Mr Johnstone again reduced the price, this time to a penny. When that step was taken the Standard announced that its politics were “enlightened amelioration and progress,” but that it was “bound to no party”; and to those independent lines it in the main adhered. In the course of four or five years it became a financial success, and then began to attract to itself many brilliant pens, one of its contributors in the ’sixties, Lord Robert Cecil, being destined to become illustrious as marquess of Salisbury. Lord Robert was an occasional leader-writer, whose contributions were confined almost entirely to political subjects. It was at this time that the Standard laid the foundation of the great reputation for early and detailed foreign news which it has ever since enjoyed. During the American Civil War it obtained the services of a representative signing himself “Manhattan,” whose vivid and forcible letters from the battlefield arrested attention from the beginning. As the campaign progressed, these full, picturesque and accurate accounts of the most terrible struggle of modern times were looked for with eager interest. There were no “special cables” to discount the poignant curiosity of the reader, and the paper reached a circulation far beyond anything hitherto known. The distinction thus acquired was maintained during the Prussian-Austrian War of 1866, and greatly increased by the letters and telegrams describing the triumphs and disasters of the campaign of 1870. In the early ’sixties the staff had been reinforced by the engagement of Mr William Heseltine Mudford. In the midst of his work as a parliamentary reporter, he was sent as special correspondent to Jamaica in 1865 to report upon the troubles which involved the recall of Governor Eyre; a further period in the gallery of the House of Commons followed, and in 1873 Mr Mudford became business manager. Mr Johnstone’s first editor was Captain Hamber, who afterwards seceded to the short-lived Hour, with whom had been associated Mr David Morier Evans as manager. He was succeeded by the owner’s eldest son, to whom Mr (afterwards Sir) John Gorst was joined in a consultative capacity. In 1876 Mr Mudford became editor, still, however, retaining managerial control. Mr Johnstone, the proprietor to whose energy and perspicacity the paper owed so much, died in 1878, and under his will Mr Mudford was appointed editor and manager for life, or until resignation. Already a great property, the Standard in Mr Mudford’s hands entered upon a very successful period. He had for his first assistant-editor Mr Gilbert Venables, who was succeeded after a short term by Mr George Byron Curtis, previously one of the leader-writers, who thus held the position through nearly the whole of Mr Mudford’s long editorship. The staff at this time comprised many men, and some women, whose names are distinguished in letters as well as in journalism. Mr Alfred Austin, Mr T. H. S. Escott, Miss Frances Power Cobbe and Professor Palmer were all writing for the paper at the same time. To them must be added, among others, Mr E. D. J. Wilson, the brilliant political leader-writer (afterwards of The Times), Mr Percy Greg, son of “Cassandra” Greg, Mr T. E. Kebbel and Dr Robert Brown, who wrote copiously upon scientific and miscellaneous subjects. Foremost among the war correspondents were Mr G. A. Henty, who represented the paper on many a stricken field; Mr John A. Cameron, who was killed at Abu Klea; and Mr William Maxwell. In January 1900 Mr Mudford retired, and was succeeded in the editorship by Mr G. Byron Curtis (d. 1907), Mr S. H. Jeyes, whose connexion with the paper had begun in 1891, becoming assistant-editor. In November 1904 the Standard, which had at that time taken rather a strong line in deprecating the tariff reform movement within the Unionist party, was sold to Mr C. Arthur Pearson (proprietor of the Daily Express, see below), who was chairman of the Tariff Reform League, and considerable changes were made in the paper, Mr H. A. Gwynne becoming editor. In 1910 Mr Pearson, owing to ill-health, transferred his interests in the proprietary company he had formed in 1904 to Mr Davison Dalziel.
The Daily Chronicle arose, as already mentioned, out of the local Clerkenwell News, the latter paper having been purchased by Mr Edward Lloyd in 1877, and converted into “an Imperial morning paper” on independent Liberal lines. Under the editorship of Mr R. Whelan Boyle the Daily Chronicle soon took rank among the other London daily journals, the only Daily Chronicle. traces of its original character being shown in the attention paid to metropolitan affairs and the appearance of numerous small advertisements. The independent tone of the journal was conspicuous in its treatment of the Home Rule question. At first deprecating the system of combined agitation and outrage with which the term was synonymous, the Daily Chronicle, under the editorship of Mr A. E. Fletcher (1890–1895), ceased to be a Unionist journal, and supported Mr Gladstone’s Bill of 1893. Another instance was afforded in the course of the Boer War. During the negotiations and the early stages of the campaign, the Daily Chronicle, which was then edited by Mr H. W. Massingham (b. 1860), strove for peace by supporting the Boer side against the diplomacy of Mr Chamberlain. Mr Massingham’s policy was, however, not to the liking of the proprietors, and he retired from the editorship towards the end of 1899, Mr W. J. Fisher succeeding him as editor. In 1904 Mr Robert Donald became editor, and the price was reduced to a halfpenny. Mr Massingham during his editorship, ably seconded by Mr (afterwards Sir) Henry Norman (b. 1858), had largely increased the interest of the paper, particularly on its literary side. A new impetus had been given in this direction in 1891, when a “literary page” was started, conducted at first by Mr J. A. Manson, and after 1892 by Mr Massingham, when he became assistant-editor under Mr Fletcher. The Chronicle had taken a leading part in many public movements since 1877. It was conspicuous in its advocacy of the cause of the men in the London dock strike of 1889; and in the great mining dispute for a “living wage,” which was brought to a close by Lord Rosebery in November 1893, raised over £13,000 for the relief committees. Much attention was given to the theosophical discussion of 1891 and to the exposure of the adventurer “De Rougemont” after he had appeared before the British Association at Bristol in 1898. The Chronicle took an active part in the negotiations which led to the Venezuelan Arbitration Treaty of 1897; it energetically pleaded the cause of the Armenians and Cretans during the massacres of 1896, and it encouraged the Greeks in the war with Turkey in 1897. Its foreign policy was, however, more distinguished by goodwill than by discretion—and notably in the latter instance. The Chronicle also worked strenuously for the Progressive cause in London in regard to the County Council, Borough Councils and the School Board. Its new successes included the first announcement of the revolution in eastern Rumelia (1885); the first circumstantial account of the death of Prince Rudolph (1889); Nansen’s own narrative of his expedition towards the North Pole; Sir Martin Conway’s journey across Spitzbergen in 1896; and the first ascent of Aconcagua in 1897.
In 1890 the illustrated morning daily paper, the Daily Graphic, was founded by W. L. Thomas (1830–1901) as an offshoot from the weekly illustrated Graphic, and soon came into favour.Daily Graphic.
In 1906 a new Liberal morning daily was started by Mr Franklin Thomason in the shape of the Tribune, edited by Mr W. Hill, who retired after a few months, with Mr L. T. Hobhouse as political editor. Later Mr Pryor became managing editor, but at the beginning of 1908, after heavy losses, the publication was stopped.Tribune.
Two morning papers, at the popular price of halfpenny, appeared in the spring of 1892, the Morning and the Morning Leader. They raced for priority of publication, the former winning by a day. The Morning Leader, under the same management as the (evening) Star, continued to flourish, but the Morning had but a brief career.Morning Leader.
The halfpenny Daily Mail was originated by Mr Alfred Charles Harmsworth (b. 1865), who was subsequently created a baronet (1904) and in 1905 a peer as Baron Northcliffe; it appeared in 1896, on the same day as Sir G. Newnes’s penny Courier (which only lasted a few weeks). In the evolution of English journalism the foundation of the Daily Mail carried still farther the Daily Mail. work begun by the Daily Telegraph in earlier days. It was the first halfpenny morning newspaper to place at the disposal of its readers a news service competing with that of any of the higher-priced newspapers, and soon took an increasingly important place in the Press. At the opening of the 20th century it claimed a regular circulation of about a million copies daily (and had occasionally sold as many as 1,500,000 copies of a single issue), and it was produced simultaneously in London and Manchester, the whole of the contents being telegraphed nightly. In May 1904 it began publishing a continental edition in Paris. The sensational success of the Daily Mail, which first made Lord Northcliffe one of the dominant personalities in English journalism, was due, not to individual writers, but to a consistent policy of catering for a modern public and serving them with lively news and articles, and constant change of interest. Its large circulation, and resulting advertising revenue, gave it an influence which in politics was used on the Unionist side; but the readers of the Daily Mail went to it, not for politics, but for news, brightly and briefly displayed. Its triumph represented the ​success of a business organization, in which individual views on affairs played a comparatively minor part.
The halfpenny Daily Express, founded by Mr Cyril Arthur Pearson (b. 1866) on the lines of the Daily Mail, first appeared in 1900, and soon won a large clientele. With R. D. Blumenfeld as editor (from 1904) it worked strenuously for Tariff Reform. The Daily Mirror, started by Mr Harmsworth as a women’s penny daily in 1904, failed to attract in its original form Daily Express. Daily Mirror. and was quickly changed into a halfpenny general daily, relying as a novelty on the presentation of news by photographic pictures of current events. This new feature soon obtained for it a large circulation under the enterprising management of Mr Kennedy Jones (b. 1865), who was already known for his successful conduct of the Evening News and his share in the business of the Daily Mail.
The Globe (founded Jan. 1st., 1803), the oldest of existing London evening papers, owed its origin to the desire of the booksellers or publishers of the day for an advertising medium, at a moment when the Morning Post gave them the cold shoulder. A syndicate of publishers started a morning paper, the British Press (which had only a short career), to combat the Globe. Post, and the Globe as a rival to the Courier (see above), which, like the Post, was under Daniel Stuart’s control. George Lane, previously Stuart’s chief assistant, was the editor. From 1815 a prominent member of the staff was Mr (afterwards vice-chancellor Sir James) Bacon. After swallowing up some other journals, in 1823 it absorbed the property and title of the Traveller, controlled by Colonel Torrens, who in the reorganization became principal proprietor and brought over Walter Coulson as the editor. John Wilson succeeded as editor in 1834, efficiently seconded by Mr Moran; Thomas Love Peacock and R. H. Barham (“Ingoldsby”) being famous contributors during his regime. For some time the Globe was the principal Whig organ, and Mr (afterwards Deputy judge Advocate Sir James) O’Dowd its political inspirer. Mahony (“Father Prout”) was its Paris correspondent. In 1842 the Courier was incorporated, but a gradual decline in the fortunes of the paper, and Colonel Torrens’s death in 1864, brought about a reorganization in 1866, when a small Conservative syndicate, including Sir Stafford Northcote, bought it and converted the Globe into a Conservative organ. In 1868 the pink colour since associated with the paper was started. In 1869 its price (originally sixpence) was lowered to a penny. Mr W. T. Madge (b. 1845), whose vigorous management was afterwards so valuable, and who in 1881 started with Captain Armstrong the People, a popular Sunday journal for the masses, joined the paper in 1866; and after brief periods of editorship by Messrs Westcomb, R. H. Patterson, H. N. Barnett and Marwood Tucker (1868), in 1871 Captain George C. H. Armstrong (1836–1907), who in 1892 was created a baronet, was put in control; he edited the paper for some years, and then it became his property. The editorial chair was filled in succession by Mr Ponsonby Ogle, Mr Algernon Locker (1891), and the proprietor’s son and heir Lieut. G. E. Armstrong, R.N. (1895), until in June 1907, after Sir G. Armstrong’s death, the paper was sold to Mr Hildebrand Harmsworth. The Globe “Turnovers” (miscellaneous articles, turning over from the first to the second page) began in 1871, and became famous for variety and humour. The jocular “By the Way” column, another characteristic feature, was started in 1881, and owed much to Mr Kay Robinson and Mr C. L. Graves. In the history of the Globe one of the best-known incidents is its publication of the Salisbury-Schuvaloff treaty of 1878. It was the first London daily to use the linotype composing-machine (1892).
A new period of evening journalism, characteristic of the later 19th century, opened with the founding of the Pall Mall Gazette. The first number (at twopence) was issued on 7th February 1865 from Salisbury Street, Strand. Mr George Smith, of the publishing firm of Smith and Elder, was its first proprietor; Mr Frederick Greenwood (q.v.), its first editor, took the Pall Mall Gazette. Anti-Jacobin for his model; the paper was intended to realize Thackeray’s picture (in Pendennis) of one “written by gentlemen for gentlemen.” Its political attitude was to be independent, and much space was to be given to literature and non-political matter. It had brilliant supporters, such as Sir J. Fitzjames Stephen as writer of leading articles (replaced to a certain extent, after 1869, by Sir Henry Maine), R. H. Hutton, Matthew James Higgins (“Jacob Omnium”), James Hannay, and George Henry Lewes, with George Eliot, Anthony Trollope, Charles Reade, and Thomas Hughes as occasional contributors; but the paper failed to attract the general public until, in the following year, Mr Greenwood’s brother, James, furnished it with three articles on “A Night in a Workhouse: by an Amateur Casual.” A morning edition had already been tried and dropped, and so was a distinct morning paper attempted in 1870. In 1867 new premises were taken in Northumberland Street, Strand. Three years later the Pall Mall Gazette was the first to announce the surrender of Napoleon III. at Sedan. Matthew Arnold contributed his famous “Arminius” letters (“Friendship’s Garland”) in 1871, and Richard Jefferies contributed “The Gamekeeper at Home” in 1876 and onwards. Mr Greenwood made the paper unflinchingly Conservative and strongly adherent to Lord Beaconsfield’s foreign policy. In 1880, however, Mr Smith handed over the Pall Mall Gazette to his son-in-law, Mr Henry Yates Thompson, who turned it into a Liberal journal. Mr Greenwood then retired from the editorship and shortly afterwards started the St James’s Gazette; Mr John (afterwards Viscount) Morley became editor of the Pall Mall, with Mr W. T. Stead (b. 1849) as assistant-editor. The price was reduced in 1882 to one penny. Many of the old contributors remained, and they were reinforced by Robert Louis Stevenson. who wrote some “Letters from Davos,” Professor Tyndall, Professor Freeman, James Payn and Mrs Humphry Ward. When Mr Morley exchanged journalism for politics in 1883, he was succeeded by Mr W. T. Stead (q.v.), with Mr Alfred Milner, afterwards Lord Milner, as his assistant. Adopting an adventurous policy, Mr Stead imported the “interview” from America, and a report of General Gordon’s opinion was believed to have been the cause of his ill-fated mission to Khartum. A series of articles called “The Truth about the Navy” (1884) had considerable influence in causing the Admiralty to lay down more ships next year. But Mr Stead’s career as the editor came to an end in 1889, in consequence of his publishing a series of articles called “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon,” purporting to further the Criminal Law Amendment Bill. Mr Stead had made a feature of reprints called “extras”; and, edited by Mr Charles Morley, the Pall Mall Budget became an illustrated weekly. Mr Stead was replaced in 1889 by E. T. Cook, who had become assistant-editor in succession to Milner. The Pall Mall Gazette was now steadily Liberal and a strong advocate of Irish Home Rule. On its staff were Edmund Garrett (a gifted writer who became editor of the Cape Times in South Africa, and died prematurely in 1907), F. C. Gould the caricaturist, and J. Alfred Spender (b. 1862). Mr Cook resigned in 1892, on the sale of the paper to Mr William Waldorf Astor, the American millionaire, who turned it again into a Conservative organ, and also changed its shape, abandoning the old small pages for a larger sheet; and he and his assistant Mr Spender continued the Liberalism of the Pall Mall in the Westminster Gazette (see below). Mr Henry Cust, M.P., was appointed editor, with Mr E. B. Iwan-Müller as assistant-editor. Mr Cust (b. 1861), who was Lord Brownlow’s heir, and came fresh to editorship with enthusiasms acquired from his experiences in parliament and in society, made the columns of the Pall Mall very lively for the next couple of years. It became well known for its “booms,” and its “smartness” generally. Some papers contributed to it by Sir Charles Dilke and Mr Spenser Wilkinson resulted in the establishment of the Navy League in 1894. The paper had, too, the first news of Mr Gladstone’s resignation and the appointment of Lord Rosebery to succeed him. But though the Pall Mall under Mr Cust had outshone all its competitors, its independence of those business considerations which ultimately appeal to most proprietors hardly represented a durable state of affairs; and eventually the relations between proprietor and editor became strained. In February 1896 Mr Cust and Mr Iwan-Müller were succeeded respectively by Sir Douglas Straight and Mr Lloyd Sanders, the latter of whom retired in 1902. Sir Douglas Straight (b. 1844) had been in early days a well-known London barrister, and from 1879 to 1892 was a judge in India. Sir Douglas Straight remained editor till the end of 1908, when he was succeeded by Mr Higginbottom.
Founded in 1880 by Mr H. Hucks Gibbs (afterwards Lord Aldenham), for Mr Frederick Greenwood to edit when he had left the Pall Mall, the St James’s Gazette represented the more intellectual and literary side of Tory journalism in opposition to the new Liberalism of Mr Greenwood’s former organ; it was in fact meant to carry on the idea of the St James’s Gazette. original Pall Mall as Mr Greenwood had conceived it, and was (like it) more of a daily review than a chronicle of news. In 1888 the paper having then been sold to Mr E. Steinkopff, Mr Greenwood retired and was succeeded as editor (1888–1897) by Mr Sidney Low, subsequently author of The Governance of England and other able works, who had as his chief assistant-editors Mr S. H. Jeyes (till 1891), and Mr Hugh Chisholm (1892–1897), the latter succeeding him as editor (1897–1900). In those days mere news was not considered the important feature; or rather, original and sagacious views were identified with a sort of novelty such a paper could best promulgate. The St James’s was for many years conspicuous for its literary character, and for the number of distinguished literary men who wrote for it, some of whom first became known to the public by means of its columns. Its interest in newspaper history is really that of a paper which appealed to and influenced a comparatively small circle of cultured readers, a “superior” function more and more difficult to reconcile with business considerations. It was one of the earliest supporters of the Imperialist movement, and between 1895 and 1899 was the chief advocate in the Press of resistance to the foreign bounties on sugar which were ruining the West Indies, thus giving an early impetus to the movement for Tariff Reform and Colonial Preference. During the years immediately following 1892, when the Pall Mall Gazette again became Conservative, the competition between Conservative evening papers became acute, because the Globe and Evening Standard were also penny Conservative journals; and it was increasingly difficult to carry on the St James’s on its old lines so as to secure a profit to the proprietor; by degrees modifications were made in the general character of the paper, with a view to its containing more news and less purely literary matter. But it retained its original shape: with sixteen (after 1897, twenty) small pages, a form which the ​Pall Mall abandoned in 1892. Gradually these changes took effect. In 1900 Mr Theodore Andrea Cook, who had been assistant-editor since 1898, became editor for a brief period, and subsequently Mr Ronald MacNeill (till 1903) acted in this capacity, with Mr W. D. Ross as manager. Meanwhile the St James’s Budget, which up to 1893 had been a weekly edition of the Gazette, was turned into an independent illustrated weekly, edited from the same office by Mr J. Penderel-Brodhurst (afterwards editor of the Guardian), who had been on the editorial staff since 1888; and it continued to be published till 1899. In 1903 the St James’s was sold to Mr C. Arthur Pearson, who in 1905, having bought the morning Standard, amalgamated the St James’s with the Evening Standard.
The Evening Standard had been founded in 1827 (see under the Standard above), and when it was amalgamated with the St James’s Gazette in 1905, the two titles covered a new paper, in a new form, as the penny Evening Standard and St James’s Gazette.Evening Standard.
When the Pall Mall Gazette was sold to Mr Astor in 1892 and converted into a Conservative organ, Mr E. T. Cook, the editor, and most of his staff, resigned, and in 1893 they came together again on the Westminster Gazette, newly started for the purpose by Sir G. Newnes (who had made a fortune out of Tit-bits and other popular papers) as a penny Liberal The Westminster Gazette. evening paper. It was printed on green paper, but the novelty of this soon wore off. The paper was conducted on the lines of the old Pall Mall, and it had the advantage of a brilliant political cartoonist in F. Carruthers Gould. In 1895 Mr Cook was appointed editor of the Daily News, and his place was ably filled by Mr J. Alfred Spender, who had been his assistant-editor, Mr Gould (who was knighted in 1906) being his chief assistant. Apart from Sir F. C. Gould’s cartoons, the Westminster became conspicuous in London evening journalism for its high standard of judicious political and literary criticism. It gradually became the chief organ of Liberal thought in London. One of its early literary successes was the original publication of Mr Anthony Hope’s Dolly Dialogues, and it continued to maintain, more than any other evening paper, the older literary and political tradition of the “gentlemanly journalism” out of which it had sprung. In 1908 a change of proprietorship took place, the paper being sold by Sir G. Newnes (d. 1910) to Mr (afterwards Sir) Alfred Mond, but without affecting the personnel or policy of the paper.
The first modern English evening newspaper to be issued at a halfpenny was the London Evening News—afterwards known as the Day. It was started in 1855, but soon failed to meet expenses and disappeared from the scene. In 1868 appeared the London Echo, published by Henry Cassell. It had for its first editor, until 1875, Mr (afterwards Sir) Arthur Arnold Halfpenny Evening Papers. (1833–1902), afterwards M.P. for Salford (1880–1886) and chairman of the London County Council (1895–1896), who was well known both as a writer and traveller and as founder of the Free Land League (1885). Baron Albert Grant (1830–1899), the pioneer of modern mammoth company-promoting, afterwards took the Echo in hand and wasted a fortune over it; and eventually it was owned for some years by Mr Passmore Edwards, coming to an end in 1905. The Evening News was begun at a halfpenny in 1881 as a Liberal organ, but was shortly afterwards bought by a Conservative syndicate. It saw stormy times, and at the end of thirteen years it had absorbed £298,000 and was heavily in debt. Its shares could then be purchased for threepence or fourpence each. In August 1894 it was purchased by Messrs Harmsworth for £25,000, and under Mr Kennedy Jones’s management developed into a highly successful property. On 17th January 1888 the first number of the Star appeared, under the editorship of Mr T. P. O’Connor (b. 1848), as a half penny evening newspaper in support of Mr. Gladstone’s policy. When Mr O’Connor left the paper, Mr H. W. Massingham became its editor, and subsequently Mr Ernest Parke. In 1909 the Star was acquired by a new proprietorship in which Messrs Cadbury and the Daily News had an important share. From the first it was conspicuous for its advanced attitude in politics, and also for excellent literary criticism. In 1893 Mr T. P. O’Connor founded the Sun, which eventually passed into the hands of a succession of proprietors and came to an end in October 1906.
As regards the purely sporting press in London, Sporting Life, started in 1859, became a daily in 1883, and in 1886 incorporated the old Bell’s Life. The daily Sportsman, the leading paper, was founded in 1865. The financial daily press is a modern creation and has taken many shapes; the Financier was the first regular daily, but in Sporting and financial dailies. 1884 the Financial News, under Mr H. H. Marks, made its appearance, and in 1888 the Financial Times; and these became the leading papers of their class.
The London weekly press (see also under Periodicals). has always worn a motley garb. Weekly publication facilitates the individuality of a journal, both as respects its editorship and as respects the class of readers to which it more especially addresses itself. From the days of Daniel Defoe there have always been newspapers bearing the unmistakable impress of an London weekly newspapers. individual and powerful mind. Cobbett’s Weekly Register affords perhaps as striking an illustration of journalism in its greatness and in its meanness as could be found throughout its entire annals. And Cobbett’s paper has had many successors, some of which, profiting by the marvellous mechanical appliances of the present day, have attained a far wider popular influence than was possessed by the Weekly Register in its most prosperous days.
The history of the weekly reviews practically begins with the Examiner, which was founded in 1808 and had a long career as one of the most prominent organs of the Liberals, ending in 1881. That its literary reputation was great resulted naturally from a succession of such editors as Leigh Hunt, Albany Fonblanque, John Forster and Henry Morley. This was succeeded in January 1817 by the foundation of the Literary Gazette, the proprietor of which was Henry Colburn and the first editor William Jerdan. Jerdan succeeded in inducing Crabbe and Campbell to contribute to it, and among those who assisted him were Bulwer Lytton, Barry Cornwall and Mrs Hemans. The Literary Gazette came to an end in 1862. At the end of 1820 Theodore Hook founded John Bull, which for a time had extraordinary popularity; to it he contributed the most brilliant of his jeux d’esprit.
Epochs in the development of this form of literature were marked by the foundation of the Athenaeum by James Silk Buckingham in January 1828 and by that of the Spectator by Robert Stephen Rintoul later in the same year.
The Spectator was edited for thirty years by Robert Rintoul. In 1858 the latter sold the paper to Mr Scott, who retired, however, from the editorship after a few months; and for a time the Spectator was in low water. In 1861 it passed into the hands R. H. Hutton (q.v.) and Meredith Townsend, and under them became a successful exponent of moderate Liberalism Spectator and Saturday Review. and thoughtful criticism, particularly in the discussion of religious problems, such as were uppermost in the days of the Metaphysical Society. The high character and literary reputation of the Spectator were already established when, in 1897, it passed into the hands of Mr J. St Loe Strachey (b. 1860), but under him it became a more powerful organ, if only because it more than maintained its position while the other weekly papers declined. Unionist in politics since 1886, the Spectator after 1903 was the leading organ of Free Trade Unionists who opposed tariff reform, until the progress of socialism and the extravagance of Mr Lloyd-George’s budget in 1909 caused it to accept the full policy of the Unionist party in preference to the dangers of socialistic radicalism. No paper in London, it may well be said, has earned higher respect than the Spectator, or carried more weight in its criticisms, both on politics and on literature. This has not been on account of any special brilliance of the pyrotechnic order, but because of continuous sobriety and good sense and unimpeachable good faith.
The Saturday Review, on the other hand, is important historically rather for the brilliance of its “palmy days.” First published on the 3rd of November 1855, it was founded by A. J. B. Beresford Hope (1820–1887), a brother-in-law of Lord Salisbury, M.P. for Maidstone and for Cambridge University, and a prominent churchman and art patron; with John Douglas Cook (1808–1868) as editor. Mr Hope was the son of James Hope (1770–1831), author of Anastatius; and it was reputed that Douglas Cook was “Anastatius” Hope’s natural son. For several years the Saturday maintained an exceptional position in London journalism. On the political side it was at first Peelite, but the strong churchmanship of Mr Beresford Hope and antagonism to Mr Gladstone did much to bring it round to a pronounced Conservative view. Most, though not all, of its early staff had already worked under Mr Cook, when he was editor of the Morning Chronicle (from 1848 to 1854). In its literary comment it gave much space to articles of pure criticism and scholarship, and almost every writer of contemporary note on the Tory side contributed to its columns. But the matter which did most to give it its peculiar character was found in its outspoken or even sensational “middles”—“The Frisky Matron,” “The Girl of the Period” (by Mrs Lynn Linton), “The Birch in the Boudoir,” &c. The editorship remained in the hands of Mr Cook till his death in 1868. In 1861 a secession from the Saturday lasting till 1863, led to the temporary brilliance of the London Review (1860–1868), started by Charles Mackay. Douglas Cook was succeeded by Philip Harwood (1809–1887), who had followed him from the Morning Chronicle and under whom Mr Andrew Lang became a contributor, with others of note. Mr Harwood retired in 1883, and was succeeded by his former assistant Mr Walter Herries Pollock, under whom the paper underwent some modifications in form to meet changes in the public taste; Mr G. Saintsbury and Mr H. D. Traill were then prominent members of the staff, and Mr Frederick Greenwood wrote for the paper till he started the Anti-Jacobin. In 1894 the Saturday Review ​was sold by the heirs of Mr Beresford Hope to Mr Lewis Edmunds, from whose hands it soon passed to Mr Frank Harris. In 1899 the paper was sold to Lord Hardwicke and came under the editorship of Mr Harold Hodge, who remained in this position when, after Lord Hardwicke’s death in 1905, it passed into the hands of Mr Gervase Becket.
The Saturday Review and Spectator, as the exponents of brilliant Toryism and serious Liberalism, had the field practically to themselves for some years; but when in 1886 the Spectator followed the Liberal Unionists in opposing Home Rule for Ireland, and ceased to support Mr Gladstone, the result was the addition to London journalism of the Radical Speaker (1898); and in 1898 the threepenny Outlook (altered in price in 1905 to sixpence) was started, to present more particularly the growing interests of the Colonies and the Empire, a side further developed in 1905 and 1906 under the editorship of Mr J. L. Garvin (b. 1868) in its advocacy of Mr Chamberlain’s policy of a preferential tariff, when the Spectator became aggressively Free Trade. In December 1906 the Outlook was sold by its proprietor, Mr C. S. Goldman, to Lord Iveagh, and Mr Garvin resigned the editorship. In 1907 the Speaker was incorporated with the Nation, a new Radical weekly, edited by H. W. Massingham. Several ambitious new weeklies meanwhile started, and some passed away before the end of the century, such as the Realm, the British Review and the Review of the Week. The most brilliant of all these, which also lasted the longest, was the Scots (soon renamed the National) Observer (1888–1897), edited at first by W. E. Henley (q.v.), and subsequently by J. E. Vincent (d. 1909). Mr Henley, assisted by Mr Charles Whibley, collected a band of clever young writers, who formed almost a “school” of literary journalism, and many of whom won their spurs in literature by their contributions to this paper. The Pilot (1900) under Mr D. C. Lathbury was another brilliant attempt, but it failed to pay its way and hardly lasted for three years.
Among purely literary weeklies the Athenaeum found a rival in the Academy, founded in October 1869 by Dr Appleton and edited by him. Later, under the editorship of J. S. Cotton, it was famous for its signed reviews and scholarly character; but the small circle to whom pure literature appealed made financial success difficult. In 1896 the Academy was bought by Mr Morgan Richards, and for some years was edited by Mr Lewis Hind, amalgamating Literature (a weekly which had been started by The Times) in 1901; and subsequently under changed proprietors it was successively edited by Mr Teignmouth Shore and Mr Anderson Graham. In April 1907 it was bought from Sir G. Newnes by Sir Edward Tennant, and subsequently passed under the control of Lord Alfred Douglas, who in 1910 parted with it to a new proprietary.
The publication of Sunday editions of the daily papers has not found the same favour in England as in the United States. In 1899 a Sunday Daily Mail and a Sunday Daily Telegraph appeared simultaneously; but public opinion was so violent against seven-day journalism that both were withdrawn. The oldest of the Sunday papers, the Observer (1791), Sunday papers. was conducted by one editor, Mr Doxat, for more than fifty years. It was one of the first papers to contain illustrations. In later years Mr Edward Dicey was a notable editor. In 1905 the Observer passed into the hands of Lord Northcliffe, his first editor being Mr Austin Harrison, a son of Frederic Harrison. In 1907 Mr J. L. Garvin became editor, and under him the old influence of the Observer revived.
Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper started as an unstamped illustrated journal at a penny in September 1842. In 1843 it was enlarged in size, and the price raised to threepence. Curious ingenuity was shown in advertising it by all sorts of expedients. Amongst others, all the pennies its proprietor could lay his hands on were embossed, by a cleverly constructed machine, with the title and price of the new journal. The Times drew attention to this defacement of the coin of the realm, and so gave it a better advertisement still. From a weekly sale of 33,000 in 1848 it rose to 170,000 in 1861. In anticipation of the abolition of the paper duty, the price was then reduced to a penny, and its circulation continued to increase. In later years it had an able editor in Mr T. Catling. Reynolds’s Weekly Newspaper, an extreme Radical paper with a large circulation, dates from May 1850. Other Sunday papers came later into existence—the People (1881), the Sunday (afterwards Weekly) Sun (1891), the Sunday Special (1897)—with which in 1904 was amalgamated the Sunday Times (1822). The Referee (1877), a paper with a strong sporting and theatrical interest, is famous for the humorous contributions by “Dagonet” (G. R. Sims) and the pungency of its miscellaneous articles.
Of the London illustrated weekly papers the oldest, the Illustrated London News, was founded in 1842; the Graphic in 1869; while the Pictorial World, which lasted for some years, began in 1874. In 1891 Black and White was started; and in 1892 the Sketch, edited by Mr Clement Shorter (also then editor of the Illustrated London News), introduced a lighter vein. Illustrated weekly papers. Mr Shorter gave up the editorship of these two weeklies in 1901, and became editor of a new illustrated weekly, the Sphere, with the proprietorship of which came also to be associated the Tatler. Another new illustrated weekly of a high class, Country Life Illustrated, began in 1897.
The “Society” weeklies, Truth (1877), Vanity Fair (1868)—with a separate cartoon as a special feature, famous for the artistic work of Pellegrini, Leslie Ward and others—and the World (1874), brought a new “note” into regular journalism, Mr Edmund Yates’s success with the World largely contributing to the increase of the personal style which he did so much to introduce; and Truth made its proprietor, the politician Mr Henry Labouchere, one of the most prominent men of the day, not so much for its aggressive Radicalism as for its vigorous exposures of all sorts of public charlatanry.
Among other weeklies, important ones are such ecclesiastical papers as the Guardian (1846), the Record (1828), the Church Times (1863), the Tablet (1840), Christian World (1857), Methodist Times (1885); the medical papers, the Lancet (1823) and British Medical Journal; the financial papers, the Economist (1843) and Statist (1878); and the great sporting and country-house paper, the Field (1853).
Among humorous papers Punch (1840) stands first (see Caricature,) of which (1895) Mr M. H. Spielmann published a History; Fun (1860–1901), Mr Harry Furniss’s Lika Joko (1894, only for a few months), Judy (1867), Moonshine (1879) and Pick-me-up (1888), have also catered for popular papers gaiety.Humorous papers.
The introduction of women into English journalism in any large degree was one of the new departures of the last quarter of the 19th century. It was indeed no new thing for women to write for the Press. Harriet Martineau was, in her day, one of the principal members of the Daily News staff, and Miss Frances Power Cobbe (1822–1905) the advocate of anti-vivisectionism, Women journalists. was an active journalist. Miss Flora Shaw (Lady Lugard), as writer of colonial topics for The Times, or Mrs Crawford, as Paris correspondent of the Daily News, are other notable instances of the prominence of women’s work in the same spheres with the ablest men. But such cases as these were exceptional, in which something in the nature of a personal mission and a peculiar aptitude gave the impulse. Journalism as a profession for women came, however, to be widely resorted to, partly through its obvious recommendation in a day when women’s education required an alternative outlet, for those who had to earn their living, to that of the teaching profession; partly, and pari passu, through the immense increase in women readers and the immensely increased publicity given in newspapers to matters of primarily feminine interest. In 1880 the only “ladies’ paper” of any importance was the Queen, a weekly which dates from 1861. But subsequently a considerable number of new weeklies entered the field: notably the Lady’s Pictorial (1880); the Lady (1885); Woman (1889); the Gentlewoman (1890), which owed its success to the vigorous management of Mr J. S. Wood; Madame (1895); and the Ladies’ Field (1898). New monthlies also appeared, in the Englishwoman, the Ladies’ Realm and the Woman at Home. The sphere of action of the lady journalist was soon by no means confined to the “ladies’ papers,” or to the writing of columns on dress or cookery for such general journals as found it useful to cultivate feminine readers; women invaded every other field of journalism, especially the large new field of “interviewing” and fashionable gossip. The increase in women-writers generally, novelists, dramatists, poets, reacted on their connexion with journalism; the increased “respectability” of journalism made it easier for them to work side by side with men; and gradually nobody thought the introduction of women into this sphere anything out of the common; a lady journalist, in fact, was much less remarkable than a lady doctor.
British Provincial Press.
England and Wales.—Though the real development of English provincial journalism, as a power co-ordinate with that of London, only dates from the abolition of the stamp duty in 1855, many country newspapers before that time had been marked by literary ability and originality of character. The history of the provincial press of England begins in 1690 with the weekly Worcester Postman (now Berrow’s Worcester Journal). The Stamford Mercury (1695; earliest known 1712; long known as Lincoln, Rutland and Stamford Mercury); Norwich Postman (1706); Nottingham Courant (1710), afterwards renamed Journal; Newcastle Courant (1711); Liverpool Courant (1712; short lived); Hereford Journal (1713); Salisbury Postman (1715); Bristol Felix Farley’s Journal (1715; merged into the Bristol Times in 1735); the Canterbury Kentish Post (1717; afterwards Kentish Gazette); Leeds Mercury (1717); Exeter Mercury, Protestant Mercury, and Postmaster or Loyal Mercury (all 1718); York Mercury (1718), and Manchester Weekly Journal (1719), came ​quickly afterwards; and other early papers worth mentioning were the Salisbury Journal (1729); Manchester Gazette (1730–1760); Manchester Mercury (1762–1830); the earliest Birmingham paper, Aris’s Gazette (1741); the Cambridge Chronicle (1744); and the Oxford Journal (1753). Liverpool also boasted of the Liverpool Advertiser (1756) and Gore’s General Advertiser (1765–1870). Of the above the Leeds Mercury (1717) became an increasingly important provincial organ. It was originally published weekly, and its price was three-halfpence. In 1729 it was reduced to four pages of larger size, and sold, with a stamp, at twopence. From 1755 to 1766 its publication was suspended, but was resumed in January 1767, under the management of James Bowley, who continued to conduct it for twenty-seven years, and raised it to a circulation of 3000. Its price at this time was fourpence. The increase of the stamp duty in 1797 altered its price to sixpence, and the circulation sank from 3000 to 800. It was purchased in 1801 by Edward Baines, who first began the insertion of “leaders,” and whose family left an impress not only on journalism but on literature in the North of England. It took him three years to obtain a circulation of 1500; but the Mercury afterwards made rapid progress. When the Stamp Tax was removed, its price was reduced to a penny, and in 1901 to a halfpenny. For many years it admitted neither racing nor theatrical new to its columns, and it had a powerful moral and political influence in Lancashire and Yorkshire.
The abolition of the duty on advertisements in 1853, of the stamp duty in 1855, and of the paper duty in 1861, opened the way for a cheap press, and within ten years of the abolition of the paper duty penny morning newspapers had taken up commanding positions in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee and Aberdeen; in Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Bradford, Newcastle and Sheffield; in Birmingham and Nottingham; in Bristol, Cardiff and Plymouth; and across St George’s Channel in Dublin, Cork, Belfast and Waterford. As time went on, and increasingly after the ’seventies, provincial evening papers began to multiply. But any real importance as organs of opinion was still confined to only a few of the great penny provincial dailies, notably the Yorkshire Post, Manchester Guardian, Birmingham Post (1857), Sheffield Telegraph (associated with Sir W. Leng), Liverpool Daily Post, Leeds Mercury and Western Morning News; others too numerous to mention here were at the same time cradling journalists who were to become famous in a larger sphere, such as the Darlington Northern Echo, on which Mr W. T. Stead made his début, while Mr Joseph Cowen for some years made the Newcastle Daily Chronicle a powerful force.
The provincial journals began as strictly local organs. But even in 1870 it was beginning to be universally perceived that, though the influence of a newspaper depends upon the sagacity, sound judgment and courage of the editor, its success as a business enterprise rests mainly with the business manager. Managers demanded less localism, a wider range of news, prompter and fuller reports of all important events, longer parliamentary reports, parliamentary sketches, verbatim reports of speeches by statesmen of the first rank. In the early ’seventies such a thing as a full telegraphic report in a provincial morning newspaper of parliamentary proceedings, or of a speech by a leading statesman, was almost unheard of. The Press Association had been in existence a short time, but had not then covered the country with its organization. Reuter’s foreign news service very briefly reported important events. Leading articles were written during the day. Between 1870 and 1880 a complete revolution was effected, as the result of the social and educational changes. Leader-writers began to discuss the latest topics. Newspapers that had been content to fill their columns with local news and clippings from London and distant provincial papers put such matter aside. Telegraphic news crushed it out. In February 1870 the government took over the telegraph system. The advantage of the change was immediately felt by newspapers and their readers. Leading English and Irish newspapers, following Scotland’s lead, began to open offices in London, where Fleet Street soon began to be an open directory to the provincial press—English, Scottish and Irish. The Scottish and the leading Irish newspapers of necessity, the wealthiest and most enterprising English papers for convenience and advantage, engaged special wires. Others that were near enough to London to do so secured London news and advertisements by railway, and completed their news supply by a liberal use of the telegraph. Commercial news, both home and foreign, especially American, was expanded. The Press Association spread its news-collecting organization over the whole country, and was stimulated to activity by the rising opposition of the Central News. All this energy had its counterpart in the business side of the press. Rapid “perfecting” printing machines were introduced, and newspaper managers found themselves in possession of newspapers full of the latest news, and procurable in practically unlimited quantities. By the use of special trains and other organizations, circulation increased apace. The development of news agencies, and their universal employment, tended to produce sameness in the provincial press. From this fate the more enterprising journals saved themselves by special London letters, parliamentary sketches and other special contributions. In 1881 the reporters gallery in the House of Commons was opened to some provincial newspapers, and these accordingly enjoyed new facilities for special effort and distinction. A more important matter, however, was the bombardment of Alexandria and the subsequent Egyptian War. The leading provincial newspapers had already emancipated themselves from localism, and in general news and criticism had risen almost, if not quite, to the average level of the first-class London journals. Now they were to step abroad into the field of war. Singly or in syndicates, or by arrangement with London journals, the leading provincial newspapers sent out war correspondents, and were able to record the history of events as promptly and fully as the metropolitan press. The first syndicate to send out war correspondents was formed by the Glasgow News, the Liverpool Daily Post, Manchester Courier, Birmingham Gazette and Western Morning News, who despatched two correspondents to Egypt, and the new departure was attended with complete success. The Central News also sent out war correspondents to Egypt and the Sudan. During the South African War (1899–1902) the Press Association, in conjunction with Reuter’s Agency, employed correspondents, as well as the Central News. The leading provincial newspapers, however, all formed syndicates amongst themselves to secure war telegrams, and in many cases made arrangements for the simultaneous publication of the letters and telegrams of leading London journals. This system of securing simultaneous publication, in provincial newspapers, of special contributions to London morning newspapers was afterwards still further extended, and articles of exceptional interest that have been specially prepared for London journals may now be found on the same day in some of the leading provincial newspapers.
By the beginning of 1880 the country had fallen upon a period of low prices, and extra expenditure upon war telegrams and on an improved supply of general news was to a considerable extent balanced by the reduced cost of paper. A list compiled at the commencement of 1902 gave the names of eighty-seven halfpenny daily newspapers published in English provincial towns, a considerable number of these being morning journals. Of these, sixty-two had been issued since 1870, those bearing earlier dates of origin being in most cases sheets which formerly were issued at a penny or more, but had subsequently reduced their prices. Of the sixty-two that were issued since 1870, twenty-seven appeared between 1871 and 1882, nineteen between 1882 and 1892 and sixteen between 1892 and 1902. Under the stimulus of cheapness the news-sheet was enlarged. More advertisements, more news, more varied contributions, filled up the additional space. The cost of composition increased, and, though circulation and revenue increased also, there was some danger to the margin of profit. Again invention came to the rescue. In the ’eighties some of the leading provincial newspapers began to use type-setting machines. In this forward step the provinces were far ahead of the London papers, excepting The Times. The Southport Daily News—since dead—led the way by introducing six Hattersley machines, and soon afterwards type-setting machinery became the rule in the provincial press. In the development of provincial papers, one factor of special importance must be noted, the desire for news about all branches of sport. In 1870 sporting meant horse-racing and little more. By degrees it embraced athleticism in all its branches, and progressive newspapers were looked to for information on football, hockey, golf, cricket, lawn-tennis, yachting, boating, cycling, wrestling, coursing, hunting, polo, running, bowls, billiards, chess, &c., quite as much as for notices of musical and dramatic performances, and of other forms of recreation and amusement. The ordinary provincial press, and its halfpenny evening representatives, largely depend on the attraction of the sporting news; and a number of special local papers have also been started to cater for this public.
Scotland.—The first newspaper purporting by its title to be Scottish (the Scotch Intelligencer, 7th September 1643) and the first newspapers actually printed in Scotland (Mercurius Criticus and Mercurius Politicus, published at Leith in 1651 and 1653) were of English manufacture—the first being intended to communicate more particularly the affairs of Scotland to the Londoners, the others to keep Cromwell’s army well acquainted with the London news. The reprinting of the Politicus was transferred to Edinburgh in November 1654, and it continued to appear (under the altered title Mercurius Publicus subsequently to April 1660) until the beginning of 1663. Meanwhile an attempt by Thomas Sydserfe to establish a really Scottish newspaper, Mercurius Caledonius, had failed after the appearance of ten numbers, the first of which had been published at Edinburgh on the 8th of January 1660. It was not until March 1699 that a Scottish newspaper was firmly established, under the title of the Edinburgh Gazette, by James Watson, a printer of eminent skill in his art. Before the close of the ​year the Gazette was transferred to John Reid, by whose family it long continued to be printed. In February 1705 Watson started the Edinburgh Courant, of which he only published fifty-five numbers. He states it to be his plan to give “most of the remarkable foreign news from their prints, and also the home news from the ports of this kingdom . . . now altogether neglected.” The Courant appeared thrice a week. Upon complaint being made to the privy council concerning an advertisement inserted after the transfer of the paper to Adam Boig, the new printer presented a supplication to the council in which he expressed his willingness “that in all time coming no inland news or advertisements shall be put into the Courant, but at the sight and allowance of the clerks of council.” In 1710 the town council authorized Mr Daniel Defoe to print the Edinburgh Courant in the place of the deceased Adam Boig. Four years earlier (1706) the indefatigable pioneer of the Scottish press, James Watson, had begun the Scots Courant, which he continued to print until after the year 1718. To these papers were added in October 1708 the Edinburgh Flying Post and in August 1709 the Scots Postman. Five years later this paper appears to have been incorporated with the Edinburgh Gazette. The Caledonian Mercury began April 28, 1720. At one period it was published thrice and afterwards twice a week. Its first proprietor was William Rolland, an advocate, and its first editor Thomas Ruddiman. The property passed to Ruddiman on Rolland’s death in 1729, and remained in his family until 1772. It is curious to notice that in his initiatory number of April 1720, Rolland claimed a right to identify his Mercury with that of 1660. This journal, he said in his preface to the public, “is the oldest [existing] in Great Britain.” And his successor of the year 1860 followed suit by celebrating the “second centenary” of the Caledonian Mercury. He brought out a facsimile of No. 1 of Mercurius Caledonius (January 1660), in its eight pages of small quarto, curiously contrasting with the great double sheet of the day. But sixty years is a long period of suspended animation, and the connexion of the two newspapers cannot be proved to be more than nominal. The Caledonian Mercury was the first of Scottish journals to give conspicuous place to literature—foreign as well as Scottish. In “the ’45” one of its editors, Thomas Ruddiman, junior, virtually sacrificed his life, and the other, James Grant, went into exile, for the expression of conscientious political opinion. Its publication ceased after an existence of more than one hundred and forty years.
Notwithstanding the positive assertion that the Edinburgh Courant and the Edinburgh Evening Courant “were entirely different journals, and never had any connexion whatever with each other,” a substantial identity may be asserted upon better grounds than those for which identity used to be claimed for the Caledonian Mercury with Mercurius Caledonius. The grant by the town council of Edinburgh in December 1718 of a licence to James M‘Ewan to print an Evening Courant three times a week appears to have been really a revival, in altered form, of the original Courant, repeatedly referred to in earlier, but not much earlier, records of the same corporation. So revived, the Evening Courant was the first Scottish paper to give foreign intelligence from original sources, instead of repeating the advices sent to London. In 1780 David Ramsay became its proprietor. Under his management it is said to have attained the largest Scottish circulation of its day. It was then of neutral politics. Subsequently, returning to its original title, and appearing as a daily morning paper, it ranked for long as the senior organ of the Conservative party in Scotland, but at last the competition of the Scotsman caused its disappearance, and after amalgamating with the Glasgow News or the Scottish News in 1886, it expired in 1888.
The Edinburgh Weekly Journal began in 1744, but it only attained celebrity when, almost seventy years afterwards, it became the joint property of Sir Walter Scott and of James Ballantyne. Scott wrote in its columns many characteristic articles. Ballantyne edited it until his death in 1833, and was succeeded in the editorship by Thomas Moir. The paper was discontinued about 1840. The Edinburgh Evening News started in 1873.
The Scotsman, the leading Scottish newspaper, was established as a twice-a-week paper in January 1817 and became a daily in June 1855. It ranked as the chief organ of the Liberal party in Scotland, until the Home Rule split in 1886, when it became Unionist. It was founded by William Ritchie, in conjunction with Charles Maclaren. For a short period it was edited by J. R. M‘Culloch, the eminent political economist. He was succeeded by Maclaren, who edited the paper until 1845, and he in turn in 1848 by Alexander Russel (1814–1876), who (with Mr Law as manager) continued to conduct it with great ability until 1876. In 1859 the first of Hoe’s rotary brought into Scotland was erected for the Scotsman. The Scotsman soon developed into a great newspaper, strong both on its literary side and also in gathering news; and it was circulated all over Scotland, its publishing offices being opened in Glasgow, which was a better centre for distributing in the west, and in Perth for the north. At last under Charles A. Cooper it succeeded in killing all its rivals in Edinburgh. In 1885 the Scotsman issued an evening paper.
The North British Advertiser was founded in 1826. The Witness began in 1840 as the avowed organ of what speedily became the Free Church party in Scotland. In its first prospectus it calls itself the Old Whig. The paper appeared twice a week, and its editor, Hugh Miller, very soon made it famous. In the course of less than sixteen years he wrote about a thousand articles and papers, conspicuous for literary ability, still more so for a wide range of acquirement and of original thought, most of all for deep conscientiousness. It survived its first editor’s death (1855) only a few years.
In Glasgow the Glasgow Herald was founded in 1782. When the Scotsman extended its activities to Glasgow, the Herald opened an office in Edinburgh; and it took an active part in breaking down the old localism of Scottish papers. In later years it became a powerful organ. The North British Daily Mail was established in April 1847. George Troup, its first editor, made it specially famous for the organizing skill with which he brought his intelligence at an unprecedented rate of speed from Carlisle, the nearest point then connected with London by railway. The Glasgow Evening News was started in 1870.
The Aberdeen Journal was founded as a weekly paper in 1748 and became a daily in 1876. In 1879 it issued an evening edition. The Aberdeen Daily Free Press, originally a weekly, dates from 1853. In 1881 it issued an evening paper in connexion with itself. The Dundee Advertiser, established in 1801, towards the latter part of the century extended its sphere of influence much on the lines of the Scotsman and Glasgow Herald. It issued the Evening Telegraph in 1877. In 1859 the Dundee Courier, a halfpenny paper, had begun.
It may be added that a very large number of the men who have distinguished themselves by their labours on the great newspapers of London, and several who rank as founders of these, began their career and have left their mark on the newspapers of Scotland.
Ireland.—In 1641 appeared a sheet called Warranted Tidings from Ireland, but this, with Ireland’s True Diurnal (1642), Mercurius Hibernicus (1644), the Irish Courant (1690), were all of them London newspapers containing Irish news. The real newspaper press of Ireland began with the Dublin News-Letter of 1685. Five years later appeared the Dublin Intelligencer (No. 1, September 30, 1690). Both of these were shortlived. Pue’s Occurrences followed in 1700 and lasted for more than fifty years, as the pioneer of the daily press of Ireland. In 1710 or in 1711 (there is some doubt as to the date of the earliest number) the Dublin Gazette began to appear, the official organ of the vice-regal government. Falkener’s Journal was established in 1728. Esdaile’s News-Letter began in 1744, took the title of Saunders’s News-Letter in 1754 (when it appeared three times a week), and became a daily newspaper in 1777.
In the Nationalist press the famous Freeman’s Journal has long been prominent amongst the Dublin papers. It was established as a daily paper by a committee of the first society of “United Irishmen” in 1763, and its first editor was Dr Lucas. Flood and Grattan were at one time numbered amongst its contributors, although the latter, at a subsequent period, is reported to have exclaimed in his place in the Irish parliament, “The Freeman’s Journal is a liar . . . a public, pitiful liar.” In 1870 it brought out the Evening Telegraph. In 1891 the dissensions among the Irish Nationalists led to the establishment of the Parnellite Dublin Daily Independent and Evening Herald. In 1897 the Nation, formerly a weekly, was brought out as a daily. On the Unionist side the principal Irish paper is the Dublin Irish Times (1859).
Waterford possessed a newspaper as early as 1729, entitled the Waterford Flying Post. It professed to contain “the most material news both foreign and domestic,” was printed on common writing paper and published twice a week at the price of a halfpenny. The Waterford Chronicle was started in 1766.
The Belfast News-Letter was started in 1737; the Belfast Evening Telegraph in 1870; the Belfast Northern Whig in 1824.
British Dominions beyond the Sea.
It is unnecessary here to give all the statistics for the British Colonial press, which has enormously developed in modern times. So far as its early history is concerned, it may be noted that Keimer’s Gazette was started in Barbadoes in 1731 and Granada followed with a newspaper of its own in 1742. In Canada the Halifax Gazette was established in 1751 and the Montreal Gazette in 1765. The first Australasian paper was the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (1803–1843), the Derwent Star, in Van Dieman’s Land (Tasmania), starting in 1810. In modern days all the British dominions beyond the sea have produced important and well-conducted papers. The Canadian press has naturally had certain marked affinities with the American; but the Globe in Toronto, as ​the organ of the Liberal party, has played a leading part in Canadian history. In Australia the Sydney Bulletin, the Sydney Morning Herald (1831—daily since 1840), Sydney Daily Telegraph, Melbourne Argus (1846) and Melbourne Age (1854), with the evening Melbourne Herald, have been the most important. In South Africa the Cape Times (1876) has been the principal paper, but some of the Transvaal English papers have exercised great influence in the disturbed political conditions since about 1895.
India.—For a considerable period under the rule of the East India Company the Indian press was very unimportant both in character and influence. It was permitted to shape its course and to gain a position as it could, under the potent checks of the deportation power and the libel law, without any direct censorship. Nor was it found difficult to inflict exemplary punishment on the writers of “offensive paragraphs.”
Prior to Lord Wellesley’s administration the most considerable newspapers published at Calcutta were the World, the Bengal Journal, the Hurkaru, the Calcutta Gazette (the organ of the Bengal government), the Telegraph, the Calcutta Courier, the Asiatic Mirror and the Indian Gazette. Mr Duane, the editor of the World, was sent to Europe in 1794 for “an inflammatory address to the army,” as was Mr Charles Maclean, four years afterwards for animadverting in the Telegraph on the official conduct of a local magistrate.
The Calcutta Englishman dates from 1821. Lord Wellesley was the first governor-general who created a censorship (April 1799). His press-code was abolished by the marquis of Hastings in 1818. The power of transporting obnoxious editors to Europe of course remained. Perhaps the most conspicuous instance of its exercise was the removal of the editor of the Calcutta Journal (Silk Buckingham), which occurred immediately after Lord Hastings’s departure from India and during the government of his temporary successor, Mr John Adan. Buckingham’s departure was followed closely (14th March 1823) by a new licensing act, far exceeding in stringency that, of Lord Wellesley, and (5th April 1823) by an elaborate “Regulation for preventing the Establishment of Printing-Presses without Licence, and for restraining under certain circumstances the Circulation of Printed Books and Papers.” The first application of it was to suppress the Calcutta Journal.
In the course of the elaborate inquiry into the administration of India which occupied both Houses of Parliament in 1832, prior to the renewal of the Company’s charter, it was stated that there were, besides 5 native journals, 6 European newspapers: three daily, the Bengal Hurkaru, John Bull and the Indian Gazette; one published twice a week, the Government Gazette; and two weekly the Bengal Herald and the Oriental Observer. At this period every paper was published under a licence, revocable at pleasure, with or without previous inquiry or notice. At Madras, on the other hand, the press remained under rigid restriction. The Madras censorship was removed whilst the parliamentary inquiry of 1832 was still pending.
One question only, and that but for a brief interval, disturbed Lord William Bentinck’s love of free discussion. The too famous “Half-Batta” measure led him to think that a resolute persistence in an unwise policy by the home government against the known convictions of the men actually at the helm in India and an unfettered press were two things that could scarcely co-exist. It was on this occasion that Sir Charles Metcalfe recorded his minute of September 1830, the reasoning of which fully justifies the assertion—“I have, for my own part, always advocated the liberty of the press, believing its benefits to outweigh its mischiefs; and I continue of the same opinion.” This opinion was amply carried out in the memorable law (drafted by Macaulay and enacted by Metcalfe as governor-general in 1835), which totally abrogated the licensing system. It left all men at liberty to express their sentiments on public affairs, under the legal and moral responsibilities of ordinary life, and remained in force until the outbreak of the mutiny of 1857.
In 1853 Garcin de Tassy, when opening at Paris his annual course of lectures on the Hindustani language, enumerated and gave some interesting details concerning twenty-seven journals (of all sorts) in Hindustani. In 1860 he made mention of seventeen additional ones. Of course the circulation and the literary merits of all of them were relatively small. One, however, he said, had reached a sale of 4000 copies.
In 1857 Lord Canning’s law, like that of 1823, on which it was closely modelled, absolutely prohibited the keeping or using of printing-presses, types or other materials for printing, in any part of the territories in the possession and under the government of the East Indian Company, except with the previous sanction and licence of government, and also gave full powers for the seizure and prohibition from circulation of all books and papers, whether printed within the Indian territories or elsewhere.
In 1878 an act was passed, which long remained in force, regulating the vernacular press of India: “Printers or publishers of journals in Oriental languages must, upon demand by the due officer, give bond not to print or publish in such newspapers anything likely to excite feelings of disaffection to the government or antipathy between persons of different castes or religions, or for purposes of extortion. Notification of warning is to be made in the official gazette if these regulations be infringed (whether there be bond or not); on repetition, a warrant is to issue for seizure of plant, &c.; if a deposit have been made, forfeiture is to ensue. Provision is made not to exact a deposit if there be an agreement to submit to a government officer proofs before publication.” After the disturbances of 1908–1909 further and more stringent regulations were made.
The Indian Daily Mirror (1863) was the first Indian daily in English edited by natives. The total number of journals of all kinds published within all the territories of British India was reported by the American consular staff in 1882 as 373, with an estimated average aggregate circulation per issue of 288,300 copies. Of these, 43, with an aggregate circulation of 56,650 copies, were published in Calcutta; 60, with an aggregate circulation of 51,776 copies, at Bombay. In 1900 it appeared from the official tables that there were about 600 newspapers, so called, published in the Indian empire, of which about one-third, mostly dailies, were in the Indian vernaculars. Calcutta had 15 dailies (Calcutta Englishman, &c.); Bombay 2 (Bombay Gazette); Madras 4 (Madras Mail); Rangoon 3 (Rangoon Times); Allahabad 2 (Pioneer); Lahore 2 (Civil and Military Gazette).
Authorities.—For late developments, see Mitchell’s, Sell’s and Willing’s Press Directories. For historical information: J. B. W. Williams, Hist. of British Journalism to the Foundation of the Gazette (1908); H. R. Fox-Bourne, English Newspapers (1877); “The Newspaper Press,” Quarterly Review, cl. 498-537 (October, 1880); Hatton, Journalistic London (1882); Pebody’s English Journalism (1882); Progress of British Newspapers in the 19th Century (1901; published by Simpkin, Marshall & Co.); Andrews, History of British Journalism (2 vols., 1860); Hunt, The Fourth Estate; Grant, The Newspaper Press (3 vols., 1871–1873); Plummer, “The British Newspaper Press,” Companion to the Almanac (1876); Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, iv. 33-97. (H. Ch.)
3. Newspapers of the United States
Massachusetts.—Boston was the first city of America that possessed a local newspaper; but the earliest attempt in that direction, made in 1689, and a second attempt, under the title Publick Occurrences, which followed in September 1690, were both suppressed by the government of Massachusetts. Nearly fourteen years afterwards (April 24, 1704), the first number of the Boston News-Letter was “printed by B. Green, and sold by Nicholas Boone.” Its proprietor and editor—so far as it can be said to have had an editor, for extracts from the London papers were its staple contents—was John Campbell, postmaster of the town. In 1719 he enlarged his paper, in order, as he told his readers, “to make the news newer and more acceptable; . . . whereby that which seem’d old in the former half-sheets becomes new now by the sheet. . . . This time twelvemonth we were thirteen months behind with the foreign news beyond Great Britain, and now less than five months; so that . . . we have retrieved about eight months since January last”; and he encourages his subscribers with the assurance that if they will continue steady “until January next, life permitted, they will be accommodated with all the news of Europe . . . that are needful to be known in these parts.” But Campbell’s new plans were soon disturbed by the loss of his office, and the commencement of a new journal by his successor in the postmastership, William Brooker, entitled the Boston Gazette “published by authority” (No. 1, 21st December 1719). The old journalist had a bitter controversy with his rival, but at the end of the year 1722 relinquished his concern in the paper to Benjamin Green, who carried it on, with higher aims and greater success, until his death, at the close of 1733, being then succeeded by his son-in-law, John Draper, who published it until December 1762. By Richard Draper, who followed his father, the title was altered to Massachusetts Gazette and Boston News-Letter; and the maintenance of the British rule against the rising spirit of independence uniformly characterized his editorship and that of his widow (to whom, at a subsequent period, a pension was ​granted by the British government). It was the only paper printed in Boston during the siege, and ceased to appear when the British troops were compelled to evacuate the city.
The Boston Gazette, founded in 1719, had James Franklin, elder brother of the celebrated Benjamin Franklin, as its first printer. It lasted until the end of 1754, its editorship usually changing with the change of the postmasters. On the 17th August 1721 James Franklin started the New England Courant, the publication of which ceased in 1727; and two years later Benjamin Franklin purchased the Pennsylvania Gazette, which he continued weekly until 1765.
To the Boston Gazette and the Courant succeeded the New England Weekly Journal (20th March 1727; incorporated with the Boston Gazette in 1741), and the Weekly Rehearsal (27th September 1731), which became the Boston Evening Post (August 1735), and under that title was for a time the most popular of the Boston newspapers. It aimed at neutrality in politics, and therefore did not survive the exciting events of the spring of 1775. Several minor papers followed, which may be passed over without notice. A new Boston Gazette, which began in April 1755 (merged in 1836 in the Centinel), is of more interest. For a long time it was the main organ of the popular party against England, and expounded their policy with great ability, and in a dignified temper. Otis, John Adams, Samuel Adams and Joseph Warren were amongst its writers. It was strongly Republican after the adoption of the constitution, especially opposing its old contributor John Adams.
The Massachusetts Spy (1770), under the indefatigable editorship of the American historian of printing, Isaiah Thomas, did yeoman’s service in this struggle, although of a different kind from that of the Boston Gazette. The latter spoke chiefly to the thinkers and natural leaders of the people. The Spy was a light and active skirmisher who engaged his antagonists wherever he met them, and frequently carried the war into the enemy’s country. In July 1774, during the operation of the Boston Port Act, and soon after the landing of four British regiments, it adopted Franklin’s odd device, representing Great Britain as a dragon, and the colonies as a snake divided into nine parts with the motto, “join or die.” But Boston grew too hot for the patriotic printer, and he had to remove to Worcester on the day of the battle of Lexington. Here the paper continued to be published (as the Worcester Spy) until 1786,—the lack of the stirring revolutionary matter being occasionally supplied by the republication in its columns of entire books, such as Robertson’s America and Gordon’s History of the Revolution. This journal, like so many more, was for a time killed by a tax. The stamp duty imposed in March 1786, though amounting to but two-thirds of a penny, and very speedily repealed, led to its suspension until April 1788, when the weekly Massachusetts Spy was revived, lasting till 1848. A morning edition, the Worcester Spy, was started in 1845 and continued to be published till May 1904.
The Boston Centinel was another memorable newspaper. It was founded in 1784 as the Massachusetts Centinel and the Republican Journal, a semi-weekly; in 1790 becoming the Columbian Centinel. For many years it was edited by Major B. Russell (1761–1845), a man who combined real ability with moderation of temper and singular modesty and disinterestedness. He printed the Acts of Congress for a very long time without charge, but the government eventually gave him £1400 in recognition of his work. The Centinel had good foreign news, and Russell was intimate with Louis Philippe and Talleyrand when they were in Boston. In 1830 it absorbed the Palladium (founded in 1793 as the Massachusetts Mercury, and renamed in 1801 the Massachusetts Mercury and New England Palladium), and in 1836 the Boston Gazette, but in 1840 was merged in the Boston Advertiser. The Boston Daily Advertiser was founded in 1813, and in 1832 absorbed the Patriot, which in 1819 was started out of a nucleus chiefly composed of the New England Chronicle (1776).
William Lloyd Garrison’s once well-known Liberator was founded at Boston on New Year’s Day 1831. For a time its editor was also writer, compositor and pressman. In December of that year the legislature of Georgia offered a reward of 5000 dollars to any one who would cause him to be apprehended and brought to trial. He continued the paper till 1865 and lived to witness the abolition of negro slavery. In 1827 Garrison also edited in Boston the National Philanthropist, the first American total abstinence paper.
Among modern Boston papers the most important are the Evening Transcript (1830), Herald (1836), Daily Advertiser (1813), Globe (1872), Boston American (1904) and Post (1831).
Of Massachusetts papers outside Boston the most important still in existence in 1910 was the morning Springfield Republican (weekly, 1824; daily, 1844), established by Samuel Bowles, father of Samuel Bowles (1826–1878), its most famous editor.
The Evening Salem Gazette, originally a weekly (1768), was a famous paper during the War of Independence and in the period immediately after. The Hampshire Gazette of Northampton, Massachusetts, founded in September 1786 in the interests of the Administration at the time of Shays’s Rebellion, started its daily edition in 1890. The weekly Gazette and Courier (1841), was a consolidation of the Greenfield Gazette (1792) and the Courier (1838). The Salem Register and Mercury continues the Salem Register (1800) and the Mercury, which was published in Salem as early as 1768, but not continuously. The Haverhill Evening Gazette dates from 1798. In Pittsfield is published the Berkshire County Eagle, a weekly established in 1789, with an evening edition, the Berkshire Evening Eagle (1892). The Newburyport Herald (evening 1880; morning 1892) continues the title of an earlier paper (1797) owned by Ephraim W. Allen and William S. Allen.
At the commencement of the struggle for independence in 1775 Massachusetts possessed 7 newspapers, New Hampshire 1 (the New Hampshire Gazette), Rhode Island 2, and Connecticut 3,—making 13 in all for the New England colonies. Pennsylvania had 8, of which the earliest in date was the American Weekly Mercury (No. 1, 22nd December 1719); and New York but 3, the oldest of them being the New York Gazette (1725). Up to that period (1725) Boston and Philadelphia were the only towns possessing newspaper throughout America. In the middle and southern colonies there were, in 1775, in the aggregate, 10 journals, of which Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina possessed each 2, South Carolina 3 and Georgia 1. The total number of the Anglo-American papers was 34, and all of them were of weekly publication.
New Hampshire.—The New Hampshire Gazette (1756; daily edition since 1852), published at Portsmouth, was the “father” of the New England press. The Cheshire Republican (1793) and New Hampshire Sentinel (1799; evening edition since 1890) are still published at Keene.
Vermont.—The earliest paper established in Vermont was the Green Mountain Postboy, first published in April 1781. The oldest important paper in Vermont is the Rutland Herald (established in 1794 as a weekly; daily edition since 1861). The Vermont Journal of Windsor, Vermont, was established in 1783.
Maine.—The first papers of any importance published in Maine were the Portland Advertiser (evening, 1785), of which James G. Blaine was editor in 1857–1860; and the Eastern Argus of Portland (September 1803). The latter was established by Nathaniel Willis (1780–1870), the father of N. P. Willis. Willis was converted in Portland by Edward Payson and about 1808 he left the paper. In 1816–1826 he established in Boston the Recorder, which is supposed to have been the first American religious paper. In 1827 Willis established the Youth’s Companion, the most popular American juvenile paper. The Eastern Argus was edited in 1820–1824 by Seba Smith (1813–1868), who established in 1829 the Portland Courier, which he edited until 1837 and to which he contributed the sketches republished in 1833 as Life and Letters of Major Jack Downing.
Connecticut.—The Connecticut Courant of Hartford was established in October 1764 as a weekly; in 1893 there appeared a semi-weekly issue, and its daily issue, the Hartford Courant, first appeared in 1837. The paper was a strong supporter of the administrations of Washington and Adams. Probably the best known of its editors is Joseph R. Hawley. Charles Dudley Warner was long a member of the staff. The Hartford Times (semi-weekly 1817; daily, 1841) has always been a prominent paper. Its principal early editors were Gideon Wells in 1826–1836 (in 1861–1869 he was United States secretary of the navy), and John Milton Niles (1787–1856), who was United States ​senator in 1835–1839 and 1843–1849 and was postmaster-general of the United States in 1840–1841.
Next to the Courant, the oldest paper still published in Connecticut is the New Haven Journal, established as a weekly in 1766 (the weekly edition is now styled the Connecticut Herald), which first appeared as a daily in 1834 as the Morning Journal and Courier. The New London Gazette (1763), which in 1773 became the Connecticut Gazette, ceased publication in 1844. Another Gazette was established in New London for a time, but is no longer published and was in no way connected with the earlier paper. The Danbury News (weekly, 1870, when The Times and Jeffersonian were consolidated; daily, 1883) is known for the humorous sketches contributed by its proprietor James Montgomery Bailey (1841–1894). The Republican Farmer (weekly) was established in 1790 in Danbury and in 1810 removed to Bridgeport; the Evening Farmer was first published in 1855. The Norwich Courier (weekly, 1796) has a daily edition, the Bulletin (1858).
Rhode Island.—The oldest paper now published in Rhode Island is the Newport Mercury (weekly; 1758), which, like most of the other New England patriot sheets, was suppressed in 1765; it was established by James Franklin, a nephew of Benjamin Franklin.
Pennsylvania.—The Aurora (1790) was the most notable of the early Philadelphia papers, next to Franklin’s Gazette. It was founded by Franklin’s grandson, Benjamin Franklin Bache, who in 1784 had started the American Daily Advertiser, the first American daily. Bache and his successor William Duane (who edited the paper till 1822) bitterly attacked Washington, Adams and Hamilton; and the Aurora after 1793 was practically the organ of Jefferson, but ceased to be of importance after the national capital was removed from Philadelphia. From 1791 to 1793 the principal Anti-Federalist paper was the National Gazette, edited by Philip Freneau, whom Jefferson brought to Philadelphia. As opposed to these there was the United States Gazette, founded in New York in 1789, but removed to Philadelphia in 1790, which represented Alexander Hamilton. This journal afterwards (1826–1847) was an important Whig organ, under the editorship of Joseph Ripley Chandler (1792–1880). In 1847 it was consolidated with the North American (1830), which still survives in Philadelphia, having in its progress also absorbed the Pennsylvania Gazette (1729–1845), for a time owned by Benjamin Franklin, the Pennsylvania Packet (founded 1771) and other papers.
Other important Philadelphia papers still in existence are, the Public Ledger (1836), founded as a one-cent paper, purchased in 1864 by George W. Childs, who increased the price from 61/4 to 10 cents a week; the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, which consolidated the American Sentinel (1815) and the Evening Bulletin (1847); and the Press (1857), edited from 1880 to 1908 by Charles Emory Smith (1842–1908), United States Minister to Russia in 1890–1892, and postmaster-general of the United States in 1898–1902.
Benjamin Lundy edited in Philadelphia in 1836–1838 the National Enquirer (anti-slavery), which became the Pennsylvania Freeman and in 1838–1840 was edited by John G. Whittier.
Outside of Philadelphia the oldest papers of importance in Pennsylvania are the Pittsburgh Gazette, first published in 1786 and probably the first newspaper published west of the Alleghanies, which in 1906 was consolidated with the Times (1879) to form the Gazette Times; and the Pittsburgh Post (1792; daily, 1842), one of the few influential Democratic papers published in Pennsylvania; the Pittsburgh Dispatch (1846) is a morning paper. Other papers founded before 1801 (and still published) in Pennsylvania are: the Franklin Repository of Chambersburg (weekly, 1790; daily, 1883), of which A. K. McClure was proprietor and editor in 1850–1856; the Reading Adler (weekly, 1796), the oldest existing German newspaper in the country; the Intelligencer of Lancaster (1799), with which the Journal (1794) was combined in 1839; the Westmoreland Democrat of Greensburg (weekly, 1799); the Herald of Norristown (weekly, 1799; daily, 1848).
Maryland.—The earliest journal of Maryland was William Parks’s Maryland Gazette, of Annapolis, begun in 1727, when in all America it had but six existing predecessors. Discontinued in 1736, it was revived in 1739 by Jonas Green and lasted till 1839. The oldest paper now published in Baltimore is the American, the successor of the Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser founded in August 1773; on the 21st September 1814 it published “The Star Spangled Banner.” The Baltimore Sun was started in 1837.
New Jersey.—New Jersey had no really established newspaper before the Revolution, although the first number of an intended journal was published in 1765, under the title of the Constitutional Gazette, containing matters interesting to Liberty, but no wise repugnant to Royalty. The earliest regular paper was the New Jersey Gazette, which began in December 1777 at Burlington (soon removing to Trenton), and ceased publication in 1786. A State Gazette (weekly), now published in Trenton, dates from 1792 (daily, 1846); Trenton’s largest paper is the Times (evening; 1882). The Sentinel of Freedom, a Newark weekly, was first published in 1796; its daily edition, the Star, dates from 1832. Newark’s largest paper is the Evening News (1883). The New Brunswick Times was first published as a weekly in 1792; a daily edition was added in 1849.
Virginia.—Virginia, notwithstanding its illustrious precedency—the province of Raleigh, the cradle of Washington—possessed neither newspaper nor printing office until 1736, so that (as respects one-half at least of the wish) there was once a prospect that the devout aspiration of Sir William Berkeley might be realized. “Thank God,” said this Virginian governor in 1671, “we have neither free school nor printing press, and I hope may not have for a hundred years to come.” The earliest journal established in the state was the Virginia Gazette, commenced in 1736. It was still published at Williamsburg in 1766, when a second paper of the same name was established there. This second paper, backed by Thomas Jefferson, was afterwards called the American Advertiser and then the Commercial Advertiser, and stopped in 1822. The Richmond Enquirer, which started in 1808, succeeding the Examiner, early attained a leading position as a Democratic organ; it was discontinued in 1880. The Alexandria Gazette (1816) is still published.
Washington, D.C.—The first “administration organ” (i.e. expressing the political views of the administration, but not officially a government paper), was the National Intelligencer (1800); this position it held until 1829, when it became an opposition paper. In Jackson’s administration the United States Telegraph, which had been purchased in 1826 by Duff Green, became the “administration organ”; but in 1830 it was supplanted by the Globe. The United States Telegraph, which had supported Calhoun, remained his organ until 1835, strongly favouring slavery and opposing the abolition press. The Globe after December 1830 was conducted by Francis Preston Blair the elder and John C. Rives (1795–1864); it opposed Nullification, Secession, and the Southern wing of the Democratic party. In 1841 the National Intelligencer became the administration organ; it was succeeded in the same year by a new paper, the Daily Madisonian, President Tyler’s organ, and in 1845 the Union became the organ of President Polk. To the Union in 1845 the Globe sold out, but only as a party organ. In 1846 to 1871 the Globe was the publisher of the Congressional debates. President Taylor’s organ during his administration was the newly established Republican. During President Fillmore’s presidency the National Intelligencer, which was a Webster-Whig organ, returned to power, and during Pierce’s administration the Union was again the administration organ, with the Evening Star (1852) a close second. In Buchanan’s administration the influence of the Union continued. During the Civil War most of these papers died off, except the Star and the National Intelligencer, which in 1870 removed to New York, where it stayed as a semi-weekly for some time. The Washington Post, now the leading paper, was founded in 1877. The National Era, the organ of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, first published in Washington in 1844 (the Cincinnati Philanthropist was merged with it in 1847) by Gamaliel Bailey, is known principally because Uncle Tom’s Cabin ran in its columns as a serial in 1851–1852. A New ​ National Era (1870), was conducted in Washington by Frederick Douglass and his sons.
New York.—The New York Gazette (which started in New York City on the 16th of October 1725) was followed by the Weekly Journal (No. 1, 5th November 1733), still memorable for the prosecution for sedition which it entailed on its printer, John Peter Zenger, and for the masterly defence of the accused by Andrew Hamilton. “The trial of Zenger,” said Gouverneur Morris, “was the germ of American freedom.” Gaines’s New York Mercury was published from 1752 to 1783. James Rivington (1724–1802) in 1773 published the New York Gazetteer as a loyalist sheet, but his press was destroyed in 1775 and he went to England; in 1777 he returned and published Rivington’s New York Loyal Gazette (semi-weekly), renamed first the Royal Gazette and then Rivington’s New York Gazette and Universal Advertiser, which came to an end in 1783. The semi-weekly Independent Journal was one of the papers of New York City in which, between October 27th, 1787, and April 2nd, 1788, the Federalist essays were published; in 1788 it became part of the New York Gazette, and then in 1840 was consolidated with the Journal of Commerce. The first daily newspaper published in the city or state of New York was the New York Journal and Register, commenced in 1788. In 1802 the Morning Chronicle, edited by Peter Irving (1771–1838), a brother of Washington Irving, was established as Aaron Burr’s organ; in 1805 it was merged in the Poughkeepsie Journal. Another political paper was the Minerva (1793), under Noah Webster, which had a semi-weekly edition, the Herald. These in 1797 became the Commercial Advertiser and New York Spectator respectively. The former (surviving as the Globe and Commercial Advertiser) was edited in 1820–1844 by W. L. Stone and in 1867 by Thurlow Weed.
In 1810 the aggregate number of papers published within the state was 66, of which 14 belonged to New York City. Ten years later the city press included 8 daily journals, with an aggregate daily circulation of 10,800 copies. No one paper circulated more than 2000, and but two—the Evening Post (1801) and the Commercial Advertiser (1797)—attained that number.
The New York Evening Post was at first strongly Federalist and practically an organ of Alexander Hamilton, who with John Jay assisted in founding it. Its first editor was William Coleman (1766–1829). In the years immediately following 1819 John Rodman Drake contributed to the Post the “Croaker” pieces, in which FitzGreene Halleck joined. William Cullen Bryant began to write for the Post in 1826, and became its editor-in-chief in 1828. John Bigelow, Parke Godwin, Carl Schurz, Horace White, E. L. Godkin, editor from 1881 to 1901, and Henry Villard, are the important names in its history. Rollo Ogden became editor in 1903. Closely connected with the Post is the weekly Nation, long edited by E. L. Godkin (q.v.). The Post was strongly Federalist until the War of 1812; it opposed the Hartford Convention; until 1860 it was consistently Democratic; it supported Lincoln in 1860 and in 1864 and Grant in 1868; in later years it was an advocate of free trade and of civil service reform. There were earlier Evening Posts in 1746–1747 and in 1794.
The cheap (two-cent) press of America (the previous price having usually been six cents) began in New York in the shape of the Morning Post (1st January 1833), which only lasted a few weeks; the real pioneer was the Daily Sun (No. 1, 23rd September 1833), written, edited, set up, and worked off by Benjamin Henry Day, a journeyman printer. It sold at one cent till the Civil War, when it charged two cents, the price remaining at that figure. The New York Sun was acquired in 1868 by Charles Anderson Dana (q.v.), who made it a powerful organ, and under his successor William M. Laffan (1848–1909) it remained one of the great dailies.
The New York Herald followed in May 1835, founded and edited by James Gordon Bennett (q.v.), and his efforts and those of his son gave it an enormous commercial success.
The New York Tribune was established in 1841 by Horace Greeley (q.v.), who remained its editor and one of its proprietors until his death, shortly after his defeat for the presidency in 1872. He was succeeded as editor and proprietor by Whitelaw Reid (b. 1837), who had joined the staff in 1868 and afterwards became U.S. Ambassador in London. Directed by two such men the Tribune became a powerful organ.
The New York Times, which was to rank with the Tribune and Sun among the best modern American daily papers, was established by Henry J. Raymond (q.v.) in September 1851; and, though absent at times in the discharge of his duties as lieut.-governor of New York and member of Congress, he continued its editor and chief proprietor until his death in June 1869. At the end of the century, under the control of Mr Adolph S. Ochs (b. 1858), it was prominent in American journalism for the excellence of its news service and literary character.
The New York World was founded in 1860 as a highly moral and religious sheet, which immediately failed and had to be reorganized. In 1861 the Morning Courier and the Enquirer were merged into it. In 1864 it and the Journal of Commerce were suppressed for several days by the Federal authorities because each had been tricked into publishing a forged presidential proclamation of a draft and of a general fast day. In 1869 it became the sole property of Manton Marble (b. 1834), who retired from its editorship in 1875; in 1876 it was sold to a syndicate and came under the control of Jay Gould; in 1883 it was purchased by Joseph Pulitzer (b. 1847), and its modern activity began; It worked hard for Grover Cleveland, especially in his first campaign, and opposed W. J. Bryan and his policies.
The journals owned by W. R. Hearst (b. 1863) all over America represent perhaps more conspicuously than any others the popular developments which at the end of the 19th century were associated with the nickname of the “Yellow Press.” His papers in New York in 1910 were the American (originally Journal; morning, except Sunday); the Evening Journal, the American and Journal (Sunday) and Das Morgen Journal. Starting in the ’nineties as proprietor of the San Francisco Examiner, Mr Hearst had a large fortune to enable him to carry out his ideas of a thoroughgoing democratic journalism, appealing particularly to the less literate masses and supplying all sorts of sensational news. The class prejudice often underlying the policy of his papers was bitterly criticized and resented by sober American opinion, but their passionate appeal to the masses, combined with their audacious and lively presentation of news, gave Mr Hearst nevertheless a position of considerable power; and no secret was made of his ambition to reach the highest political positions, both in New York itself and in the Republic. Dangerous as his social influence was considered by important sections of the community, and unsuccessful as he remained up to 1910 in obtaining municipal office or presidential nomination, it remained the fact that, in the type of journalism so indefatigably conducted under him, he represented a serious force in American social and political life, and his journalistic methods were a remarkable outcome of the conditions of a modern free press in a democratic country, where a large public exists for the consumption of the sort of newspaper fare which he was ready to provide.
The New York Press (1887) is a morning Republican paper of the strictest party type.
An important commercial paper of long standing in New York is the Journal of Commerce and Commercial Bulletin, founded in 1827 as the Journal of Commerce by Arthur Tappan (1786–1865) and his brother Lewis Tappan (1788–1873), and in 1893 consolidated with the Commercial Bulletin (1865). The Journal of Commerce in 1829–1830 was the first American paper to send out news schooners which intercepted packet ships which brought news especially of the French Revolution of 1830. Arthur Tappan, who was one of the founders of Oberlin College, established in 1833 the Emancipator, an abolitionist paper, of which in 1833–1837 Elizur Wright (1804–1885), and in 1837–1840 Joshua Leavitt (1794–1873), were editors. Leavitt took the paper to Boston. It was the weekly organ of the American Anti-Slavery Society.
The New York Evening Mail (1833), for a time the Mail ​and Express, was bought in 1888 and reorganized by Elliott Fitch Shepard (1833–1893). The Express was established in 1836 with the help of Willis Hall (1801–1868), a prominent Whig lawyer and politician, by James Brooks (1810–1873), who had formerly been on the Portland Advertiser and in 1832 had written (for the Advertiser) the first regular Washington correspondence. His brother Erastus (1815–1886) was joint owner of the Express in 1836–1877. James Brooks wrote several books of travel and was involved in the scandal of the Crédit Mobilier.
Of the New York newspapers not in English the most important are the following. The Staats-Zeitung (evening, 1834) is published by a company of which in 1909 Herman Ridder (b. 1851) was president, having since 1890 been treasurer and manager. Ridder, a prominent German Democrat and Roman Catholic, established in 1886 the Catholic News, a weekly with a large circulation, edited by his son Henry Ridder. The Zeitung (morning, 1845), Herald (evening, 1879), and Revue (Sundays) are other German papers published by one company. Mr Hearst’s Das Morgen Journal dates from 1890. A Socialist Labour paper—daily Volks Zeitung and weekly Vorwaerts—was established in 1878. The Jewish Daily News and (weekly) Jewish Gazette (1874) in Yiddish and English have large circulations; so have the Jewish Morning Journal (1901; Abend Post, 1899, and weekly, Jewish Journal, 1899); the Jewish Herald (evening) and Volksadvocat (weekly), both editions, 1887; and Forward (evening, 1897). The Courrier des États-Unis (1828) publishes small daily, Sunday and weekly editions. There are four Italian dailies, the more important being L’Araldo Italiano (1894) and Il Progresso Italo-Americano (1879). The Atlantis (evening, 1894) is a Greek daily. The Listy (1875) and Hlas Lidu (1886) are Bohemian dailies; the Narodni List (1898) is a Croatian daily; the Gaelic American (1903), Irish Nationalist (1888), Irish-American (1849) and Irish World are Irish weeklies printed in English; the Amerikai Magyar Nepsava (1897) is a Hungarian daily, also published in Cleveland, Ohio; the Glas Naroda (1893) is a small Slavonic daily.
Among the New York weekly publications must be mentioned Harper’s Weekly, founded in 1856; George William Curtis was first connected with it in 1857, and after 1864 was its political editor. Under Curtis it was a powerful advocate of civil service reform, and its campaigns against Tammany were made famous by the cartoons of Thomas Nast. During the Civil War Harper’s Weekly published Nast’s sketches in the field. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (now Leslie’s Weekly) was founded in 1855 by Frank Leslie (1821–1880), whose ability as a wood-engraver was the basis of its success. Nast was employed by Leslie in 1854 and subsequent years, and was sent to England to sketch the Heenan-Sayers fight. With Harper’s and Leslie’s Weeklies ranks Collier’s Weekly, established in 1888 by Peter Fenelon Collier (d. 1909).
The following are newspapers of Brooklyn. The Eagle (evening, 1841), of which Walt Whitman was editor in 1846–1847, came in 1885 under the editorship of St Clair McKelway (b. 1845), editor in 1878–1885 of the Albany Argus. The Times (evening, 1848), like the Eagle, makes a specialty of the news of Long Island. Brooklyner Freie Presse (evening, 1864). The Standard Union (evening, 1864). The Citizen (evening, 1886).
Outside of New York City the most important papers in the political history of the state have been those of Albany. The Albany Argus, established in 1813 (daily, 1824), was the organ of the famous Albany Regency. The Evening Journal of Albany was established in 1830 by Thurlow Weed, who controlled it for 35 years. After 1865 it became the property of Samuel Wilkeson (1817–1889), and in 1889 William Barnes, Jr., became its editor. The Argus and the Journal held alternately the valuable state printing. A factional fight in the Democratic party over the printing resulted in the establishment of the Atlas in 1843; in 1858 this was consolidated with the Argus.
In Buffalo the oldest paper is the Commercial, the successor of the Buffalo Gazette (1811, weekly), which in 1818 became the Niagara Patriot and in 1820 the Buffalo Patriot, and in 1834 the Buffalo Patriot and Commercial Advertiser. The daily issue began in 1835 as the Commercial Advertiser; the weekly was still called by the earlier name. The weekly ceased publication in 1909. In 1890 the daily became the Commercial. The first daily in Buffalo was the Courier (1828), controlled in 1909 by W. J. Conners. The Evening Times (1885) was in 1909 edited by Norman Mack, who was in 1908 treasurer of the Democratic National Committee.
In Rochester are the Democrat and Chronicle (morning and weekly; Democrat, 1826; Chronicle, 1868); Post-Express (evening, 1858); Herald (morning, 1879); and Union and Advertiser (evening, 1826). It was in Rochester that Myron Holly (1779–1841), who had formerly edited the Lyons (N.Y.) Countryman (anti-masonic), edited the Freeman, an anti-slavery paper; and here in 1847–1860 Frederick Douglass edited the North Star, called Frederick Douglass’s Paper after 1855.
In Syracuse are the Evening Herald (1877) and the Post-Standard (morning, Standard, 1829, and Post, 1894, consolidated in 1899).
In Troy are the Record (morning and evening, successor to the Post, 1812), the Times (daily, 1851; weekly, 1856), the Evening Standard (1877), and the Northern Budget (weekly only, 1797).
The Utica Herald-Despatch and Daily Gazette is the successor of the Whitestown Gazette (1793); the Daily Gazette first appeared in 1842; the Morning Herald (1847) was consolidated with it in 1867; and in 1900 it was purchased by the owners of the Evening Despatch (1898).
In Catskill, Greene county, New York, was established in August 1792 by Mackay Croswell the Packet, which in May 1804 was succeeded by the Recorder, which in 1909 was still published as a weekly, the largest in the county. Mackay Croswell’s son Edwin Croswell (1797–1871) left the Recorder in 1823 and in 1824 became editor of the Albany Argus; Croswell was state printer in 1824–1840 and 1844–1847.
Other papers (mostly with small circulations) in New York state founded before 1801 are: the Gazette of Hudson (weekly, 1785; daily, Evening Register, 1866); the Register of Newburgh (1796; now a daily only); the Washington County Post of Cambridge (weekly only, 1798); the Journal of Ballston Spa (weekly, 1798; Ballston Daily Journal, 1894; Republican); and the Gazette of Owego (weekly only, 1800).
Ohio.—The Repository (weekly, 1815; daily, 1878), formerly the Ohio Repository, of Canton, is one of the oldest papers in Ohio. The Western Hemisphere of Columbus was purchased in 1836 by Samuel Medary (1801–1864), who changed its name to the Ohio Statesman; Medary—the “old wheel horse of Democracy,” who is said to have originated the cry of “Fifty-four, forty, or fight!”—was a friend of Stephen A. Douglas and governor of Minnesota in 1857–1858 and of Kansas in 1858–1860; S. S. Cox was editor of the Statesman in 1853–1854.
The Weekly Gazette of Cincinnati (founded in 1793 as the Centinel; in 1804–1815 called the Liberty Hall; in 1815–1883 the Cincinnati Gazette), and the Commercial Tribune (morning; formed in 1896 by the consolidation of the Commercial Gazette and Tribune), are published by the same firm. In 1825–1840 Charles Hammond (1779–1841), an anti-slavery leader, was editor of the Gazette. The Commercial was made by Murat Halstead (1829–1908), prominent Republican politician, and writer of several “campaign lives” of Republican presidential candidates, who was the first editor in the Middle West to get news freely by telegraph. The Cincinnati Enquirer (morning, 1842) became a great power in Ohio politics under the ownership (after 1852) of Washington McLean and his son John R. McLean. The Post (1880), the Times-Star (Times 1836), the Volksblatt (1836), the Volksfreund (daily 1850; weekly 1852), and the Freie Presse (1874) are the other large dailies of Cincinnati. In Cincinnati James G. Birney established in 1835 the Philanthropist, an anti-slavery paper, which Gamaliel Bailey edited in 1837–1847.
The Cleveland Leader (Republican, 1847) was bought in 1853 by Edwin Cowles (1825–1890) and Joseph Medill (after 1855 of the Chicago Tribune). Cowles became sole owner in 1854; he was an anti-slavery Whig and one of the founders of the Republican party in the state. The Leader of 1853 was a consolidation of the Cleveland Forest City, a Whig paper founded in 1849 by Joseph Medill and united in 1852 with the Free Democrat. Like the Chicago Tribune it was in 1909 controlled by Medill’s grandson, Medill McCormick (b. 1877), a son-in-law of M. A. Hanna. The Press of Cleveland (evening, independent) was established in 1878 by James Edmund Scripps (1835–1906); with Milton A. McRae (b. 1858) he formed the Scripps-McRae Press Association of Cleveland and the Scripps-McRae League, which included the Cincinnati Post, the St Louis Star-Chronicle, the Cleveland Press, the Kentucky Post of Covington, the Columbus Citizen, and the Times, the News-Bee and Times-Bee of Toledo. Scripps and McRae organized the Publishers’ Press Association of New York, a rival of the Associated Press. Scripps in his later years was a benefactor of the city of Detroit, where he had established (1873) the Evening News. The Cleveland Plain-Dealer (morning, 1841) is a well-known paper; in its columns appeared the first “Artemus Ward” sketches, contributed by Charles Farrar Browne (1834–1867), who in 1861 went to New York to edit the short-lived humorous Vanity Fair. The Waechter und Anzeiger (Waechter 1852; Anzeiger 1872) is published in Cleveland.
​The larger papers of Columbus are the Ohio State Journal (morning, 1811), the Press-Post (evening, 1827), the Citizen (evening, 1899), and the Express und Westbote (weekly, 1880; Sunday, 1878; daily, 1890—the different editions being under different names). The News of Springfield has a weekly edition, the Weekly Republic, which was founded in 1817. The Toledo Blade (daily, 1848; weekly, 1835) before and during the Civil War contained the attacks on slavery and on political abuses written by “Petroleum V. Nasby,” i.e. David Ross Locke (1833–1888); The first of these letters (signed “Rev. Petroleum Vesuvious Nasby”) appeared in the Jeffersonian of Findlay, Ohio, in 1860, when he was its editor. He had edited small papers in Plymouth and Mansfield (O.) before his connexion with the Blade; in 1871 he became managing editor of the Evening Mail of New York City. Will Carleton (b. 1845) was a member of the Blade’s staff, and contributed to the Blade his first “ballads.” The News-Bee (evening) of Toledo was formed by the consolidation in 1903 of the Times (1846), News (1888) and Bee (1894), and has a morning edition called the Times and a Sunday edition called the Times-Bee. The Zanesville Courier (Republican; daily, 1846) has a weekly edition dating from 1809 (originally the Muskingum Messenger).
Among the smaller newspapers of Ohio the following are more than 100 years old: the Western Star of Lebanon (weekly, 1806); the Ohio Patriot of Lisbon (weekly, 1808; daily and semi-weekly, 1898); and the Journal of Dayton (morning, 1808).
Illinois.—The first newspaper in Illinois was the Illinois Herald (1814; succeeded in 1815 by the Illinois Intelligencer) of Kaskaskia (then the seat of government); it removed to Vandalia, which then became the capital, in 1820; it became the Vandalia Whig and Illinois Intelligencer in 1832; and it ceased publication about 1839, when Springfield became the capital.
The principal papers in Illinois are naturally those of Chicago. The Chicago Tribune (morning; 1847) succeeded The Gem of the Prairie (1844), and a weekly edition was for a time continued under that name. In August 1848 John Locke Scripps (1818–1866) bought a third interest in the Tribune and became its managing editor. In 1852 he sold it to a syndicate of Whig politicians. A part (in 1855) and eventually the whole (in 1874) was bought by Joseph Medill (1823–1899). Horace White (b. 1834) was a reporter on the Tribune in 1856, and was its editor and one of its proprietors in 1864–1874; from 1883 to 1903 he was editor-in-chief of the New York Evening Post. In 1858 the Daily Democratic Press, which J. L. Scripps had established in 1852 with William Bross, was consolidated with the Tribune as the Press and Tribune; in 1860 the name became the Tribune again; the Tribune Company was incorporated in 1861, with J. L. Scripps as its president. The first newspaper published in Chicago, the Democrat (November 1833), was merged with the Daily Tribune in 1861. The Inter-Ocean (morning; 1872), under the editorship (from 1897) of George Wheeler Hinman (b. 1863), has made a specialty of foreign affairs. The News (evening; 1875) was founded and developed by Melville E. Stone (b. 1848) as a one-cent evening paper. After 1883 Eugene Field contributed to this paper his column “Sharps and Flats,” including much verse. In 1888 Victor Fremont Lawson (b. 1850), who had been associated with Stone, acquired the paper. The Record (morning; 1881), started by Lawson, was consolidated in 1901 with the Herald (1881) as the Record-Herald. The Evening Post dates from 1889. In 1900 W. R. Hearst established in Chicago two papers, Hearst’s Evening American and the Examiner (the name assumed in 1902 for his morning American). The Chicago German papers include the Freie Presse (evening and weekly; 1871), the Staats-Zeitung (daily, 1847, weekly—Westen und Daheim—1845; evening edition, the Abend Presse) and Abendpost (1899). The Skandinaven (semi-weekly, 1866; daily, 1871) is an important Norwegian-Danish paper; and there are large Bohemian and Polish dailies.
In Springfield, the state capital, there are two party journals, the Illinois State Journal (Republican; semi-weekly, 1831; daily, 1848) and the Illinois State Register (Democratic; weekly, 1836; daily, 1848).
Michigan.—The Detroit Free Press (morning, 1835; with a weekly agricultural edition, Farm and Live Stock Journal, 1831) was particularly known in 1869–1891 for the humorous sketches of Charles Bertrand Lewis (b. 1842), who wrote under the pseudonym “M. Quad.” The News (morning, 1873) was established by J. E. Scripps (1835–1906).
Missouri.—The oldest paper is the Republic of St Louis, formerly the Republican, founded as a weekly in July 1808, by Joseph Charless, an Irishman who had worked on the Kentucky Gazette in Lexington; it was called first the Missouri Gazette, then (1809) the Louisiana Gazette, then (1812) the Missouri Gazette again, and then (1822) the Missouri Republican, and in 1886–1888 the St Louis Republican; the present name was adopted in 1888. Its first daily issue was in September 1836 and the first Sunday issue in 1848. The Republican was originally a Jeffersonian Democratic paper; it opposed Thos. H. Benton; it supported Wm. Henry Harrison in 1840, and became a Whig organ; and from 1856 was a Democratic paper. A cause célèbre was the trial in 1830 for the impeachment of judge James H. Peck of the U.S. District Court for Missouri, who had suspended from practice for 18 months and had imprisoned for 24 hours an attorney, Luke Edward Lawless, who had criticized in the Republican Judge Peck’s decision in a Spanish land grant case, which was adverse to Lawless, attorney for the plaintiff. William Wirt appeared for Peck, and he was acquitted. Since 1837 the paper has been almost continuously the property of the Knapp and Paschall families. In 1871 the Republican purchased a Walter press from The Times of London; it introduced stereotyping in 1860, probably before any other newspaper. The Globe-Democrat (morning; Republican, 1852) of St Louis early became a valuable property: in 1872 it was sold for $456,100. In St Louis in 1833–1836 Elijah P. Lovejoy published the Observer, primarily a religious paper, which because of local opposition to its attacks on slavery he removed in July 1836 to Alton, Ill., where he was killed by a mob.
The Post-Dispatch (evening, 1851) is a consolidation made in 1878 by its proprietor Joseph Pulitzer. Pulitzer’s first newspaper experience was in 1868 as a reporter on the Westliche Post (morning, 1857) of St Louis, which has an evening edition, the Anzeiger, a Sunday edition, Mississippi Blaetter, and a semi-weekly and weekly edition, Anzeiger des Westens. Carl Schurz was editor of the Westliche Post in 1867. Another German newspaper in St Louis is Amerika (morning; 1872).
The two principal dailies of Kansas City are the Star (evening, 1880–1881; with a morning edition, the Times, 1838, and a Weekly Star, 1890), founded by William R. Nelson (b. 1841); and the Journal (morning, 1854; with a weekly edition). The News-Press (News, 1878; Press, 1902; evening) is the principal paper of St Joseph.
North Carolina.—The Observer (weekly, 1817; daily, 1896) of Fayetteville. The News and Observer (daily; News, 1872; Observer, 1876) and North Carolinian (weekly, 1892) of Raleigh.
South Carolina.—The News and Courier of Charleston (Courier, established 1803 by Loring Andrews, d. 1805, of Hingham, Mass.; News, 1865; consolidated, 1873). The City Gazette of Charleston (founded in 1783 as the South Carolina Weekly Gazette) was edited by W. G. Simms in 1828–1833, but then failed, after bravely attempting to oppose Nullification, and was finally purchased by the Courier. The State of Columbia (1891) is one of the most influential papers in the South.
Alabama.—The News (evening, 1887) and Age-Herald (morning, 1887) of Birmingham. The Mercury of Huntsville (weekly, 1816; daily, 1885). The Register of Mobile (weekly, 1821). The Advertiser of Montgomery (1828). The Morning Times of Selma (weekly edition, 1825.
Georgia.—The Constitution of Atlanta (daily, 1868; weekly, 1870): Henry W. Grady (1851–1889), the orator, was its editor and proprietor-in-part from 1880 until his death; Joel Chandler Harris was an editor (1890–1901) and contributed the Uncle Remus sketches; Frank Lebby Stanton (b. 1857) is well known as a contributor of humorous paragraphs and excellent verse. The Journal of Atlanta (1883; semi-weekly, 1885); its proprietor in 1887–1898 was Hoke Smith (b. 1855), U.S. Secretary of the Interior in 1893–1896, and governor of Georgia in 1907–1909. The Chronicle of Augusta (1785, semi-weekly; now semi-weekly and, since 1837, daily); originally the Augusta Chronicle and Gazette of the State, in 1821 it became the Augusta Chronicle and Georgia Gazette (then Advertiser); in 1835, the Augusta Chronicle; in 1837, when it incorporated the State’s Rights Sentinel—edited for about a dozen years by Judge Augustus Baldwin Longstreet (1790–1870), son of the inventor William Longstreet, and author of Georgia Scenes (1840)—the Daily Chronicle and Sentinel; in 1877, after merging with the Constitutionalist (founded before 1800), the Chronicle and Constitutionalist; James R. Randall (1839–1908), author of “Maryland, my Maryland,” was senior editor of the Chronicle for some time, having been connected with the Constitutionalist after 1866. The Enquirer-Sun of Columbus (weekly, 1828; daily, 1858). The Telegraph of Macon (semi-weekly, 1826; now daily also). The Union-Recorder of Milledgeville (the Federal Union, 1829, and the Southern Recorder, 1819, united in 1872). The Tribune of Rome (1843). The Morning News of Savannah (1850).
​Louisiana.—The Picayune of New Orleans (daily, 1837; weekly, 1841). The Item (evening, 1877) of New Orleans. The Times-Democrat (daily, 1863; semi-weekly, 1895) of New Orleans. L’Abeille de la Nouvelle-Orleans (1827). The States (1880) of New Orleans. On all these see New Orleans. De Bow’s Commercial Review appeared in New Orleans in 1846–1861, in Charleston and Washington in 1861–1864, and in New York in 1866–1870; it was edited by James Dunwoody Brownson De Bow (1820–1867), formerly (1844–1845) of the Southern Quarterly Review, professor (1848–1850) of political economy in the University of Louisiana, director of the state census in 1850–1853, and of the Federal census in 1853–1855. The Review was intensely Southern in tone and is a most important “source” for the economic history of the South; from it De Bow extracted Industrial Resources of the Southern and Western States (3 vols. New Orleans, 1852–1853).
Florida.—The Florida Times Union and Citizen (1865), with daily and semi-weekly editions; and the Metropolis (1887), both of Jacksonville. The Morning Tribune (weekly, 1870; daily, 1891) of Tampa.
Texas.—The Statesman of Austin (1871). The Morning News of Dallas, established in 1885 by Alfred H. Belo (1839–1901), who in 1875 bought the Galveston News (established 1842) and built up these two papers. The Post (1880) and the Chronicle and Herald (1901) of Houston.
Tennessee.—The Journal and Tribune (Journal, 1839, and Tribune, 1816, consolidated in 1898) of Knoxville. The Commercial Appeal (Appeal, 1840; Avalanche, 1857; Commercial, 1889; consolidated in 1894); and the News Scimitar (Evening Scimitar, 1880, and News, 1902, consolidated in 1904), both of Memphis. The Banner (1875), and the American (1830), both of Nashville. The first paper published in the state was the Gazette (1791) of Rogersville, which removed in 1818 to Knoxville, where it was published for a few years.
Kentucky.—The Louisville Courier-Journal (Journal, 1830; Courier, 1843; Democrat, 1844; consolidated 1868), edited by Henry Watterson, who began his connexion with the Journal in 1867. The Herald (1869) of Louisville. In Frankfort, the Argus of Western America was established in 1806; in 1816 Amos Kendall (1789–1869) became part owner and co-editor, and under him the Argus was a political power; it was succeeded in 1840 by the Yeoman.
Indiana.—The first paper in Indianapolis was the Gazette (January 1822), which in 1830 was consolidated with (and took the name of) the Indiana Democrat; in 1840 it was reorganized as the Indiana Sentinel; in 1851 it was first published as a daily; in 1865 its name was changed to the Herald, and in 1868 again to the Indianapolis Sentinel; in February 1905 it was bought by the News (v. infra). The Indianapolis Journal (1823) ceased publication in 1904, but was an important Republican sheet especially after 1878, when John Chalfant New (1831–1906) became its editor and proprietor; New was a wealthy banker who was U.S. treasurer in 1875–1876, assistant secretary of the treasury in 1882–1884, and for many years a member (part of the time, treasurer) of the Republican National Committee. The paper was also owned and edited by his son, Harry Stewart New (b. 1858), who was a member of the executive committee of the Republican National Committee. The Indianapolis News (evening, 1869) and the Star (morning, 1903) are the principal papers in the city. The first paper published in the state was at Vincennes in July 1804 and called the Western Sun; it is still published (daily edition since 1879).
Wisconsin.—The principal papers are those of Milwaukee: the Evening Wisconsin (1847); the Sentinel (morning, 1837), edited in 1845–1861 by Rufus King (1814–1876), who was U.S. minister to the Pontifical States in 1863–1867, and a brigadier of volunteers in the Civil War; the News (evening, 1866); the Free Press (morning, 1901); the Germania-Abend-Post (1872, with a large weekly edition), and the Kuryer Polski (evening, 1888).
Minnesota.—The Journal (evening, 1878); the Tribune (morning, evening and weekly, 1867); and the Tidende (daily, 1887; weekly, 1851; Norwegian-Danish) are the principal papers of Minneapolis. In St Paul the best-known paper is the Pioneer Press (founded in 1849; daily since 1854); the Minnesota Pioneer was the first paper printed in the state, and in 1855 it was consolidated with the Minnesota Democrat under the name of Pioneer and Democrat; in 1862 it became the St Paul Pioneer; and in 1875 after the St Paul Press united with it it took the name of the Pioneer Press. The other dailies are the Dispatch (evening, 1868); the News (evening, 1900) and the Volks Zeitung (weekly, 1857; daily, 1877).
Kansas.—The Emporia Gazette (evening, 1890) is one of the notable smaller city papers of the country; its reputation being due to its editor and proprietor William Allen White (b. 1868). Other papers of interest are the Leavenworth Times (morning and weekly, 1857); in Topeka, the Capital (daily and semi-weekly, 1879); the State Journal (evening and weekly, 1872), and the Herald (evening, 1901); and in Wichita, the Eagle (morning, 1884, and weekly, 1872).
Nebraska.—The News (evening, 1899), the World-Herald (morning and evening, weekly and semi-weekly, 1865), and the Omaha Bee (morning and evening, 1871) are all of Omaha. The Bee was established by Edward Rosewater (1841–1906); his son Victor (b. 1871) succeeding him in 1895 as managing editor. The Rosewaters were prominent in the Republican party and headed the opposition in the state to William Jennings Bryan, who was in 1894–1896 editor of the World-Herald. Bryan also founded at Lincoln the Commoner, a weekly used by him in spreading his political views and in advancing his candidacy for the presidency. The Lincoln dailies are the Nebraska State Journal (morning, 1870; Evening News, 1880; Weekly State Journal, 1868), the Star (evening, 1902); and the evening Post (1896).
Iowa.—The Des Moines papers are the Capital (evening, 1883), the News (evening, 1881), and the Register and Leader (morning, Leader, 1849, and Register, 1856, consolidated in 1902). At Burlington is the Hawk Eye (morning, 1839), to which Robert Jones Burdette (b. 1844), associate editor in the ’seventies, contributed humorous squibs. The Burlington Evening Gazette, originally the Wisconsin Territorial Gazette (1837), is one of the oldest papers in the state.
Arkansas.—The Arkansas Gazette (Democratic; morning and weekly) was first published at Arkansas Post in 1819, then removed to Little Rock.
Colorado.—At Denver are the Republican (morning and weekly, 1866); the Post (evening, 1893; weekly, 1901); and the Rocky Mountain News (morning, 1859; evening, The Times, 1872; and a weekly edition).
Arizona.—At Tombstone, the county-seat of Cochise county, is the well-known Epitaph (1882), a Sunday edition of the Prospector (daily, 1886).
Utah.—At Salt Lake City are the Deseret Evening News (daily and semi-weekly, 1850), controlled by the Mormons; the Salt Lake Tribune (daily, 1870; semi-weekly, 1894), founded by Godbe and Harrison, opponents of Brigham Young, and always anti-Mormon; and the Salt Lake Herald (daily and semi-weekly, 1870). The last named was the principal—and for a time the only—Democratic paper in Utah; in 1901 it was purchased by Senator W. A. Clark, who sold it in August 1909 to Republican politicians.
California.—At San Francisco are the Call (morning, 1856), owned by John D. Spreckels (b. 1853), principal owner of the Oceanic Steamship Company, and son of Claus Spreckels the “sugar-king”; the Examiner (morning, 1865), founded by Senator George Hearst (1820–1891), the inheritance of which started his son, William Randolph Hearst, in the newspaper business; the Bulletin (morning, 1855); the Chronicle (morning, 1865; weekly, 1874); the Evening Post (1871; weekly edition, 1875), and the California Demokrat (morning, 1853; consolidated in 1902 with the Abend Post; weekly edition, California Staats-Zeitung, 1854). The Argonaut (1877) is an able literary weekly.
In Los Angeles the large dailies are the Times (morning, 1881; weekly edition, Saturday Times and Weekly Mirror, 1873); the Herald (morning, 1873); the Express (evening, 1871); the Record (evening, 1895); and R. Hearst’s Examiner (morning, 1903).
Oregon.—At Portland are the Morning Oregonian (1861; weekly edition, 1850) which has a great reputation on the Pacific Coast; the Oregon Daily Journal (evening and semi-weekly; 1902); and the Evening Telegram (1868).
Washington.—At Seattle are the Post Intelligencer (morning, 1867), and the Times (evening and weekly, 1861).
4. Newspapers of France
The annals of French journalism begin with the Gazette (afterwards called Gazette de France), established by Théophraste Renaudot in 1631, under the patronage of Richelieu, and with his active co-operation. Its price was six centimes. Much of its earliest foreign news came direct from the minister, and not seldom in his own hand. Gazette de France. Louis XIII. took a keen, perhaps a somewhat childish, interest in the progress of the infant Gazette, and was a frequent contributor, now and then taking his little paragraphs to the printing office himself, and seeing them put into type. Renaudot was born at Loudun in 1584, studied medicine in Paris and at Montpellier, established himself in the capital in 1612, and soon became conspicuous both within and beyond the limits of his profession. Endowed by nature with great energy and versatility, he seems at an early period of his career to have attracted the attention of the great cardinal, and to have obtained permission to establish a sort of general agency office, under the designation of “Bureau d’Adresses et de Rencontre.” An enterprise like this would, perhaps, naturally suggest to such a mind as Renaudot’s the advantage of following it up by the foundation of a newspaper. According to some French writers, however, the project was formed by Pierre d’Hozier, the genealogist, who carried on an extensive correspondence both at home and abroad, and was thus in a position to give valuable help; according to others by Richelieu himself. Be this as it may, Renaudot put his hand zealously to the work, and brought out his first weekly number in May 1631. So much, at least, may be inferred from the date (4th July 1631) of the sixth number, which was the first dated ​publication, the five preceding numbers being marked by “signatures” only—A to E. Each number consists of a single sheet (eight pages) in small quarto, and is divided into two parts—the first simply entitled Gazette, the second Nouvelles ordinaires de divers endroits. For this division the author assigns two reasons—(1) that two persons may thus read his journal at the same time, and (2) that it facilitates a division of the subject-matter, the Nouvelles containing usually intelligence from the northern and western countries, the Gazette from the southern and eastern. He commonly begins with foreign and ends with home news, a method which was long and generally followed, and which still obtains. Once a month he published a supplement, under the title of Relation des nouvelles du monde, reçues dans tout le mois. In October 1631 Renaudot obtained letters patent to himself and his heirs, conferring the exclusive privilege of printing and selling, where and how they might please, “the gazettes, news and narratives of all that has passed or may pass within and without the kingdom.” His assailants were numerous, but he steadily pursued his course, and at his death in October 1653 left the Gazette to his sons in flourishing circumstances. In 1752 the title Gazette de France was first used. Under this designation it continued to appear until the 24th August 1848. During the five days which followed that date it was suspended; on the 30th it was resumed as Le Peuple français, journal de l’appel à la nation, and again modified on the 14th September to L’Étoile de la France, journal des droits de tous. On the 25th October it became Gazette de France, journal de l’appel à la nation; and under this title it continued.
Jean Loret’s rhymed Gazette (1650 to March 1665) will always have interest in the eyes of students who care less for the “dignity” of history than for the fidelity of its local colouring and the animation of its backgrounds. It were vain to look there for any deep appreciation of the events of those stormy times; but it abounds in vivid portraits of the men and manners of the day. It paints rudely, yet to the life, the Paris of the Fronde, with all its effervescence and depression, its versatility and fickleness, its cowardice and its courage.
Of the Mercure galant, established by Donneau de Vizé in 1672, with Thomas Corneille for its sub-editor, it may be said that it sought to combine the qualities of the Gazettes, both grave and gay. Like the Gazette de France, it contained the permitted state news and court circulars of the day. Like Loret’s Gazette, it amused its readers Mercure de France. with satirical verses, and with sketches of men and manners, which, if not always true, were at least well invented. Reviews and sermons, law pleas and street airs, the last reception at the Academy and the last new fashion of the milliners, all found their place. De Vizé carried on his enterprise for more than thirty years, and at his death (1710) it was continued by Rivière du Fresny. The next editor, Lefèvre de Fontenay, altered the title to Nouveau Mercure, which in 1728 was altered to Mercure de France, a designation retained, with slight modification, until 1853. The Mercure passed through many hands before it came into those of Panckoucke, at the eve of the Revolution. Amongst its more conspicuous writers, immediately before this change, had been Raynal and Marmontel. The latter, indeed, had for many years been its principal editor, and in his Mémoires has left us a very interesting record of the views and aims which governed him in the performance of an arduous task. He there narrates the curious fact that it was Madame de Pompadour who contrived the plan of giving pensions to eminent men of letters out of the profits of the Mercure. To one of Marmontel’s predecessors the “privilege,” or patent, had been worth more than £1000 sterling annually. This revenue was now to be shared amongst several, and to become a means of extending royal “patronage” of literature at a cheap rate. It is to this pension scheme, too, that we owe the Contes Moraux. Marmontel, who had long before lost his “patent” by an act of high-minded generosity, continued to share in the composition of the literary articles with Chamfort and La Harpe, whilst Mallet du Pan, a far abler writer than either, became the most prominent of the political writers in the Mercure. In 1789 he contributed a series of remarkable articles on the well-known book of de Lolme; and in the same year he penned some comments on the “Declaration of the Rights of Man,” very distasteful to violent men of all parties, but which forcibly illustrate the pregnant truth they begin with: “The gospel has given the simplest, the shortest and the most comprehensive ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man,’ in saying, ‘Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you.’ All politics hinge upon this.”
In 1790 the sale of the Mercure rose very rapidly. It attained for a time a circulation of 13,000 copies. Mirabeau styled it in debate “the most able of the newspapers.” Great pains were taken in the collection of statistics and state papers, the absence of which from the French newspaper press had helped to depress its credit as compared with the political journalism of England and to some extent of Germany. But, as the Revolution marched on towards a destructive democracy, Mallet du Pan evinced more and more unmistakably his rooted attachment to a constitutional monarchy. And, like so many of his compatriots, he soon found the tide too strong for him. The political part of the Mercure (in 1791 its title was altered to Mercure français) changed hands, and after the 10th August 1792 its publication was suspended.
All this time the Moniteur (Gazette nationale, ou le moniteur universel), founded in 1789, was under the same general management. The first idea, indeed, of this famous official Journal appears to have been Panckoucke’s, but it did not firmly establish itself until he had purchased the Journal de l’assemblée nationale, and so secured the Moniteur universel. best report of the debates. The Moniteur, however, kept step with the majority of the assembly, the Mercure with the minority. So marked a contrast between two journals, with one proprietor, gave too favourable a leverage to the republican wits not to be turned to good account. Camille Desmoulins depicted him as Janus—one face radiant at the blessings of coming liberty, the other plunged in grief for the epoch that was rapidly disappearing.
When resumed, after a very brief interval, the Mercure français became again Mercure de France—its political importance diminished, whilst its literary worth was enhanced. During the later days of the Revolution, and under the imperial rule, its roll of contributors included the names of Geoffroy, Ginguené, Morellet, Lacretelle, Fontanes and Chateaubriand. The statesman last named brought upon the Mercure another temporary suppression in June 1807 (at which date he was its sole proprietor), by words in true unison with the noblest deed of his chequered career—his retirement, namely, from the imperial service on the day that the news of the execution of the duke of Enghien reached him, being the day after he had been appointed by Napoleon a minister plenipotentiary.
Thus it chanced that alike under the brilliant despotism of Napoleon and under the crapulous malversation of Louis XV. the management of the Mercure was revolutionized for protests which conferred honour upon the journal no less than upon the individual writers who made them. Resumed by other hands, the Mercure continued to appear until January 1820, when it was again suspended. In the following year it reappeared as Le Mercure de France, au dix-neuvième siècle, and in February 1853 it finally ceased.
The only other newspaper of a date anterior to the Revolution which needs to be noticed here is the first French daily, the Journal de Paris, which was started on New Year’s Day of 1777. It had but a feeble infancy, yet lived till 1819. Its tameness, however, did not save it from sharing in the “suspensions” of its predecessors. After, the Journal de Paris. Revolution such men as Garat, Condorcet and Regnaud de St Jean d’Angély appear amongst its contributors, but those of earlier date were obscure. Its period of highest prosperity may be dated about 1792, when its circulation is said to have exceeded 20,000.
The police adventures of the writers of the MS. news-letters, or Nouvelles à la main, were still more numerous, and, if we ​may judge from the copious specimens of these epistles which yet survive, must also not unfrequently have arisen from lack of official employment, rather than from substantial provocation. Madame Doublet de Persan, the widow of Nouvelles à la main. a member of the French board of trade, was a conspicuous purveyor of news of this sort. For nearly forty years daily meetings were held in her house at which the gossip and table-talk of the town were systematically (and literally) registered; and weekly abstracts or epitomes were sent into the country by post. Piron, Mirabaud, Falconet, D’Argental and, above all, Bachaumont, were prominent members of the “society,” and each of them is said to have had his assigned seat beneath his own portrait. The lady’s valet-de-chambre appears to have been editor ex officio; and as he occasionally suffered imprisonment, when offensive newsletters had been seized by the police, so responsible a duty was doubtless “considered in the wages.” News and anecdotes of all kinds—political and literary, grave, gay or merely scandalous—were all admitted into the Nouvelles à la main; and their contents, during a long series of years, form the staple of those Mémoires secrets pour servir à l’histoire de la république des lettres which extend to thirty-six volumes, have been frequently printed (at first with the false imprint “Londres: John Adamson, 1777–89”), and are usually referred to by French writers as the Mémoires de Bachaumont.
The journalism of the first Revolution has been the theme of many bulky volumes, and only a very casual glance at this part of our subject can be given to it here. When at least one half of the French people was in a ferment of hope or of fear at the approaching convocation of the states-general, most of the existing newspapers Newspapers of the Revolution. were still in a state of torpor. Long paragraphs, for example, about a terrible “wild beast of the Gevaudan”—whether wolf or bear, or as yet nondescript, was uncertain—were still current in the Paris journals at this momentous juncture. Mirabeau was among the foremost to supply the popular want. His Lettres à ses commettants began on the 2nd May 1789, and with the twenty-first number became the Courrier de Provence. Within a week Maret (afterwards duke of Bassano) followed with the Bulletin des séances de l’assemblée nationale, and Lehodey with the Journal des états généraux. In June Brissot de Warville began his Patriote français. Gorsas published the first number of his Courrier de Versailles in the following month, from which also dates the famous periodical of Prudhomme, Loustalot and Tournon, entitled Révolutions de Paris, with its characteristic motto—“Les grands ne nous paraissent grands que parce que nous sommes à genoux; levons nous!” In August 1789 Baudouin began the Journal des débats (edited Journal des débats and Moniteur. in 1792 by Louvet) and Marat the Ami du Peuple (which at first was called Le Publiciste parisien). The Moniteur universel (of which we have spoken already) was first published on the 24th November, although numbers were afterwards printed bearing date from the 5th May, the day on which the states-general first assembled. Camille Desmoulins also commenced his Révolutions de France et de Brabant in November 1789. The Ami du roi was first published in June 1790, La Quotidienne in September 1792.
The Moniteur and Débats survived, but most of these papers expired either in the autumn of 1792 or with the fall of the party of the Gironde in September 1793. In some of them the energy for good and for evil of a whole lifetime seems to be compressed into the fugitive writings of a few months. Even the satirical journals which combated the Revolution with shafts of ridicule and wit, keen enough after their kind, but too light to do much damage to men terribly in earnest, abound with matter well deserving the attention of all students desirous of a thorough knowledge of the period.
The consular government began its dealings with the press by reducing the number of political papers to thirteen. At this period the number of daily journals had been nineteen, and their aggregate provincial circulation, apart from the Paris sale, 49,313, an average of 2600 each.
Under Napoleon the Moniteur was the only political paper that was really regarded with an eye of favour. Even as respects the nation at large, the monstrous excesses into which the Revolutionary press had plunged left an enduring stigma on the class. When Bertin acquired the Journal des débats from Baudouin, the printer, for 20,000 francs, he had to vanquish popular indifference on the one hand, as well as imperial mistrust on the other. The men he called to his aid were Geoffroy and Fievée; and by the brilliancy of their talents and the keenness of his own judgment he converted the Débats into a paper having 32,000 subscribers, and producing a profit of 200,000 francs a year. When the imposition of a special censorship was threatened in 1805, at the instance of Fouché, a remarkable correspondence took place between Fievée and Napoleon himself, in the course of which the emperor wrote that the only means of preserving a newspaper from suspension was “to avoid the publication of any news unfavourable to the government, until the truth of it is so well established that the publication becomes needless.” The censorship was avoided, but Fievée had to become the responsible editor, and the title was altered to Journal de l’empire—the imperial critic taking exception to the word Débats as “inconvenient.” The old title was resumed in August 1815. The revolution of July did but enhance the power and the profit of the paper. It has held its course since with uniform dignity, as well as with splendid ability, and may still be said, in the words which Lamartine applied to it in an earlier day, to have “made itself part of French history.”
Shortly before the Journal de l’empire became again the Journal des débats (in 1815), a severance occurred amidst both the writers and subscribers. It led to the foundation of the Constitutionnel, which at first and for a short time bore the title of L’Indépendant. The former became, for a time, the organ of the royalists par excellence, the latter the leader of the opposition. In 1824, however, both were in conflict with the government of the day. At that date, in a secret report addressed to the ministry, the aggregate circulation of the opposition press of Paris was stated at 41,330, while that of the government press amounted only to 14,344.
The rapid rise of the Constitutionnel was due partly to the great ability and influence of Jay, of Étienne, of Béranger and of Saint Albin (who had been secretary to Carnot in his ministry of 1815), all of whom co-operated in its early editorship, and partly to its sympathy with the popular reverence for the memory of Napoleon, as well Constitutionnel. as to the vigorous share it took in the literary quarrel between the classicists and romanticists. Its part in bringing about the revolution of 1830 raised it to the zenith of its fortunes. For a brief period it could boast of 23,000 subscribers at 80 francs a year. But the invasion of cheap newspapers, and that temporary lack of enterprise which so often follows a brilliant success, lowered it with still greater rapidity. When the author of the Mémoires d’un bourgeois, Dr Véron, purchased it, the sale had sunk to 3000. Véron gave 100,000 francs for the Juif errant of Sue, and the Sue fever rewarded him for a while with more than the old circulation. Afterwards the paper passed under the editorship of Césena, Granier de Cassagnac, and La Guéronnière.
The cheap journalism of Paris began in 1836 (1st July) with the journal of Girardin, La Presse, followed instantly by Le Siècle, under the management of Dutacq, to whom, it is said—not incredibly—the original idea was really due. The first-named journal attained a circulation of 10,000 copies within three months of its commencement La Presse and Le Siècle. of and soon doubled that number. The Siècle prospered even more strikingly, and in a few years had reached a circulation (then without precedent in France) of 38,000 copies.
The rapid growth of the newspaper press of Paris under ​Louis-Philippe will be best appreciated from the fact that, while in 1828 the number of stamps issued was 28 millions, in 1836, 1843, 1845 and 1846 the figures were 42, 61, 65 and 79 millions respectively. At the last-mentioned date the papers with a circulation of upwards of 10,000 were (besides the Moniteur, of which the circulation was chiefly official and gratuitous) as follows: Le Siècle, 31,000; La Presse and Le Constitutionnel, between 20,000 and 25,000; Journal des Débats and L’Époque, between 10,000 and 15,000.
If we cast a retrospective glance at the general characteristics (1) of the newspaper press of France, and (2) of the legislation concerning it, between the respective periods of the devastating revolution of 1793–1794 and the scarcely less destructive revolution of 1848, it will be found that the years 1819, 1828, 1830 (July) and 1835 (September) mark epochs full of pregnant teaching upon our subject. We pass over, as already sufficiently indicated, the newspaper licence of the first-named years (1793–1794), carried to a pitch which became a disgrace to civilization, and the stern Napoleonic censorship which followed it—also carried to an excess, disgraceful, not, indeed, to civilization, but to the splendid intellect which had once given utterance to the words, “Physical discovery is a grand faculty of the human mind, but literature is the mind itself.”
The year 1819 is marked by a virtual cessation of the arbitrary power of suppression lodged till then in the government, and by the substitution of a graduated system of preliminary bonds and suretyships (“cautionnements”) on the one hand, and of strict penalties for convicted press-offences on the other. This initiatory amelioration of 1819 became, in 1828, a measure of substantial yet regulated freedom, which for two years worked, in the main, alike with equity towards the just claims of journalism as a profession and with steady development towards the public of its capabilities as a great factor in the growth of civilization. Those two years were followed by a widely contrasted period of five years. That was a term of entire liberty often grossly abused, and fitly ending with the just and necessary restrictions of September 1835. But that period of 1830–1835 was also signalized by some noble attempts to use the powers of the newspaper press for promoting the highest and the enduring interests of France. Not least memorable amongst these was the joint enterprise of Montalembert and Lamennais—soon to be aided by Lacordaire—when, by the establishment (October 1830) of the newspaper L’Avenir, they claimed for the church of France “her just part in the liberties acquired by the country,” and asserted for the sacred symbols of Christianity their lawful place, alike above the tricolor and above the lilies. “Dieu et la liberté” was the motto which Montalembert chose for his newspaper, as he had chosen it long before for the guiding star of his youthful aspirations. L’Avenir existed only for one year and one month. It came to its early end from no lack of energy and patience in its writers, but in part from that mission of the editors to Rome (November 1831) which, at least for a time, necessitated the discontinuance of their newspaper. Human regrets had higher than human consolations. “Our labours” on L’Avenir, wrote Montalembert, with simple truth, “decided the attitude of Catholics in France and elsewhere, from the time of the July revolution to the time of the second empire.”
There were many other papers, at this time and afterwards, which, like L’Avenir, were, in their degree, organs of ideas, not speculations of trade. But they cannot be even enumerated here. No very notable specially religious paper succeeded L’Avenir until the foundation in 1843—under widely different auspices, although twice at the outset the editorship was offered to Lacordaire—of L’Univers Religieux. That journal was edited, at first, by De Coux, then by Louis Veuillot; it underwent innumerable lawsuits, “warnings,” suppressions and interdicts, for causes very diverse. Several prelates suppressed L’Univers Religieux in their respective dioceses, amongst them the great bishop Dupanloup in that of Orleans (1853). Napoleon III. suppressed it in 1861, permitted it to reappear as Le Monde, and suspended it many times afterwards; but it survived all its misfortunes for a good many years. Le Monde had the curious fate, at one time, of being conducted jointly by the first editor of L’Avenir, Lamennais, and by George Sand, who had previously figured in the newspaper annals of France as co-foundress of L’Éclaireur de l’Indre, a journal published at Orleans. The account given by that brilliant writer of her adventures in what was then to her a new department of activity is an instructive one. With that breadth of sympathy which was so characteristic of her, she strove to interest all her friends (however varied in character, as in rank) in the enterprise. There is, perhaps, scarcely anything more amusing in French journalistic annals than is her (contemporary) account of the first meeting of the shareholders—at which, she tells us, about five hundred resolutions were moved for the guidance of the editor at his desk.
The impulse given to the growth of advertisements in the days which followed July 1830, became, as the years rolled on, sufficiently developed to induce the formation of a company—in which one of the Laffittes took part—to farm them, at a yearly rent of £12,000 sterling (300,000 francs), so far (at first) as regarded the four leading journals (Débats, Constitutionnel, Siècle, Presse), to which were afterwards added two others (Le Pays and La Patrie). The combination greatly embarrassed advertisers, first, since its great aim was to force them either to advertise in all, whether addressing the classes intended to be canvassed or not, or else to pay for each advertisement in a selected newspaper the price of many proffered advertisements in all the papers collectively, and, secondly, because by many repetitions in certain newspapers no additional publicity was really gained, two or three of the favoured journals circulating for the main amongst the same class of buyers. La France was then the newspaper of the Conservative aristocracy of the nation; Le Monde and the Union more especially addressed the clergy; the Débats and the Temps were the journals of the upper mercantile class, the Siècle and L’Opinion of the lower or shopkeeping class. A man who asked to advertise briefly, in the Siècle, for example, alone, was charged 2 francs for each several insertion. If he went the round of the six, his advertisement cost him only 75 centimes per journal, for ten successive insertions in each of them, all round.
To a great extent, the inundation of newspapers which followed the revolution of February 1848 was but a parody on the revolutionary press of 1793. Most of them, of course, had very short lives. When Cavaignac took the helm he suppressed eleven journals, including La Presse and L’Assemblée Nationale. The former had at this period a circulation of nearly Loi Tinguy. 70,000, and its proprietor, in a petition to the National Assembly, declared that it gave subsistence to more than one thousand persons, and was worth in the market at least 1,500,000 francs. In August the system of sureties was restored. On the 13th June 1849 the president of the republic suspended Le Peuple, La Révolution Démocratique et Sociale, La Vraie République, La Démocratie Pacifique, La Réforme and La Tribune des Peuples. On July 16, 1850, the assembly passed what is called the “Loi Tinguy” (from the name of the otherwise obscure deputy who proposed it), by which the author of every newspaper article on any subject, political, philosophical or religious, was bound to affix his name to it, on penalty of a fine of 500 francs for the first offence, and of 1000 francs for its repetition. Every false or feigned signature was to be punished by a fine of 1000 francs, “together with six months’ imprisonment, both for the author and the editor.” The practical working of this law lay in the creation of a new functionary in the more important newspaper offices, who was called “secrétaire de la rédaction,” and was, in fact, the scapegoat ex officio. The “Loi Tinguy,” though now long repealed, has had a permanent influence on French journalism in the continued prevalence of signed articles, and the consequent prominence of individual writers as compared with the same class of work in other countries. In February 1852 all the press laws were incorporated, with increased stringency, into a “Décret organique sur la presse.” The stamp duty for each sheet was fixed at 6 centimes, within certain dimensions, and a proportional increase in case of excess.
In 1858 the order of the six leading Parisian papers in point of circulation was—(1) Siècle (2) Presse, (3) Constitutionnel, (4) Patrie, (5) Débats, (6) Assemblée Nationale. The number of provincial papers exceeded five hundred. “Newspapers, nowadays,” wrote a keenly observant publicist in that year, “are almanacs, bulletins, advertising mediums, rather than the guides and the centres of opinion.” In 1866 the change had become more marked still. The monetary success of Girardin’s many commercial speculations in this branch of commerce greatly increased the number of Parisian journals, whilst lowering the status of those of established rank. The aggregate daily issue of the Parisian “dailies” had increased to about 350,000 copies, but the evening paper, Le Petit Moniteur, alone issued nearly 130,000 of these. The average circulation of Le Siècle had fallen from 55,000 to 45,000 copies; that of La Patrie was reduced by one-half (32,000 to 16,000); that of Le Constitutionnel from 24,000 to 13,000; of L’Opinion Nationale from 18,000 to 15,000; whilst the chief journal of all—with grand antecedents and with a brilliant history of public service rendered—had for a time descended, it is said, from 12,000 copies to 9000. And yet almost over the whole of this very period the brilliant “Lundis” of Sainte-Beuve were making their punctual appearance in Le Constitutionnel, to be presently continued in Le Moniteur and in Le Temps; and writers like St Marc Girardin, Cuvillier-Fleury, and Prévost-Paradol were constantly writing in the Journal des Débats. Meanwhile, Villemessant and his colleagues were making their fortunes out of Le Figaro (begun 1854, but a daily from 1866), and helping to make frivolous petty “paragraphs” on matters of literature almost everywhere take the place of able and well-elaborated articles. Well might Albert Sorel, say, “Our trumpery newspapers are the newspapers that pay.” In 1872 the circulation of Le Petit Journal (founded 1863), the pioneer of the French halfpenny press, was 212,500, and it went on rapidly increasing.
No incident in the newspaper history of this period made more temporary noise than did the strange charges brought in 1867 against the Débats, the Siècle and L’Opinion Nationale, by M. Kerveguen, member for Toulon, in the French assembly. He charged them ​collectively with receiving bribes, both from the government of Prussia and from that of Italy—upon the faith, as it afterwards appeared, of statements made by another newspaper, not of France but of Belgium, La Finance. An elaborate inquiry, presided over by M Berryer, pronounced the accusation to be absolutely groundless. Yet it was soon revived by Le Pays, in the shape of a specific charge against an individual editor of Le Siècle—La Varenne. All that was eventually proved, in due course of law, was merely the agency in Paris of La Varenne for the Italian government, at a time prior to the events of 1866.
In 1874 an elaborate return showed that in thirty-five principal towns of France, comprising a population of 2,566,000, their respective journals had an aggregate weekly issue of 2,800,000 copies.
In 1878 the total number of journals of all kinds published in France was 2200. Of these 150 were political, strictly speaking, of which Paris published 49. Of Parisian journals other than political there were 1141 (including 71 religious, 104 legal, 153 commercial, 134 technological, 98 scientific and medical, 59 artistic). At that date Le Figaro had a circulation of about 70,000, Le Petit Journal (at a halfpenny) one of about 650,000.
The principal Parisian newspapers in 1883 may be classified thus—
(a) Organs of the Legitimists and of the Church of France: Gazette de France, Le Monde, L’Union, La Défense, La Civilisation, L’Univers.
(b) Orleanist organs: Le Moniteur Universel, Le Constitutionnel, Le Français (under the auspices of the Duc de Broglie), Le Soleil.
(c) Bonapartist organ: Le Pays (edited at one time by Lamartine).
(d) Republican organs: Journal des Débats, Le Temps (founded 1861, with the title of the earlier Temps of 1829–1842, Le Siècle, Le XIX. Siècle, Le Paix, La Justice, Paris, La République Française (founded in 1871 by Gambetta), Le Parlement (founded by Dufaure), the Socialist La Petite République (1875).
The law concerning the liberty of the press, of July 29, 1881, abolished suretyship for newspapers, and transferred their registration from the ministry of justice at Paris to the local representative of the attorney-general (le parquet) in each town respectively. It made the establishment of a newspaper virtually free, upon legal deposit of two copies, and upon due registration of each newspaper under the simple guarantee of a registered director, French by birth, responsible in case of libel. And it took away the former discretionary power, lodged in the home office, of interdicting the circulation in France of foreign journals. The home minister might still prohibit a single number of a newspaper; only the whole council of ministers, duly convened, could prohibit the circulation of a foreign newspaper absolutely.
The newspapers of Paris, and similarly of France, practically doubled in number between 1880 and 1900. In 1880 there were about 120 Paris newspapers, in 1890 about 160, and in 1900 about 240. The total number of newspapers, as distinguished from periodicals, published in France during 1900 was in round numbers Later developments. 2400. Of these, about 2160 appeared in 540 provincial towns.
The history of the French press during the last twenty years of the 19th century followed very closely that of the country itself, Boulangist and anti-Boulangist, Dreyfusist or anti-Dreyfusist, Republican or Nationalist; finally it became either Moderate Republican or Radical-Socialist with a sprinkling of Nationalist organs and a small minority of Royalist and Bonapartist sheets.
At the head of the Moderate Republican organs were Le Temps and Le Journal des Débats among the evening papers, and Le Figaro, Le Journal, Le Siècle, Le Petit Parisien and Le Petit Journal among the morning dailies. Le Figaro was until 1901 under the editorship of M. F. de Rodays, and the brilliant articles of M. J. Cornély were one of the features of the paper; but a dispute among the proprietors in 1901 resulted in the dismissal of M. Cornély and the retirement of M. de Rodays. M. Jean Dupuy (a member of the Waldeck-Rousseau government) was the proprietor and editor of Le Petit Parisien, a popular organ almost rivalling Le Petit Journal; the circulation of the latter had, however, reached over one million and a quarter copies daily.
Le Matin and L’Éclair, among the Moderate Republican organs, gave less attention to the discussion of political questions from the party point of view than to the collection of news, and they were followed by the Écho de Paris (1884). Le Matin, which also dates from 1884, was from its origin essentially what is called in France a journal d’informations, publishing every morning a mass of telegraphic news from all countries. By an arrangement with the London Times, it gave every day a translation of most of the telegrams published in that newspaper.
In April 1901 the proprietorship of Le Siècle was changed, in consequence of the lack of support given by Parisian readers to that journal as edited by M. Yves Guyot (formerly minister of public works). The latter was a staunch free-trader, a courageous defender of Captain Dreyfus, and an eloquent advocate of a good understanding between France and England; he emphatically endorsed the British policy in South Africa, and tried to explain it to his countrymen. The paper was, however, bought in by a number of friends of M. Yves Guyot, who remained as editor. The greatest opponent of Yves Guyot, from the economic point of view was Jules Méline, also a former minister, whose paper, La République, was the recognized organ of Protectionism.
The Radical and Socialist ideas which in latter years made such progress in France were very ably advocated by several newspapers whose influence steadily grew, such as L’Aurore, La Lanterne and L’Humanité (the organ of Jean Jaurès). Such individual organs of opinion must also be mentioned as L’Intransigéant, the organ of Henri Rochefort, and M. Clemenceau’s organ, Le Bloc, in which he advocated the practical application of all of the revolutionary republican principles, pure and unadulterated, forming a whole (bloc), no part of which could or ought to be sacrificed to temporary political necessities.
As an intermediate link between the Republican organs of all shades and the various Monarchist newspapers, came the so-called Nationalist press, an offshoot of or successor to the Boulangist press of the preceding decade. As were the Boulangists, so were the Nationalists, a sort of syndicat des mécontents, their chief organs being La Patrie, edited by M. Millevoye, and La Cocarde; these papers represented the views of those who had vague hankerings after a different régime and a decided hostility towards the republican form of government.
There was a considerable diminution of influence in the Monarchist press. Le Soleil, however, had a large circle of readers among the Conservative bourgeoisie with Orleanist leanings. Le Gaulois remained a Royalist paper of somewhat doubtful tendencies, the editor, M. Arthur Meyer, having incurred the displeasure of the Pretender whose cause he defended. Of the old Legitimist press there remained the old Gazette de France, which was founded in 1631 and had still a diminishing band of faithful readers. The organ of the religious (Roman Catholic) associations in France, La Croix, founded in 1880, represented the views of the French religious associations, and discussed all questions from the point of view of Catholic interests. La Croix was published in Paris, but had in the provinces one hundred and four local weekly supplements to the Paris edition, each one taking its name from the parent journal and adding to it the name of the department or locality in which it was printed, such as La Croix de l’Allier, La Croix de Lyon.
The French papers, of whatever party, took an increased interest during this period in foreign matters, and much improved ​their organization for collecting news. Some of them, in fact, were almost exclusively news-sheets, and the journal d’informations—Le Matin or L’Éclair, for instance—took its place beside the journal properly so called, more perhaps as a rival than as a complement. The natural result followed, and the more old-type newspapers took steps to provide their readers with news as well as with leading articles, current and literary topics, society gossip, dramatic criticism and law reports. The most remarkable as well as perhaps the earliest attempt to enlarge the scope of Parisian newspapers was made in 1893 by Georges Patinot, editor of the Journal des Débats. Instead of one edition, that newspaper published two entirely distinct editions, a morning one and an evening one. After some time the plucky attempt had to be given up, and the Journal des Débats became an evening paper. The bold experiment made by the Journal des Débats (which celebrated its centenary in 1889) led the other newspapers to find a happy mean between a four-page paper published twice a day and an eight-page paper on the pattern of English newspapers, and the result was that now most great daily papers in Paris came out with six pages, the Figaro giving the lead. As French newspapers increased in size they reduced their price. Most six-page newspapers, with the exception of Le Figaro, were by 1902 sold at 5 centimes, and the price of 15 centimes, which used to be the rule, became the exception. In 1902 60 Paris papers (daily and weekly) were sold at 5 centimes and 51 at 10 centimes, whilst only 11 cost 15 centimes. In 1880 only 23 were 5-centime papers and 24 were 10-centime papers.
The American style of journalism came into vogue in Paris in the ’eighties, and “interviews” were frequent; but the general tendency of Parisian editors was to adopt the English compromise, and to eschew any extreme sensational methods. Most of the important Parisian newspapers had their special correspondents in the great capitals of Europe, London, Berlin, St Petersburg, Vienna and Rome. Nothing perhaps was so striking after 1890 as the demand of the French public for foreign and colonial news, or the readiness of the papers to supply it by means of special representatives independent of the news agencies.
In home matters the French press made greater progress still in the rapid and accurate collection of news, and in this respect the provincial press showed more enterprise and more ability than that of Paris. Its development was remarkable, for whereas in 1880 the inhabitants of the departments had to await the arrival of the Parisian papers for their news, they now had the advantage of being supplied every morning with local newspapers inferior to none of the best organs of Paris. Among the best provincial papers may be mentioned La Gironde and La Petite Gironde of Bordeaux, La Dépêche of Toulouse, Le Lyon Républicain, L’Écho du Nord of Lille, Le Journal de Rouen, all having a staff in Paris engaged in collecting news, reporting parliamentary proceedings and law cases, telegraphed or telephoned during the night and published early the next morning in their respective localities. Being perfectly independent of purely Parisian opinion or even bias, the decentralization of the French provincial press became complete. The newspapers of the large towns circulated not only in the city in which they were printed but throughout the region of which it was the centre. Thus the Dépêche of Toulouse, with its twelve editions daily, was read in the whole of the departments extending from the Lot to the Pyrenees, whilst the Petite Gironde was found in all south-western France. The influence of the provincial, as of the Paris, press became so great that, as M. Avenel says in his book on the French press, there came a tendency to resent its omnipotence. The power of the newspaper in France differs from that of the English newspaper, in that it seems to act more on the government and the parliament than on public opinion. The French newspapers have taken upon themselves, in many cases, functions which belong more properly to the legislative or to the judicial power than to the press, and the result has not always been successful. The cause of this is that too many men of talent with political ambition look upon journalism as “leading to everything, provided one gets out of it.” and use it alternately as an antechamber of parliament or of the cabinet, and a lounge during their parliamentary or ministerial eclipses.
See generally Hatin, Histoire de la Presse en France (8 vols., 1860–1861); Gallois, Histoire des Journaux et Journalistes de la Révolution (2 vols.); “Journalism in France,” Quarterly Review, lxv. 422-468 (March, 1840); Henri Avenel, La Presse française au vingtième siècle (Paris, 1901).
5. Newspapers of Germany
Printed newspapers in Germany begin with the Frankfurter Journal, established in 1615 by Egenolph Emmel, a bookseller of Frankfort-on-Main. The following year saw the foundation of the Frankfurter Oberpostamtszeitung—continued until the year 1866 as Frankfurter Postzeitung. Fulda appears to have been the next German town to possess a newspaper, then Hildesheim (1619) and Herford (1630). In the course of the century almost all German cities of the first rank possessed their respective journals. The earliest in Leipzig bears the date 1660. The Rostocker Zeitung was founded in 1710. The Hamburgischer Correspondent (1714) was originally published under the name of Holsteinische Zeitungs-Correspondenz, two years earlier, and was almost the only German newspaper which really drew its foreign news from “our own correspondent.” Berlin had in the 18th century two papers, those of Voss (the Vossische Zeitung, 1722) and of J. K. P. Spener (1749–1827; the Spener’sche Zeitung, or Berlinische Nachrichten, 1772). Some half-dozen papers which glimmered in the surrounding darkness were the reservoirs whence the rest replenished their little lamps. On the whole, it may be said that the German newspapers were of very small account until after the outbreak of the French Revolution. Meanwhile the MS. news-letters, as in earlier days, continued to enjoy a large circulation in Germany. Many came from London. The correspondence, for instance, known under the name of “Mary Pinearis”—that, apparently, of a French refugee settled in London—had a great German circulation between 1725 and 1735. Another series was edited by the Cologne gazetteer, Jean Ignace de Rodérique, also a French refugee, and remembered as the subject of a characteristic despatch from Frederick II. of Prussia to his envoy in that city, enclosing 100 ducats to be expended in hiring a stout fellow with a cudgel to give a beating to the gazetteer as the punishment of an offensive paragraph. The money, it seems, was earned, for Rodérique was well-nigh killed. At Berlin itself, Franz Hermann Ortgies carried on a brisk trade in these news-letters (1728–1735), until he too came under displeasure on account of them, was kept in prison several months, and then exiled for life. Nor, indeed, can any journal of a high order be mentioned of prior appearance to the Allgemeine Zeitung, founded at Leipzig by the bookseller Cotta (at first under the title of Neueste Weltkunde) in 1798. Posselt was its first editor, but his want of nerve—and perhaps his weak health—hindered the application of his high powers to political journalism. His articles, too, gave offence to the Austrian court, and the paper had to change both its title and its place of publication. It had been commenced at Tübingen, and removed to Stuttgart; it was now transferred to Ulm, and again to Augsburg. It was Cotta’s aim to make this the organ of statesmen and publicists, to reach the public through the thinkers, to hold an even balance between the rival parties of the day, and to provide a trustworthy magazine of materials for the historians to come; and, in the course of time, his plan was so worked out as to raise the Allgemeine Zeitung into European fame. Cotta was also the founder, at various periods, of the Morgenblatt, which became famous for its critical ability and tact, of Vesperus, of Das Inland, of Nemesis, of the Oppositionsblatt of Weimar (for a time edited by Bertuch), and even of the Archives Parisiennes.
Whilst French influence was dominant in Germany, the German papers were naturally little more than echoes of the Parisian press. But amidst the excitements of the “war of ​liberation” a crowd of new journals appeared. Niebuhr started a Preussischer Correspondent; Görres—who in 1798 had founded at Coblentz Das rothe Blatt, soon suppressed by the invading French—undertook the Rheinischer Mercur (January 1814 to January 1816), which was suppressed by the Prussian government, under Von Hardenberg. This journal, during its initiatory year, had the honour of being termed by Napoleon—perhaps satirically—“the fifth power of Europe.” Wetzel, somewhat later, founded the Fränkischer Mercur, published at Bamberg, and Friedrich Seybold the Neckarzeitung. Some of these journals lasted but two or three years. Most of the survivors fell victims to that resolution of the diet (20th September 1819) which subjected the newspaper press, even of countries where the censorship had been formally abolished, to police superintendence of a very stringent kind.
The aspirations for some measure of freedom which burst forth again under the influences of 1830 led to the establishment of such papers as Siebenpfeiffer’s Westbote, Lohbauer’s Hochwächter, Wirth’s Deutsche Tribune, Eisenmann’s Baierisches Volksblatt, Der Freisinnige of Rotteck and Welcker, and many more of much freer utterance than had been heard before in Germany. This led, in the ordinary course, to new declarations in the diet against the licence and revolutionary tendencies of the press, and to “regulations” of a kind which will be sufficiently indicated by the mention of one, in virtue whereof no editor of a suppressed journal could undertake another journal, during the space of five years, within any part of Germany. It need hardly be added that few of the newspapers of 1830 saw the Christmas of 1832. Very gradually some of the older journals—and amongst the number the patriarch of all, the Frankfurter Oberpostamtszeitung—plucked up courage enough to speak out a little; and some additional newspapers were again attempted. Amongst those which acquired deserved influence were Brockhaus’s Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, the advocate of free trade and of a moderate liberalism, possessing a large circulation in northern Germany (1837); the Deutsche Zeitung, edited by Gervinus, at Heidelberg (July 1847); and the Dorfzeitung, published at Hildburghausen. The stirring events of 1848 called forth in Germany, as in so many other countries, a plentiful crop of political instructors of the people, many of whom manifestly lacked even the capacity to learn, and vanished almost as suddenly as they had appeared. But it is undeniable that a marked improvement in the ability and energy of the German political press may be dated from this period.
At the beginning of the 20th century the position and influence of the German press were passing through a period of change. The Germans had become a newspaper-reading people. Indeed, with the remarkable growth of the commercial spirit in Germany there had simultaneously been a change in the intellectual attitude and habits of the mass of the nation. The German of “the great period” of 1866 and 1870 derived his knowledge of his own and other countries to a very great extent from the more or less intelligent study of books, pamphlets and magazines. The busy German of the opening years of the 20th century had become almost as much the slave of his newspaper as the average American. Berlin in 1900 had 45 dailies, Leipzig 8, Munich 12, Hamburg 11, Stuttgart 8, Strassburg 6. In the domains both of home and of foreign politics the result was often a chaos of crude opinions and impulses, the strata of which were only differentiated by certain permanent tendencies of German political thought based upon tradition, class feeling, material interests, or distinctions of religious creed. In these circumstances it was still possible for the government, as in the days of Prince Bismarck and Dr Moritz Busch, to bring its superior knowledge to bear upon the anarchy of public sentiment through the medium of the inspired (or as it used to be called, the “reptile”) press, but this operation had now to be performed with greater delicacy and skill. The press had begun to feel its power. It was at least able to drive a bargain with those who would officially control it, and it was conscious in its relations with the authorities that the advantage no longer rested exclusively on the side of the latter. It would be instructive to compare, with the aid of Dr Busch’s “Secret Pages” of the history of Prince Bismarck, the methods by which the first Chancellor used to create and control a movement of public opinion with the devices by which, for instance, count von Bülow and his subordinates endeavoured to manage the press of a later day. The journalists who placed themselves at the disposal of Prince Bismarck were mostly treated as his menials; as he himself said, “Decent people do not write for me.” Count von Bülow’s methods, and to a certain extent those of his predecessor, Prince Hohenlohe, moved on somewhat different lines. These methods might be characterized as the psychological treatment of the individual journalist, the endeavour to appeal to his personal vanity or to his legitimate ambition, and only in a minor degree to his fear of the dossier, the public prosecutor, and the official boycott. There was also a further development of Prince Bismarck’s system of acknowledging the existence of political and social movements the origin of which was wholly or partially independent. As in Bismarck’s time, the tendencies of these movements were carefully observed, and they were turned to account where they seemed capable of subserving the main objects of state policy. Thus at the opening of the century the pro-Boer and agrarian movements were both employed in support of German foreign and colonial policy, and of an elaborate scheme of naval construction; while the growth of the commercial spirit on the one hand and the awakening of the lower middle classes on the other, were pressed into the service of Welt-politik and of its auxiliary—a system of protective tariffs. It required no small skill to bring into line and to hold together the various classes and interests from time to time arrayed in the press in support of German foreign policy. The organs of the government in the press were the sheep-dogs which held the flock together.
The German journals of which foreigners hear most belong with few exceptions to the daily press of Berlin. There are, however, one or two provincial or non-Prussian newspapers which from time to time enjoy more careful inspiration from the government offices than any of their Berlin contemporaries. There is, for example, the Cologne Gazette (Kölnische Zeitung, 1848), of which Prince Bismarck once said that it was “worth an army corps on the Rhine.” It is difficult to trace all the channels by which information is conveyed to an organ of this kind, but there have undoubtedly been times when leading articles and entre-filets in the Rhenish organ were virtually or actually written in the German Foreign Office. Indeed, the methods of the institution which has been called the “Press Bureau,” but which in the realm of foreign policy at least represented no concrete organization, have been so numerous and varied that it would be hopeless for any one except the most practised observer to trace their manifestations. The advantage of a semi-official press, if it could be manipulated with unvarying success, is that it can easily be disavowed when the suggestions, overtures or menaces of which it has been the exponent have served their turn or have become inexpedient. Thus during the blockade of Manila in 1898 the Cologne Gazette gave all the prominence of its first column and of leaded type to an article taken from the Marine Politische Korrespondenz, which practically warned the United States of the intention of Germany to have a share in the Pacific possessions of Spain if these should eventually change hands. Some ten days later the authority of this menace was explicitly disavowed by the North German Gazette, which announced that the Marine Politische Korrespondenz had never possessed a semi-official character. The Cologne Gazette continued in the west of Germany to, serve the German government much as it did in the time of Prince Bismarck, although for prudential reasons its inspiration became on the whole more intermittent than it was in the days of the first Chancellor. The Hamburgischer Correspondent, the leading Hamburg journal, played a minor rôle of the same nature in the chief Hanseatic port, while the Hamburger Nachrichten, celebrated especially during the exile of Prince Bismarck and the closing years of his life at Friedrichsruh as the receptacle of indiscreet revelations and violent attacks upon his successors, almost lost all significance except as a local organ of violent Anglophobia. The Allgemeine Zeitung of Munich, once famous throughout Europe as the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung before its transference to the Bavarian capital, became in the hands of new proprietors practically an organ of the imperial Chancellor. In Prince Bismarck’s days the press bureau of the Prussian Ministry of the Interior, and a similar organization in the Imperial Home Office, used to furnish hundreds of petty local newspapers known as Kreis-blätter with whole articles gratis, so that the policy of the government might be advocated in every nook and corner of the country. The numerous journals in which these communications used to appear simultaneously and in an identical form were the government organs to which the Radical and Socialist ​opposition more particularly applied the term “Reptile Press.” Later this practice of wholesale inspiration was abandoned, but there remained many channels, public and private, through which almost every department of the government could communicate information and guidance to newspapers in all parts of Germany. The Prussian Ministry of the Interior distributed to all and sundry a news-letter known as the Berliner Korrespondenz, professing only to give statistics and information, and to correct erroneous statements, but also frequently containing articles advocating some proposal of the government or combating the arguments of its opponents. The Süd-Deutsche Reichs-Korrespondenz had a similar character, and in 1902 served as an exponent of the policy and tactics of the imperial Chancellor, count von Bülow. Almost every one of the political parties has its Korrespondenz (or news-letter) supplying views rather than news. These circular letters deal, in fact, with the policy of the party with which they are associated, although they occasionally also embody information which the party leaders in the Reichstag or in the Prussian Diet have received from representatives of the government for their own guidance. They form the means of holding the parties together, and of inspiring them with common aims, as they are reproduced throughout the country by all the party organs.
It was in the press of Berlin that the greatest changes took place towards the end of the 19th century. During the regime of Prince Bismarck the North German Gazette, and occasionally the Post, used to keep Europe in a state of nervous tension by fulminant communiqués which the great Chancellor himself often dictated, or by what he used to call “jets of cold water” (Kaltwasserstrahl), which were mostly directed against France or Russia. So far as France and Russia are concerned, a much more pacific tone prevailed in Berlin after the conclusion of the Dual Alliance, and it was upon England that the press mainly concentrated its attacks. The North German Gazette, which was originally established by a private individual, in order “to place a blank sheet of paper at the disposal of Prince Bismarck,” became on the whole, a mere record of home news and a summary of foreign intelligence bearing the semi-official stamp of Wolff’s Telegraph Agency. It had doubtless been found that the constant employment of an organ so distinctly official as the Norddeutsche Allgemeine as a medium of expression for the views of the government was apt to lead to indiscretions which committed the authorities too deeply. Indeed, immediately before Prince Bismarck’s fall he had actually employed this journal in order to attack the labour policy of the emperor. Official communications still continued to appear in the North German Gazette, but mostly characterized by a vagueness and awkwardness of style in striking contrast to the force and point of Prince Bismarck’s polemics. The Imperial Gazette (Reichsanzeiger), corresponding to the London Gazette, is purely a record of official intelligence, though on rare occasions it publishes in the section marked Nicht Amtlich (non-official), some démenti, some statement of policy or some official document—a proceeding which always requires the express sanction of the emperor.
The journals which in 1880 were most widely read in Berlin, and which were best known abroad as the exponents of Berlin opinion. were the Liberal or Radical Vossische Zeitung and Berliner Tageblatt, and the National Liberal National Zeitung. The Vossische Zeitung, the oldest of all the Berlin newspapers, written with a degree of literary ability which justified its real title, Königlich privilegierte Berlinische Zeitung für Staats- und Gelehrtensachen, held its place. The National Zeitung, however (founded in 1848 by Bernhard Wolff, the originator of Wolff’s news agency), which represented as long as it could those vestiges of old German Liberalism which survived in the National Liberal party, was compelled to come to an end on January 1st, 1905. The Kreuz Zeitung represented the “small but mighty party” of the reactionary Conservatives and Agrarians in the state, and of the orthodox (Lutheran) Protestants in the Church. It was the favourite journal of officers in the army, of the Conservative gentry (Junker), as well as the medium through which people of social standing preferred to announce births, marriages and deaths. The Post continued to be subsidized by a small number of industrial and rural magnates in the interests of the Reichspartei, or Free Conservative party, which for the most part subordinated its views to those of the government. The Berliner Neueste Nachrichten, like the Post, was a consistent advocate of the development of the German navy and of a vigorous Welt-politik. The Boersen Zeitung and the Boersen-Courier were organs of the Berlin Stock Exchange; the first of a National Liberal colour, and the other expressing the views of the Moderate Radicals (Freisinnige Vereinigung) and of opponents of extreme protection. The Vörwarts was the central organ of the German Social-Democrats, who had established a considerable number of other journals throughout Germany. The clericals or Centre party were represented by the Germania, less influential than the other leading organ of the Roman Catholic “governing party,” the Kölnische Volks-zeitung. The Deutsche Tageszeitung made itself a name by its advocacy of the agrarian movement, while the Freisinnige Zeitung (founded, and to a great extent edited, by the Radical leader Eugen Richter) represented the Radical point of view. Among the provincial papers the Frankfurter Zeitung (Radical) was distinguished by the excellence of its news, especially on commercial subjects. The Schlesische Zeitung (1752) a leading Conservative organ, had continued to appear in Breslau since the days of Frederick the Great. The Magdeburger Zeitung and the Hannoversche Courier gave an independent or National Liberal support to the government. The Weser Zeitung, published at Bremen, was an exponent of the Liberalism of the commercial classes, while the Strassburger Post was one of the journals which enjoyed government inspiration, and helped to maintain die Wacht am Rhein. A considerable number of journals, published in the Polish language, advocated the Polish cause in the eastern provinces of Prussia.
Great success attended a new departure in German journalism, represented by newspapers like the Berlin Lokal-Anzeiger, describing themselves as non-political. The Lokal-Anzeiger, founded by August Scherl, who had gained his journalistic experience in America, had a circulation in Germany comparable with that of the Petit Journal in France, and it exercised a very marked influence upon public opinion in Berlin.
The external form and arrangement of German newspapers is often puzzling at first sight to an English reader. There is an absence of the striking headlines, which in English journals direct attention to news of importance, and which in America almost swamp the text. The outside page generally contains the editorial articles and the news of most importance, while the intelligence received immediately before going to press is placed in the last column of the last sheet. The bulk of the paper can apparently be increased indefinitely in accordance with the supply of news or literary matter, or with the number of advertisements. The Vossische Zeitung on a Sunday morning assumes, with its numerous supplementary sheets, the dimensions of a thick Blue-book. The quantity of extraneous matter, such as articles on literary, social and technical subjects, is enormous, and even the most serious political journals invariably publish a novel in serial form, as well as numerous novelettes and sketches. The local news in Berlin and other large cities is written with the minuteness and the familiarity of style of a village chronicle, and gives the impression that every one is occupied in observing the doings of his neighbour. The signed article is very much in vogue, and most writers and salaried correspondents have at least a cypher or initial by which they are distinguished. The greatest licence prevails in reporting and discussing the affairs of other countries, combined with the keenest sensitiveness to foreign criticism of anything that concerns Germany. The example of the government is followed in advertising the products of German industry, while those of foreigners are studiously depreciated.
6. Other European Countries
Austria-Hungary.—At the beginning of 1840 the whole number of Austro-German and Hungarian periodicals, of all sorts, was less than 100, only 22 being (after a fashion) political newspapers; and of these nearly all drew their materials and their inspiration from the official papers of Vienna (Wiener Zeitung and Oesterreichischer Beobachter). These two were all that appeared in the capital. Agram, Pesth, Pressburg, Lemberg and Prague had also two each; but no other city had more than a single journal. In 1846 the aggregate number of periodicals had grown to 155, of which 46 were political, but political only in the character of mere conduit pipes for intelligence “approved of” by the government. In 1855 the number of political papers published throughout the entire territory under Austrian government, the Italian provinces excepted, was 60. The Neue Freie Presse, the chief Vienna daily, was founded in 1864. In 1873, ten years after the virtual cessation of a very strict censorship, the number of political journals, including all the specifically administrative organs, as well local as general, was 267, and that of mere advertising papers 42; in 1883 the former number had increased to about 280, the latter to about 60. Vienna had in 1883 in all 18 daily newspapers, ten of which ranged in average circulation from 14,000 to 54,000 copies.
In the period from 1880 to 1888 the only notable paper founded in Austria, was the Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung (1880). It appeared three times daily, but in spite of the impetus communicated to its start by the well-known “Freilands” Apostle Theodor Hertzka, it soon fell away, and eventually became simply a late evening paper, known as the 6 Uhr Abendblatt. It was with the rise of the anti-Semitic and Socialistic movements of 1888 onwards that the Vienna daily press first began a fresh increase. The Deutsche Volksblatt (anti-Semitic) was founded in 1888, the Ostdeutsche Rundschau (Radical) in 1893, and the Reichspost (the organ of the Catholic section of the Christian Socialist party) in 1894. The Labour movement led to the development of the Arbeiterzeitung from a weekly, when it succeeded the Gleichheit in 1889, to a daily in 1895. It was therefore the first Social Democratic daily of Austria. In 1893 the Neues Wiener Journal was founded as a political neutral, and the old Presse disappeared in 1894, its place being filled by the weekly Reichswehr (military), established in 1888. The French daily paper, Le Petit Journal de Vienne, was founded in May 1899. In 1902 nineteen political dailies were published in Vienna.
In 1883 the Hungarian journals numbered 170; in 1899 they were returned as 764. Budapest, which in 1890 had 14 dailies and 10 weeklies, in 1900 had 21 and 3 respectively. The leading papers are the Budapest Kögtöng, the Pester Lloyd and the Budapeste Hirlap. Of the German provincial press the most highly developed is in the German towns of Bohemia and in Prague, and the foundation of the Deutsche Volkszeitung at Reichenberg in 1885 marks the date of ​separation of the Deutschfortschrittliche and Deutschvolkliche parties, while the Radical party, which greatly increased in Bohemia, was first represented by the weekly Deutscher Volksbote at Prague, and also in 1897 by the Unverfälschte deutsche Worte, edited by Iro at Eger. A peculiar feature in Austrian journalism is the existence of German organs of the Czech national movement, of which the representative is the Prague daily Politik, founded in 1862. In Silesia the anti-Semitic Freie Schlesische Presse was founded in 1881 at Troppau, and when it changed sides in 1889 it was speedily replaced, 1891, by the Deutsche Wehr. In Moravia the representative papers of the Czech Conservatives and Radicals were the Mir and the Pozar respectively. The newspapers in Galicia, which increased steadily after 1870, are both numerous and important. The leading ones are the Slovo Polskie in Lemberg and the Glos Naroda in Cracow. In 1900 there were 161 newspapers in Polish, as against 10 in 1848 and 50 in 1873. Of the lesser Slavic nations, the Slovenians advanced the most, the Slovenski List having started at the end of 1896. In Illyrian journalism the chief newspapers founded after 1880 were the Crvena Hrvatska (1891), and the Hrvatska Kruna (1893). An attempt at unity amongst the Ruthenian factions in 1885 to 1887 produced the Mir, while the Ruslan, a daily founded at Lemberg in 1896, advocated joint action by Poles and Ruthenians. The Bukowyna, established in 1885, developed into the organ of “Young Ruthenia,” and the Bukowinska Widomosty, established in 1895, represented the Old Ruthenians.
The Italian press in Austria was represented in 1900 chiefly by the very popular daily Piccolo, published at Trieste; it had a formidable rival in the Mattino, from 1885 to 1898. The Fede e Lavoro, published at Roveredo, was the organ of the Catholic Labour party, and L’Avvenire del Lavoro, at Bozen, that of the Socialists. In Dalmatia the Corriere Nazionale, founded in 1896 at Zara and afterwards published at Trieste, was the organ of the autonomist Italians, while Il Dalmata continued to represent the National Liberals.
Belgium.—The Nieuwe Tijdinghen of Antwerp, published by Abraham Verhoeven, has been said to date virtually from 1605, in which year a “licence for the exclusive retailing of news” was accorded to him by the archduke Albert and the archduchess Isabella. But the claim is conjectural. No copy of any number anterior to 1616 is now known to exist. It seems probable that the Gazette Extraordinaris Posttijdinghen, published by Wilhelm Verdussen between 1637 and 1644, is a continuation of Verhoeven’s paper. But, be this as it may, that of Verdussen was certainly the foundation of the well-known Gazette van Antwerpen, which continued to appear until 1827.
Bruges had its Nieuwe Tijdinghen uyt verscheyden Quartieren, published (in black letter) by Nicholaes Breyghel. When this paper was commenced is uncertain, but various numbers of it exist with dates between 1637 and 1645. In one of these (26th July 1644) a Brusselsche Gazette of the 24th of that month is quoted, apart from which citation no Brussels paper is known of earlier date than 1649. When the first number of Le Courier véritable des Pays-Bas made its appearance, the publisher (Jean Mommaert) prefaced the first number by an address to the reader, in which he says: “I have long endeavoured to meet with somebody who would give employment to my presses in defending truth against the falsehoods which malignity and ignorance send daily abroad. I have at length found what I sought, and shall now be able to tell you, weekly, the most important things that are going on in the world.” This paper became afterwards the Gazette de Bruxelles, then Gazette des Pays-Bas; and, under the last-named title, it continued to appear until 1791. The Annales Politiques of Linguet was one of the most remarkable of the political journals of Brussels in the 18th century. For a time the editor won the favour of the emperor Joseph II. by praising his reforms, and the Government subscribed for 1200 copies of his paper at two louis d’ors each a year; but here, as in almost every other place of residence during his chequered career, Linguet at length incurred fine and imprisonment. His journal was repeatedly suppressed, and as often resumed under many modifications of title. It was continued in France, in Switzerland (at Lausanne), and in England. At one time it was so popular that a printer in Brussels regularly and rapidly published a pirated edition of it. For a brief period the publication was resumed at Brussels. Mallet Du Pan was, for a time, a collaborator in the editorship. Linguet died by the guillotine in 1794. Le National was a famous paper for a short period prior to the revolution of 1830. Soon after its cessation—its presses were destroyed by the populace on the 26th August—the official journal, Le Moniteur Belge, was established,—“the ministry deeming it indispensable to the success of its great political enterprise that a journal should be created which might expound its views, and act daily upon public opinion”; and, on decree of the regency, it was published accordingly.
The first newspaper published at Ghent, Gazette van Gent, appeared in 1667. Den Vaderlander, begun in October 1829, was, for a long period, one of the most widely circulated of the Flemish journals.
In 1890 Brussels published 34 papers of various periodicity, among which the Moniteur Belge held the lead with circulation of 90,000, while Le National (revived in 1885) and L’Étoile (1869) circulated 21,000 and 5000 respectively. In 1900 there were 18 dailies and 14 weeklies, &c. Antwerp had 7 dailies in 1890 and 1900; Ghent 7 dailies in 1890 and 6 in 1900; Liége 6 in 1890 and 5 in 1900. The halfpenny paper is well established.
Holland.—The kingdom of the Netherlands has always been rich in newspapers, but they have usually had more weight commercially than politically. Amsterdam in 1890 had 10 dailies, and in 1900 had 12 dailies (Algemeen Handelsblad, Nieuws van den Dag, &c.). In 1900 the Hague had 6 dailies (Dagblad, Vaderland, &c.); and Rotterdam had 5 dailies (Nieuwe Rotterdammer Courant, &c.). The oldest Dutch paper, the Haarlemsche Courant, founded in 1656, is still one of the leading journals.
Italy.—The Diario di Roma, although dating only from 1716, may claim to have been the patriarch of the Italian press. It lasted for nearly a century and a half. During its later years it was a daily paper, with a weekly supplement having the somewhat whimsical title Notizie del Giorno. Next to this came the Gazzetta Uffiziale di Napoli. These and their congeners were published under a rigid censorship until far into the 19th century, and exercised little influence of any kind. The first tentative movement towards a free press may, perhaps, be dated from the effort to establish at Milan, in 1818, under the editorship of Silvio Pellico, the Conciliatore, in which Simonde de Sismondi, Gonfalonieri and Romagnosi were fellow-writers. But the new journal was suppressed in 1820. The first really effectual effort had to wait for the lapse of nearly thirty years. L’Opinione was first published in Turin (26th December 1847) afterwards in Rome. It had, amongst its many editors, Giacomo Durando (a soldier of mark, and twice minister of foreign affairs), Montezenolo, Giovini Bianchi and Giacomo Dina. The Florence Diritto, originally founded at Turin, in 1851, by Lorenzo Valerio, was edited successively by Macchi, Bargini and Civinini, and as a radical organ attained great influence. Counting journals of all kinds, there were published in Italy in 1836 185 newspapers; in 1845, 200; in 1856, 311; in 1864, 450; in 1875, 479. In 1882 the “periodicals” of all kinds numbered 1454, and total number of political dailies was 149. In 1890 Rome published 13 dailies, and in 1900, 10 dailies. The leading Roman papers were the Fanfulla, representing the court and government; the Tribuna (5 centimes), a Liberal paper founded in 1883; the organ of the Vatican, L’Osservatore Romano; and the popular Messaggiero. Il Secolo (1866) and the Corriere della Sera (1876) are issued from Milan.
Russia, Poland and Finland.—The earliest gazette of Moscow (Moskovskya Viedomosti) was issued by order of Peter the Great on the 16th December 1702, but no copy is known now to exist of earlier date than the 2nd January following. The whole gazette of the year 1703 was reproduced in facsimile by order of Baron de Korff (the imperial librarian at St Petersburg) in 1855, on occasion of the festival for the 3rd century of Moscow university. The existing Viedomosti dates only from 1766. That of St Petersburg dates from 1718. The historian Karamzin established a short-lived Moscow journal (Moskovski Listok), and afterwards at St Petersburg the once widely-known Russian Courrier de l’Europe (1802). The profits of the successful Invalide Russe (Russki Invalid), established in 1815 by Persorovius, were devoted to the sufferers by the war with France. Adding to the distinctively political journals those of miscellaneous character, the whole number of newspapers published within the Russian states—Poland and Finland excepted—in the year 1835 was 136; in 1858 that number had grown to 179, of which 82 were published in St Petersburg and 15 in Moscow; 132 were printed in Russian, 3 in Russian and in German, 1 in Russian and in Polish, 28 in German, 8 in French, 3 in English, 1 in Polish, 1 in Lithuanian, 1 in Italian. In 1879, under the more liberal rule of Alexander II., the number of political and miscellaneous journals had grown to 293, and of these 105 were under the direct influence of the Government. But, in truth, the period of relaxation of censorship, if strictly examined, will be found to have lasted only from 1855 to 1864, when repressive measures were again and frequently resorted to. Poland in 1830 had 49 newspapers. Fifty years later the number was still less than 70, of which 54 were in Polish, these numbers including journals of all kinds. Finland in 1860 had 24 newspapers, half in Swedish, half in Finnish. In 1863 the number had increased to 32, in spite of the zealous opposition of Count de Berg, the governor-general, to all discussion of political events and “subjects which do not concern the people.” He was very friendly to journals of gardening and cottage economy, and to magazines of light literature, and did not regard comic papers with anger provided they kept quite clear of politics. The paper which was long the chief Finnish organ, Suometar (founded at Helsingfors in 1847), owed much of its popularity to the pains its editors took with their correspondence. The Oulun Wukko-Samomat (“Uleaborg Daily News”) was for a considerable period the most northerly newspaper of the world, with the one exception of the little journal published at Tromsö, in Norway.
In 1880 the whole number of newspapers printed within the government of Finland was 46, while the total number of newspapers and journals of all kinds published within the whole Russian empire during the same year was 608. Of these, 417 were printed in the Russian language, 155 of them being official or administrative organs; 54 were printed in Polish, 40 in German, 11 in Lettish, 10 in French, 7 in Esthonian, 3 in Lithuanian.
In 1890 St Petersburg had 6 dailies; and in 1900 there were 16 dailies (the St Petersburgskya Viedomosti, the Novoya Vremja, the Journal de St Pétersbourg, &c.). Moscow increased from 5 to 8 dailies (the Moskovskya Viedomosti, &c.). The rest of Russia proper produced about 100 newspapers, of which one-third were dailies. ​In Russian Poland about 11 papers, one-half being dailies, were published at Warsaw in 1900 (Kurier Warsawski, Gazeta Polska, &c.).
Spain and Portugal.—In Spain no newspaper of any kind existed earlier than the 18th century, a Gaceta de Madrid starting about 1726 (an alleged gaceta in 1626 is a myth). Even during the early years of the 19th century the capital contented itself with a single journal, the Diario de Madrid. The Peninsular War and the establishment of the Cortes gave the first impulse towards something which might be called political journalism, but the change from total repression to absolute freedom was too sudden not to be grossly abused. The Diario de las Cortes, the Semanario Patriotico (published at Cadiz from 1808 to 1811,) and the Aurora Mallorquina (published at Palma in 1812–1813) were the first of the new papers that attained importance. In 1814 the circulation or receipt in Spain of English newspapers was prohibited under penalty of ten years’ imprisonment. Most of the native journals fell with the Cortes in 1823. In the following year Ferdinand decreed the suppression of all the journals except the then Diario and Gaceta of Madrid, the Gaceta de Bayona, and certain provincial papers which dealt exclusively with commercial or scientific subjects. At the close of his reign only three or four papers were published in Madrid. Ten years afterwards there were 40; but the number was far more noticeable than the value. Spanish newspapers have been too often the mere stepping-stones of political adventurers, and not unfrequently the worst of them appear to have served the turn more completely than the best. Gonzales Bravo attained office mainly by the help of a paper of notorious scurrility,—El Guirigay. His press-law of 1867 introduced a sort of indirect censorship, and a system of “warnings,” rather clandestine than avowed; and his former rivals met craft with craft. The Universal and the Correo were successively the organs of José Salamanca. At the end of 1854 the political journals published in Madrid numbered about 40, the most conspicuous being the now defunct España and El Clamor Publico. In 1890 Madrid published 38 papers, of which 15 were dailies; but by 1900 they declined to 28, of which 19 were dailies. The leading Spanish papers in 1900 were—El Correo (1879), Monarchico-Liberal; La Epoca, Conservative; El Imparcial, Independent Liberal; La Justicia, an evening Republican paper; El Liberal, numbering among its contributors the best writers without distinction of party; and El Pais, the organ of the Progressives.
Portugal in 1882 was credited with 179 journals of all kinds and of various periodicity. Of this number 68 appeared in Lisbon. The strictly political daily papers of Lisbon were 6 in number; those of Oporto 3. In 1890 Lisbon published 11 dailies; and in 1900, 19 dailies.
Sweden.—In Sweden the earliest regular newspaper appears to have been the Ordinarie Post-Tidende of Stockholm, first published in 1645, and continued until 1680, then, after long suspension, revived under the title Post- och Inrikes-Tidning. Stockholm has also its Aftonbladet. The Post-Tidende was followed by the Svensk Mercurius (1675–1683) and the Latin Relationes Curiosae (1682–1701). In 1742 a Swedish newspaper in French (Gazette Française de Stockholm) was commenced, and was followed in 1772 by the Mercure de Suède. But the press in Sweden had small political influence until 1820, when the Argus was established by Johannsen. The strife between “classicists” and “romanticists” spread itself in Sweden, as in France, from the field of literature into that of politics. Crusenstolpe’s Fäderneslandbladet and Hjerta’s Aftonbladet, founded in 1830, were long the most conspicuous of the Swedish journals,—the former on the side of the royalists, the latter on that of the reformers. Hjerta’s paper, in its best days, could boast of a circulation of 5000 copies; but on the accession of King Oscar it ceased to appear as an opposition organ. Almost every town in the provinces now has its paper. In 1890 Stockholm had 5 dailies and 12 weeklies, &c.; in 1900 it had 11 dailies and 4 weeklies, &c., while 93 provincial towns published 197 papers, mostly weeklies, &c. In the period 1890—1894 a large number of newspapers appeared at Stockholm, but their duration was in general very short, often only a few months (Lundstadt, Sveriges Periodiska Literatur, ii. 1896). A newspaper in Finnish is published at Haparanda.
Denmark.—While Denmark published an Europäische Zeitung as early as 1663 and the Danske Mercurius in 1666, the political influence of the press is a newer thing in that country than even in Sweden. Until 1830 Copenhagen had but two papers, and they filled their columns with mild extracts from foreign journals. Real activity in this direction dates from the establishment of the provincial states in 1834. The Berlingske Tidende dates from 1749, and was at first published in German. The Fädrelandet in 1848–1849 was in a glow of zeal for Scandinavianism and “Young Denmark.” In 1890 Copenhagen produced 8 dailies and 6 weeklies, &c. In 1900 it had 12 dailies and 2 weeklies, while 121 papers appeared in sixty-eight provincial towns.
Reykjavik (Iceland) published two weekly papers in 1890, and the same number in 1900 (Thiódólfr and Isafold).
Norway.—The earliest Norwegian paper was the Christiania Intelligentssedler, founded in 1763. Next to this came the Adressecontors Efterretninger (1765), published at Bergen. Den Constitutionelle absorbed an older paper, called Norske Rigstidende. The Morgenblad was founded in 1819. In 1890 Christiania published 12 papers, of which only three appeared daily; in 1900 only 10 papers were produced, but 8 of them were dailies. The Morgenbladet still held its rank, and the Aftenposten had a large circulation.
Switzerland.—In 1873 the total number of political and general newspapers in Switzerland was 230. In 1881 they numbered 342; 53 were of daily issue, 166 appeared twice or thrice a week, and 7 only were of weekly issue. A monthly compendium of the news of the day appeared at Rorschach, in the canton of St Gall, as early as January 1597. The editor was a German, one Samuel Dilbaum, of Augsburg. He varied his titles, so that his monthly newsbooks, although really consecutive, do not wear the appearance of serial publications. Sometimes he called his issue Historische Relatio, sometimes Beschreibung, sometimes Historische Erzählung. Switzerland has since become remarkable for the number of its newspapers in proportion to its size. Among the more important may be mentioned the Journal de Genève and the Gazette de Lausanne, both Moderate Liberal, and the Catholic Courrier de Genève. La Tribune de Genève (1878) is a leading five-centime paper.
Greece.—The few newspapers that made their sudden appearance in Greece during the war of liberation departed as hastily when King Otho brought with him a press-law, one of the provisos of which demanded caution-money by actual deposit. The journal Saviour was established, in 1834, as a Government organ, and was soon followed by Athena as the journal of the opposition. Ten years later 7 distinctively political papers had been established, along with 13 journals of miscellaneous nature. In 1877 there were, of all sorts, 81 journals, of which 77 appeared in Greek, 2 in Greek and French, 2 in French only; 37 of these were printed in Athens, 17 in the Ionian Islands. In 1890 Athens published 9 dailies and 4 weeklies, &c., and in 1900, 10 dailies and 2 weeklies, The chief papers, the Asty and the Acropolis, were mainly political and on the Liberal side, as indeed were nearly all the Athenian papers.
Turkey.—During the embassy (1795) of Verninac Saint-Maur, envoy of the French republic, a French journal was established at Pera. This, possibly, is the pioneer of all Turkish newspapers. Thirty years later (1825) the Spectateur de l’Orient was founded at Smyrna, also by a Frenchman (Alexander Blacquet?). It was afterwards published under the titles Courrier and Journal de Smyrne. In like manner, the Moniteur Ottoman, first of strictly Constantinopolitan journals, was founded by the above-named Blacquet in 1831. It soon changed its language to Turkish, and was edited by Franceschi. The second Smyrna newspaper, Echo de l’Orient, established in 1838, was transferred to Constantinople in 1846. But not one of these papers has survived. In 1876 the total number of journals of all kinds published in the capital was 72 (namely, 20 in French, 16 in Turkish, 13 in Armenian, 12 in Greek, 11 in as many other tongues). In 1890 there were 19 papers, in various languages, published at Constantinople, most of them dailies; and in 1900 the number of papers decreased to 18. They appeared in the following languages: the Stamboul and 4 others in French, 3 in Turkish, 1 in Turkish and Greek, 3 in Greek, 2 in Armenian, 1 in English and French, and 1 each in Arabic, English, Italian and Persian. Smyrna published 8 papers, mostly weeklies, in 1890, and the same number in 1900. Owing to the number of Mahommedan fasts and feasts Turkish newspapers are somewhat irregular in their appearance.
For the newspapers of other countries (e.g. Japan) or of important towns, see under the separate topographical headings. (H. Ch.)
* ↑ 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.”
* ↑ The account which follows is reproduced from Mr Whitelaw Reid’s article in the 10th edition of the Ency. Brit.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ The title Mercurius or Mercury—as representing the messenger of the gods—thus became a common one for English periodicals.
* ↑ Registers of the Stationers’ Company, as printed by Edward Arber, iii. 302.
* ↑ Ibid. iv. 23.
* ↑ Literary Anecdotes, iv. 38.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ 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 (1901).
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ State Papers, Domestic, Charles II., cxxxiv. 103 (Rolls House).
* ↑ Ibid. 117.
* ↑ In 1664 he had halved them, so that this really only means he had now restored the original size.
* ↑ State Papers, Domestic, Charles II., cxxxv. 24.
* ↑ Anthony Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, “Perrot.”
* ↑ Calendar of Home-Office Papers, 1766–1769, p. 483 (1879).
* ↑ A complete set is now of extreme rarity.
* ↑ 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.
* ↑ “A Proposition to Increase the Revenue of the Stamp-Office,” Redington, Calendar of Treasury Papers, 1708–1714, p. 235. The stamp-office dated from 1694, when the earliest duties on paper and parchment were enacted.
* ↑ See the Burney collection of newspapers in the British Museum; and Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, iv. 33–97.
* ↑ “Fourth Report of the Committee of Secrecy,” &c., in Hansard’s Parliamentary History, xii. 814.
* ↑ See the centenary number of January 2, 1888; the pamphlet by S. V. Makower, issued by The Times in 1904, “The History of The Times”; and the article by Hugh Chisholm on “The Times, 1785–1908” in the National Review (May 1908).
* ↑ See Life of John Sterling, by Carlyle, who says of him at this time: “The emphatic, big-voiced, always influential and often strongly unreasonable Times newspaper was the express emblem of Edward Sterling. He, more than any other man, . . . was The Times, and thundered through it, to the shaking of the spheres.” The nickname of “The Thunderer,” for The Times, came in vogue in his day.
* ↑ Albert Grant, who took that name though his father’s was Gottheimer, was given the title of baron by King Victor Emmanuel of Italy in 1868 for his services in connexion with the Milan picture gallery. He made a large fortune by company-promoting, and in 1865 became M.P. for Kidderminster. He became a prominent public character in London. In 1873 he built Kensington House, a vast mansion close to Kensington Palace, which in 1883 was demolished and the site seized by his creditors. In 1874 he bought up Leicester Square, converted it into a public garden, and presented it to the Metropolitan Board of Works. But soon afterwards he failed, and from 1876 to his death he constantly figured in the law-courts at the suit of his creditors.
* ↑ The Norwich Postman, a small quarto of meagre contents, was published at a penny, but its proprietor notified that “a halfpenny is not refused”! Within a few years Norwich also had its Courant (1712) and Weekly Mercury or Protestant’s Packet (1720).
* ↑ Amalgamated with the Bristol Mirror (1773) in 1865 to form the Daily Bristol Times and Mirror.
* ↑ Exeter was then fiercely political. These three newspapers commented so freely on proceedings in parliament that their editors were summoned to appear at bar (Journal of the House of Commons, xix. 30, 43, 1718). The incident is curious as showing that each represented a rival MS. news-letter writer in London.
* ↑ This was followed by the Scotch Dove, the first number of which is dated “September 30 to October 20, 1643,” and by the Scottish Mercury (No. 1, October 5, 1643). In 1648 a Mercurius Scoticus and a Mercurius Caledonius were published in London. The Scotch Dove was the only one of these which attained a lengthened existence.
* ↑ Watson was the printer and editor, but the person licensed was James Donaldson, merchant in Edinburgh (“Act in favors of James Donaldson for printing the Gazette,” March 10, 1699, published in Miscellany of the Maitland Club, ii. 232 sq.). Arnot, in his History of Edinburgh, mentions as the second of Edinburgh newspapers—intervening between Mercurius Caledonius and the Gazette—a Kingdom’s Intelligencer. But this was a London newspaper, dating from 1662, which may occasionally have been reprinted in Scotland; no such copies, however, are now known to exist. In like manner the Scottish Mercury, No. 1, May 8, 1692, appears to have been a London newspaper based upon Scottish news-letters, although in an article written in 1848, in the Scottish Journal of Topography, vol. ii. p. 303, it is mentioned as an Edinburgh newspaper.
* ↑ During an imprisonment of six weeks in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh his health suffered so severely that he died very shortly after his release.
* ↑ Grant, History of the Newspaper Press (1873), iii. 412.
* ↑ See Notes and Queries, 5th series, vii. 45, viii. 205.
* ↑ The Hurkaru and the Indian Gazette were long afterwards combined under the new leading title, Indian Daily News (with the old name appended).
* ↑ For the general conditions producing the modern type of American newspaper, see the first section of this article. In the following account of American and foreign newspapers, the historical material in the 9th and 10th editions of the Ency. Brit. has been utilized and in parts repeated.
* ↑ In other words, the attention of the Bostonian politicians was engrossed on the siege of Belgrade, when their contemporaries in the mother country were intent on the destruction of the Spanish fleet on the coast of Sicily.
* ↑ Le Constitutionnel, 16,250; Journal des débats, 13,000; La Quotidienne, 5800; Le Courrier français, 2975; Journal de commerce, 2380; L’Aristarque, 925.
* ↑ Journal de Paris, 4175; L’Étoile, 2749; Gazette de France, 2370; Le Moniteur, 2250; Le Drapeau blanc, 1900; Le Pilote, 900.
* ↑ Or, to speak more precisely, to farm a certain conspicuous page of each newspaper, in perpetuity.
* ↑ When comparing the French newspaper press as it stood in 1873 with that of Germany, in the Revue des deux Mondes, article “La Presse Allemande,” vol. ii. of 1873, p. 715.
* ↑ The history of French journals published abroad is interesting. The Annales politiques of Linguet—for a time of Linguet and Mallet du Pan jointly—was, from about 1770 to about 1785, almost a power in Europe, in its way. Mallet du Pan’s own Mercure Britannique, during the eventful years 1798–1800, was brilliant, sagacious and honest. When the pen literally fell from his dying hand—a hand that had kept its integrity under the pains of exile and of bitter poverty—that pen was taken up (for a short interval) by Malouet. When Napoleon forcibly suppressed, a little later, the Courrier de l’Europe of the count of Montlosier, he offered the deprived editor a pension, which was refused, until accompanied by the offer of a post in which the able minister of Louis XVI. could still work for his country. English journalism in France was for long associated with Galignani’s Messenger, started by Giovanni Antonio Galignani (1757–1822) in 1814, an turned into a daily just before his death. Its palmy days were between 1814 and 1848. In 1895 it was turned into the Daily Messenger, but proved a failure and was dropped in 1904; it was really killed by the competition of the Paris edition of the New York Herald. It had been preceded by Sampson Perry’s Argus (1809), a Napoleonic organ. In May 1905 a new era of English journalism on the continent began by the institution of the Paris edition of the London Daily Mail.
* ↑ Fr. Kapp, “Berliner geschriebene Zeitungen,” in Deutsche Rundschau, xxi. 107-122 (1879), citing Droysen, Zeitschr. f. preuss. Gesch. xiii. 11. The story, as told by Droysen, is an instructive commentary on Carlyle’s praise of Frederick’s “love of the liberty of the press.”
* ↑ Kapp, ut supra.