The Birth And Death Of Newspapers

Like many these days, I don't often buy a newspaper. It's just too easy and far more enjoyable to read newspapers online. I have my favorites that I skim each day, love the fact that many of them have a breaking news update system. Enjoy the fact that I'm not stuck with a pile of newspapers to recycle, and fancy the idea that somehow, some way, I'm saving a tree from certain death.

Still, occasionally, I buy a newspaper, usually a Sunday paper. Recently, while grocery shopping, I was delighted to see that the New York Times was carried by Publix. That British owned grocery chain that dominates our state, often is lacking in awareness of what the American market wants. Not that I'm complaining, because Publix has an eye for introducing American's to a wider, more global sort of grocery product and experience.

I was excited when I left the store, looking forward to a leisurely and quiet afternoon, gleefully planning on reading each and almost, every newspaper article in the New York Times completely. I drove home wondering about what kind of advertisements I might find, what happenings in the world have I been missing, and how much better the vocabulary of the writers would be -- compared to local papers.

Here in Florida, our papers seem to be focused on the latest on the Casey Antony murder trial, crime, Disney, and high school sports. One of our local newspapers is often remarked about in the same breath with "being fit only for lining bird cages." Once home, however, the experience quickly had a down side -- I was a little shocked about the price I paid for a Sunday paper -- $6.00!

OK . . . . where I live, we complain that the Sunday paper costs $1.25 and most people opt for the lesser regarded paper that only costs $1.00. Also, many drive around to the newspaper stands to find one that still has a paper, solely because they also don't want to pay the state tax.

This got me to thinking about the birth and rumored eventual death of newspapers. In a world of instant news, are newspapers still important sources of learning? Why should we pay high dollar for news when it is virtually free? Also, what is the history of newspapers, or more importantly, what is the future of newspapers?  My search for answers found a few surprises that might be fun to share with all of you:

What Is The History of Newspapers?

The newspapers in their modern form of print we know it, is usually regarded as beginning around 1566, when the government of Venice, Italy, issued written news-sheets and exhibited them in the streets. Anyone was allowed to read them on payment of a small coin called a "gazetta." On this account, the news-sheets were called gazettes, and they became so popular that they were in high demand.

Soon after this, gazettes were issued in most of the big cities of Europe. The first English newspaper was the Weekly News, published in London in 1622. However, in this paper and its successors until 1641, only foreign news was printed.

While modern day newspapers are said to be only about five centuries old technically, also existed in the ancient world. Accounts of the imperial armies of Rome were sent to generals in command in all parts of the empire. These Acta Diurna (Daily Doings), as they were called, were communicated by the generals to their offices.

Farther back still, items of news, generally about kings or battles were carved in stone in prominent places in Babylonian and Assyrian cities. These may almost be regarded as the origin of the newspaper as a record of events.

Probably the oldest newspaper in this sense is the Siloam Inscription, discovered in 1880, in the rocky aqueduct of the Pool of Siloam, at the southeast end of Jerusalem. The characters are those of an early form of the alphabet used by the Phoenicians, Hebrews, and Moabites. The language is Biblical Hewrew. The inscription is of the period of the Hebrew monarchy.

It takes back to at least 700 B.C. and is one of the oldest Hebrew inscriptions known. It may be called the Jewish newspaper of Isiah's time, and perhaps even of Solomon's time. Freely translated it reads thus:

"Finished is the boring. And this was the manner of the boring. The hewers were plying the pickax, each toward his fellow, and there were still three cubits to finish, when there was heard the voice of one calling to his fellow; for there was a crack in the rock on the right. And on the day of the boring the hewers struck each to meet his fellow, pickax to pickax, and the water ran from the source to the pool, two hundred and a thousand cubits. And a hundred cubits was the height of the rock above the heads of the hewers."

It sounds very modern. Just such a similar paragraph might announce the completion of the cutting of a new tunnel anywhere in the United States, for example.

Not that long ago, before the Internet, at the top of some newspapers, near the date line, there used to be a number of stars. Sometimes there was only one, sometimes as many as four or five stars appeared in a row.

The number of stars indicated how recently the paper had come off the presses. The first newspapers printed each day usually had no star. An hour or two later one or two pages of the newspaper may be remade to include fresh news, and a star is placed up near the date line to show that it is the second printing of the day, or second edition.

The third edition will have two stars, and so on. Back in the pre-instant news days, men interested in the stock market reports or sports events want to read the latest news on those subjects, therefore they looked carefully at the number of stars on the afternoon and evening papers before buying. In smaller towns, there were not so many editions and the star system was not used.

The word morgue usually means a place in which dead people are kept until ready for burial and sometimes identification. The same word applied to a newspaper office meant a department where clippings and pictures of more or less prominent persons and celebrities are kept, so that a sketch of the person's life and work could easily and quickly be written if they died or came into the news unexpectedly.

This practice is still used today, although the Internet has changed the concept in a more dramatic way. In the old days of newspapers, the clippings and pictures were carefully filed by subject, in envelopes or folders. Large newspapers had a morgue containing thousands of subjects. Much of the information in the newspaper morgue was stuff that was not typically found in the ordinary library.

While the newspaper morgue usually served only the newspaper staff, in some cases students were allowed to go there if they wished to look up some special topic and could not find the information elsewhere.

In the Middle Ages, European society was usually thought of as divided into Three Estates, or classes -- the Clergy, the Nobility, and the Commons -- the first two having special privileges. Later, the Third Estate, the representatives of the common people, gained authority, especially in matters of taxation.

In France in 1789, discontent among the people forced the King to call his Three Estates for a Parliament and for the first time in French history, the Third Estate demanded and received equal rights with the other two.

Once, Irish statesman, Edmund Burke was making a speech in the British House of Commons. He pointed to the newspaper men in the reporters' gallery. "Yonder," he cried, "sits the Fourth Estate, more important than them all!" He meant, of course, that newspapers mold public opinion, and influence the course of events. Since then "Fourth Estate" is an old fashioned nickname for the press.

As a child of the 1950s, it's hard to imagine that in my own life time we are now witnessing what seems to be the death of newspapers. More and more across our country, newspapers have merged and folded and continue to struggle. Web sites and instant news has replaced newspapers. The younger generations and even some of us who are older, no longer prefer to get our news via print.

At one level, I cannot help but wonder how all of this will change the reliability of the news, which already has a long shadow cast upon it. Journalism isn't what it used to be. Sometimes it seems like it's either a choice of really bad news, or entertainment news, or news that has crossed a line that it should never do.