The best source I could find that highlights the longest period of time was in the Encyclopedia Britannica. According to this source the first known, official journalistic product dates back before 59 BC. Circulated around ancient Rome, Acta diurna was a news sheet that was published daily and posted in public areas. It included the minutes of official business and political and social events.
The bao (report) in China during the Tang dynasty (618–907 AD) is the next product Britannica explains. This report apparently lasted for about a 1,000 years.
Jumping forwards another couple hundred years and jumping across countries, actual newspapers started being published in Germany in about 1609.
But according to BYU journalism professor Steve Thomsen, newspapers weren’t originally of masses. At first they were for the elite and included a lot of business information.
Then in 1830 in New York, Benjamin Day founded the first penny press, The Sun. This newspaper covered a wide variety of sorted news and it was directed to the common person.
For the next century or so, the newspaper thrived. New technology, like the telegraph, helped move news farther and faster than ever before. In
Then came the computer. Internet and, more recently, social media have revolutionized journalism.
Despite the changes through its history, journalism has stayed a strong industry.
“Humanity has always been storytellers,” Dr. Thomsen said. “Journalists will always be the storytellers.”
I like how you started out your post my saying that journalism has been around as long as news as been around. And I would add that the news has been around from the beginning of time. It reminds me of the scriptures, and how those were recording the news of the time, the prophesies that the ancient prophets were making, among other things.
ReplyDeleteI never knew that the "news" was limited to the elite for so long. Low literacy rates were probably a large factor. Maybe the sudden availability of printed news helped motivate more people to learn how to read. It might be similar to today's social media shift. The older generation has been forced to become more technologically capable.
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing to see how much journalism has changed from the written word to technology. What exact changes do journalists make to be more successful with their stories in different mediums?
ReplyDeleteOne of the greatest parts of living in our modern world is how widely distributed information is. We owe it to the journalists who make it happen!
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