Valerie Richmond, age 11, of Grand Ledge, Michigan, for her question:
When was the first newspaper published?
The story of newspapers marches hand in hand with the story of civilization. The best way to make our minds expand is to read about events in the lives of other people near and far. We see ourselves in proper proportion within a world wide scene of activity. This is one reason why a well educated person reads at least one daily newspaper. Another reason is the downright pleasure one gets fun being well ¬informed.
The newspaper business got off to a humble start before the Christian Bra. Most likely it began with the Romans, who felt it necessary to keep in communication with their far flung empire. In the fifth century B.C., newsletters were written in Rome and circulated to interested readers in distant cities. They carried newsy items about business and politics, events such as wars, natural disasters, plagues and floods. These ancestors of the modern newspaper were copied by hand and carried by couriers or by travelers who happened to be going in the right direction. They were newsletters, prepared now and then when news was urgent.
Julius Caesar, of course, was a great one for law and order and the strict organization of government. He saw the value of the haphazard newsletters and set about organizing them on a regular schedule. In the year 60 B.C., he became a Roman consul and immediately decreed a daily news bulletin to be posted on the walls of the Roman Forum. It was called the Acta Diurna, the Events of the Day, and most of its newsy items were reports of government activities. Anyone could read it, have it read to him or copy it to send to a friend.
Acta Diurna was indeed a very simple daily newspaper and more elaborate versions had to wait centuries until the printing press was invented. In the meantime, assorted newsletters and proclamations, pamphlets stating political opinions and royal decrees were copied and distributed from city to city. By the sixteenth century, a lot of controversial pamphlets and ballads were sold secretly from shops after closing time. Reports of wars and natural disasters, coronations and royal births were sold openly in shops and toted afar by traveling fairs.
Early in the seventeenth century, many countries in Europe used moveable type to produce regular newspapers. The first of them started in Germany, where the printing press was invented. The city of Augsburg had a newspaper in 1609. On September 4, of that year, the Strasburg newspaper carried a fascinating item about a new telescope built by Signor Galileo, a math professor of Padua, Italy. In the 1620s, several newspapers full of interesting information were published in Holland. Some of them, published in Amsterdam by George Veseler, were translated into English and may well have been the first newspapers in the English language. The few remaining samples show that they had two pages of smallish print arranged in double columns.
During the 18th century, the newspaper business made its mark. Political writers used it to express opinions and bring about social reforms. The British were among the first to realize the social necessity of a well informed and responsible press. The newly formed United States of America grasped this vital fact even more readily which is why a free press is one of our most cherished rights as a nation.