ABSTRACT
In the 16th century, the Reformation first spread the idea of rights to free expression, and in the 17th, mercantilism vastly increased demand for economic intelligence. The sensationalist and untrustworthy newsbooks persisted, but now more was required. During the Thirty Years’ War the need to know where armed conflicts raged and civil order had collapsed became paramount. And, for all that truth is the first casualty of such turmoil, as censorship faltered, a seriousness of purpose, often soberly expressed, came to mark journalism. The market was as ready for newes as it had been for strange newes, and so news responded. The press which emerged already had in place many other aspects of a modern news publication: a full agenda of reports, domestic and foreign; (early experiments with) headlines and illustrations; new content (e.g. advice columns, advertisements). The first English ‘scoop’, involving the publishing of secret state papers, appeared in 1649. The Civil War papers illuminate the idea that holding power to account was becoming a central press function. And opinion which, during the Reformation, had been published as pamphlets, now began occasionally to appear in the pages of what, in 1688, were finally being called ‘newspapers’.
