ABSTRACT
This chapter examines news from the Americas in the famous Gazette of Théophraste Renaudot, which appeared in Paris every week between 1631 and 1653. Renaudot has often been portrayed in French scholarship as a mere mouthpiece of Cardinal Richelieu, but his coverage of events in the Atlantic world shows that he was in fact a very accomplished news writer, who gave a more balanced account of events than contemporaries and historians have given him credit for. Readers who wanted to follow events in the South Atlantic were often better off reading Renaudot’s Gazette than the French-language editions of the Amsterdam newspapers, or the embryonic periodicals from Lisbon. Renaudot thematized the inherent difficulties of reporting on events across the ocean, citing the disadvantages of distance and delay as part of his coverage, leading to explicit questions about the nature of news. It argues that for a news writer like Renaudot, whose output was scrutinized by the authorities, distance represented a form of liberation – enhancing rather than affecting credibility.
