ABSTRACT
It took nearly two centuries for a publication devoted to the regular dissemination of news to emerge as a distinct form out of the variety of printed material that flowed from the development of the printing press in the late fifteenth century. These were the formative years of the British newspaper and the structure and content of modern newspapers were influenced by a number of things that happened in this period. Newspapers are a relatively recent invention but their basic ingredient is ‘one of humanity’s oldest pleasures’.2 People have always had the desire to know about what is happening around them, and the spreading of news, or ‘tydings’ as it was referred to in the medieval era, responds to what the anthropologist Claude Lévi Strauss3 labels a basic human trait. Long before people could read and write they exchanged news and information. The advent of the printing press was an essential catalyst in the emergence of the newspaper but many of the features we associate with the newspaper pre-date printing. They can be traced back to the era of handwritten manuscripts and even further back to when societies were dominated by oral communication. Printed news material developed within the context of – and was influenced by – the communication of news by word of mouth and handwritten manuscript. The early newspapers not only had to survive in a predominantly oral culture but also had to compete with other forms of printed news material, such as posters, ballads and handbills. Understanding the history of the newspaper requires some knowledge of the struggles of these forerunners of today’s newspaper to establish themselves.
