BYN 106/2 The Press March 1, 2021

The first mechanical printing press outside China was built by Johannes Gutenberg, a German craftsman, in 1440. It
enabled two men to produce 3000 printed pages in one day. European mechanical presses produced 20 million
books in the first 50 years, mostly on religious and political topics, and played a key role in the Renaissance, the
Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the scientific revolution.

The first newspapers appeared in the 1600s (in Germany, Holland and Britain). The next big changes took place in
the second half of the 19th century after the invention of the rotary press. The emergence of mass newspapers
depended mainly on rapid communications (esp. the railways), improved literacy and urbanization.

The new mass journalism in the US was called Yellow Journalism, which featured big headlines, scandalous stories,
illustrations, comic strips, pseudo-science, and fake interviews. The tabloid newspapers of today employ much the
same techniques. The first newspaper with a daily circulation of a million was Britain’s Daily Mail (in 1900).

The mass newspapers were owned by powerful press ‘barons’. In the US, the key figures were Hearst and Pulitzer,
whose newspapers exercised significant political influence. In 1898, Hearst cabled his photographer: ‘Send photos of
the war in Cuba’. Photographer: ‘But there is no war, sir.’ Hearst: ‘You provide the photos; I will provide the war.’

Newspapers earned more from advertising revenues than from newspaper sales. This meant a growing influence of
advertisers over newspaper content. Adverts changed the tenor as well as the look of newspapers. The earliest
newspapers in Turkish had appeared in the 1830s. The first edition of Hürriyet was published in 1948. The front page
story was concerned with the first Arab-Israeli war.

A critical issue for newspapers was (and is) the degree of government control. The earliest form of control was a tax
that limited circulation by keeping the price high. Later, direct censorship by governments of left and right was
common (e.g. Soviet Russia and Fascist Germany in the 1930s). The usual reason for censorship in democracies is
that of ‘national security’. There is no such thing in any country as a completely free press.

The printed newspaper is being killed off by digital news on PCs, tablets and phones. The number of fully-employed
journalists is everywhere shrinking. One result is the increase in the recycling of news stories, without adequate
checking and corroboration. Many stories are taken directly from the reports of news agencies (Associated Press,
Reuters, Agence France Press, Anadolu Ajans) where journalists may work on ten or more stories in one day.

Newspaper readers often read only headlines, which (with photo and photo caption) become ‘the news’. The
tabloids prefer large headlines, sometimes one word: OBAMA! (when he won the presidency in 2008).

Journalism as a profession. In most countries, the profession of journalism still has considerable status perhaps
because it involves intellectual work as well as an active (and sometimes adventurous) life. Journalists also give the
impression (often illusory) of operating close to the centres of power.