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Beginnings of Journalism:
Posted Date: 17 Mar 2008 Resource Type: Articles/Knowledge Sharing Category: Education
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Posted By: Sree.... Member Level: Diamond
Rating:  Points: 5
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Review from Elizabeth Grey's The Story of Journalism , 1968
Many of you who pick up this book will be interested in the idea of journalism as a career, some time in the future; many more will already be earning extra pocket-money by working a paper-round. You may not know it, but your honorable trade dates back to the early days...
Grey illustrates that communication is human nature. The great ancestors of journalism are visual and sound signals such as beacon fires, smoke, and jungle tom-toms, are much similar with present-day burglar alarms, fire sirens, school bells, lighthouse and aircraft beacons.
When noise and distance started to get in the way, humans started writing the message through drawings. These drawings have direct, and later, multiple meanings, such as drawing a sun with rays, to represent day or the sun itself. She calls this picture-writing. She pin points that picture-writing is still apparent in our present-day road signs.
TV and radio, Grey asserts, is the quickest and surest way of conveying information Still she says that the importance of journalism prints lies on the permanence of the message. Moreover, she implies that newspapers do not literally blasts or pop-outs.
Grey mentions many journalism trivia. She tells about the first permanently recorded news, discovered Jerusalem in 1880, known as the Siloam Inscription. It is written in old Hebrew in 700 BC and narrates the completion of an aqueduct. (A translation is found in the book, which makes it more revealing!)
Paper and printing are the most important inventions that allowed journalism to flourish. Wasps make paper as they tunnels into wood and chew pulp. Grey acknowledges that Ts'ai Lun of China followed the same process by pounding mulberry bark, straining it flat by bamboo screen, and drying it up.
Early forms of journalism articles, such as handwritten news bulletins may have been first produced in Peking. The Roman Empire distributed the first news-letters, called Acta Diurna or Daily Doings.
China is also ahead on printing. The discovered Buddhist scripture, called Diamond Sutra, dates back to AD 868. Chinese early printing is done through wooden blocks carved with characters in relief and in reverse. Ink of resin or gum is brushed on the wooden blocks, and then paper is pressed. It was later improved to movable wooden type, and then much later to movable cast metal type. Paper and printing proliferated Europe in fifteenth century, which is also the height of journalism enterprise. In Germany, the movable cast type is generally attributed to Johan Gutenberg.
From this point, Elizabeth Grey s account on journalism history becomes increasingly concentrated in Great Britain.
William Caxton brought printing to England in 1476—twenty-one years after the first book, a bible, had been printed in Germany, and 8th years after Gutenberg s death. Sixteenth century journalism has newsletters which carry local events, and foreign news. Foreign news comes mainly from Italy, the center of journalism of the period.
Notizie Scritte or Written Notices did not appear in Venice until 1566. It was more popularly known as gazettes , after the small coin of payment, the gazetta. Journalism gazettes looked exactly like any other book of the time: quite small, only 7 ½ ? 5, and containing just one particular but very important event. Grey called this journalism prints, news-books. News-books do not appear regularly, and the style of writing is far more eloquent and ornate. Grey provided examples of old headlines (12) such as this:
HEREAFTER ENSUE THE TRUE ENCOUNTER OR BATTLE LATELY DONE BETWEEN ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND, IN WHICH BATTLE THE SCOTTISH KING WAS SLAIN.
As late as 1880, chanters could still be heard in London streets hawking their doleful ditties till the dawn broke for those who still can not read.
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