This is a photograph of today’s newspaper in Dallas. Yes, I still subscribe to the daily newspaper. I know there are many young people who do not get their information this way. They prefer social media. While I am a Facebook user, I do not want to look at a tiny screen to read the news with my breakfast. I do not want to buy an iPad just to read the newspaper. I do not want to lug my laptop to the breakfast table. Don’t we get too much screen time anyway? I thought it was supposed to be bad for us. I want to be surprised by the news. I don’t want to enter subjects I am interested in into a search engine for the news. I don’t know what I am interested in until I read about it in the news. I realize that the business model for newspapers is outdated. I just think there should be a better way of keeping people informed without skewing the content toward only what they like. My brother-in-law Adam is currently the business editor for the Charlotte Observer. At one point in his career after being nominated for three Pulitzer Prizes for his investigative reporting, his hours were cut to half-time, and he worked many nights as an editor to make up the difference. This is what the occupation of print journalist has come to. I fear there are many more scandals and white-collar crimes being committed now simply because readers are no longer interested. All they want is the sound bite of a short video. In-depth reporting is fast becoming an extinct animal. That’s my rant for the day. Let’s learn more about newspapers.
According to Wikipedia, a newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background.
Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports and art, often including materials such as opinion columns, weather forecasts, reviews of local services, obituaries, birth notices, crosswords, editorial cartoons, comic strips and advice columns.
Most newspapers are businesses, and they pay their expenses with a mixture of subscription revenue, newsstand sales and advertising revenue. The journalism organizations that publish newspapers are themselves often metonymically called newspapers.
Newspapers have traditionally been published in print, usually on cheap, low-grade paper called newsprint. However, today most newspapers are also published on websites as online newspapers, and some have even abandoned their print versions entirely.
Newspapers developed in the 17th century as information sheets for merchants. By the early 19th century, many cities in Europe — as well as North and South America — published newspapers.
Some newspapers with high editorial independence, high journalism quality and large circulation are viewed as newspapers of record.
Overview
Newspapers are typically published daily or weekly. News magazines are also weekly, but they have a magazine format. General-interest newspapers typically publish news articles and feature articles on national and international news as well as local news. The news includes political events and personalities, business and finance, crime, weather and natural disasters; health and medicine, science and computers and technology; sports; and entertainment, society, food and cooking, clothing and home fashion and the arts.
Usually, the paper is divided into sections for each of those major groupings. Most traditional papers also feature an editorial page containing editorials written by an editor or by the paper's editorial board and expressing an opinion on a public issue, opinion articles called "op-eds" written by guest writers which are typically in the same section as the editorial and columns that express the personal opinions of columnists, usually offering analysis and synthesis that attempts to translate the raw data of the news into information telling the reader "what it all means" and persuading them to concur. Papers also include articles that have no byline; these articles are written by staff writers.
A wide variety of material has been published in newspapers. Besides the aforementioned news, information and opinions, they include weather forecasts; criticism and reviews of the arts including literature, film, television, theater, fine arts, architecture and local services such as restaurants; obituaries, birth notices and graduation announcements; entertainment features such as crosswords, horoscopes, editorial cartoons, gag cartoons and comic strips; advice columns, food and other columns; and radio and television listings. As of 2017, newspapers may also provide information about new movies and TV shows available on streaming video services like Netflix. Newspapers have classified ad sections where people and businesses can buy small advertisements to sell goods or services; as of 2013, the huge increase in internet websites for selling goods, such as Craigslist and eBay has led to significantly less classified ad sales for newspapers.
Most newspapers are businesses, and they pay their expenses with a mixture of subscription revenue, newsstand sales and advertising revenue — other businesses or individuals pay to place advertisements in the pages, including display ads, classified ads and their online equivalents. Some newspapers are government-run or at least government-funded; their reliance on advertising revenue and profitability is less critical to their survival. The editorial independence of a newspaper is thus always subject to the interests of someone, whether owners, advertisers or a government. Some newspapers with high editorial independence, high journalism quality and large circulation are viewed as newspapers of record.
Many newspapers, besides employing journalists on their own payrolls, also subscribe to news agencies or wire services such as the Associated Press, Reuters or Agence France-Presse, which employ journalists to find, assemble and report the news, then sell the content to the various newspapers. This is a way to avoid duplicating the expense of reporting from around the world. Circa 2005, there were approximately 6,580 daily newspaper titles in the world selling 395 million print copies a day; in the U.S., 1,450 titles selling 55 million copies. The late 2000s–early 2010s global recession — combined with the rapid growth of free web-based alternatives — has helped cause a decline in advertising and circulation, as many papers had to retrench operations to stanch the losses. Worldwide annual revenue approached $100 billion in 2005-2007, then plunged during the worldwide financial crisis of 2008-2009. Revenue in 2016 fell to only $53 billion, hurting every major publisher as their efforts to gain online income fell far short of the goal.
The decline in advertising revenues affected both the print and online media as well as all other mediums; print advertising was once lucrative but has greatly declined, and the prices of online advertising are often lower than those of their print precursors. Besides remodeling advertising, the internet has also challenged the business models of the print-only era by crowdsourcing both publishing in general (sharing information with others) and, more specifically, journalism (the work of finding, assembling and reporting the news). Besides, the rise of news aggregators, which bundle linked articles from many online newspapers and other sources, influences the flow of web traffic. Increasing paywalling — restricting access to content with a purchase or a paid subscription — of online newspapers may be counteracting those effects. The oldest newspaper still published is the Ordinari Post Tijdender, which was established in Stockholm in 1645.
Definitions
Newspapers typically meet four criteria:
Public accessibility: Its contents are reasonably accessible to the public, traditionally by the paper being sold or distributed at newsstands, shops and libraries, and, since the 1990s, made available over the internet with online newspaper websites. While online newspapers have increased access to newspapers by people with Internet access, people without internet or computer access — e.g., homeless people, impoverished people and people living in remote or rural regions — may not be able to access the internet, and thus will not be able to read online news. Literacy is also a factor that prevents people who cannot read from being able to benefit from reading newspapers.
Periodicity: They are published at regular intervals, typically daily or weekly. This ensures that newspapers can provide information on newly emerging news stories or events.
Currency: Its information is as up-to-date as its publication schedule allows. The degree of up-to-date-ness of a print newspaper is limited by the need for time to print and distribute the newspaper. In major cities, there may be a morning edition and a later edition of the same day's paper, so that the later edition can incorporate breaking news that has occurred since the morning edition was printed. Online newspapers can be updated as frequently as new information becomes available, even several times per day, which means that online editions can be very up-to-date.
Universality: Newspapers cover a range of topics from political and business news to updates on science and technology, arts, culture and entertainment.
History
Gazettes and bulletins
In Ancient Rome, Acta Diurna, or government announcement bulletins, were produced. They were carved in metal or stone and posted in public places. In China, early government-produced news-sheets, called Dibao, circulated among court officials during the late Han dynasty in the second and third centuries AD. Between 713 and 734, the Kaiyuan Za Bao or "Bulletin of the Court" of the Chinese Tang Dynasty published government news; it was handwritten on silk and read by government officials. In 1582, there was the first reference to privately published news-sheets in Beijing, during the late Ming Dynasty.
In early modern Europe, the increased cross-border interaction created a rising need for information which was met by concise handwritten news-sheets. In 1556, the government of Venice first published the monthly notizie scritte, which cost one gazetta, a small coin. These avvisi were handwritten newsletters and used to convey political, military and economic news quickly and efficiently to Italian cities during 1500-1700 — sharing some characteristics of newspapers though usually not considered true newspapers. However, none of these publications fully met the classical criteria for proper newspapers, as they were typically not intended for the general public and restricted to a certain range of topics.
Newspapers
Europe
The first mechanical, movable type printing that allowed the mass production of printed books was invented by Johann Gutenberg around 1450. In the 50 years after Gutenberg started printing, an estimated 500,000 books were in circulation, printed on about 1,000 presses across the continent. Gutenberg's invention was a simple device, but it launched a revolution marked by repeated advances in technology and, as a result, a popularization of the ideals of liberty and freedom of information exchange.
The emergence of the new media in the 17th century has to be seen in close connection with the spread of the printing press from which the publishing press derives its name. The German-language “Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien,” printed from 1605 onwards by Johann Carolus in Strasbourg, is often recognized as the first newspaper. At the time, Strasbourg was a free imperial city in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation; the first newspaper of modern Germany was the Avisa, published in 1609 in Wolfenbüttel. They distinguished themselves from other printed material by being published on a regular basis. They reported on a variety of current events to a broad public audience. Within a few decades, newspapers could be found in all the major cities of Europe, from Venice to London.
The Dutch “Courante uyt Italien, Duytslandt, &c.” or “Courant from Italy, Germany, etc.” of 1618 was the first to appear in folio- rather than quarto-size. Amsterdam, a center of world trade, quickly became home to newspapers in many languages, often before they were published in their own country. The first English-language newspaper, “Corrant out of Italy, Germany, etc.,” was published in Amsterdam in 1620. A year and a half later, “Corante,” or “weekely newes from Italy, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Bohemia, France and the Low Countreys” was published in England by an "N.B." — generally thought to be either Nathaniel Butter or Nicholas Bourne — and Thomas Archer. The first newspaper in France was published in 1631, “La Gazette,” originally published as “Gazette de France.” The first newspaper in Italy, in accordance with the oldest issue still preserved, was “Di Genova” published in 1639 in Genoa. The first newspaper in Portugal, “A Gazeta da Restauração,” was published in 1641 in Lisbon. The first Spanish newspaper, “Gaceta de Madrid,” was published in 1661.
“Post- och Inrikes Tidningar,” founded as “Ordinari Post Tijdender,” was first published in Sweden in 1645, and is the oldest newspaper still in existence, though it now publishes solely online. “Opregte Haarlemsche Courant” from Haarlem, first published in 1656, is the oldest paper still printed. It was forced to merge with the newspaper “Haarlems Dagblad” in 1942 when Germany occupied the Netherlands. Since then, the “Haarlems Dagblad” has appeared with the subtitle “Oprechte Haerlemse Courant 1656.” “Merkuriusz Polski Ordynaryjny” was published in Kraków, Poland in 1661. The first successful English daily, “The Daily Courant,” was published from 1702 to 1735.
Americas
In Boston in 1690, Benjamin Harris published “Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick.” It is considered the first newspaper in the American colonies, even though only one edition was published before the paper was suppressed by the government. In 1704, the governor allowed “The Boston News-Letter” to be published, and it became the first continuously published newspaper in the colonies. Soon after, weekly papers began being published in New York and Philadelphia. These early newspapers followed the British format and were usually four pages long. They mostly carried news from Britain and content depended on the editor's interests. In 1783, the “Pennsylvania Evening Post” became the first American daily.
In 1752, John Bushell published the “Halifax Gazette,” which claims to be "Canada's first newspaper." However, its official descendant, the “Royal Gazette,” is a government publication for legal notices and proclamations rather than a proper newspaper; In 1764, the “Quebec Gazette” was first printed June 21, 1764 and remains the oldest continuously published newspaper in North America as the “Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph.” It is currently published as an English-language weekly from its offices at 1040 Belvédère, suite 218, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. In 1808, the “Gazeta do Rio de Janeiro” had its first edition printed in devices brought from England, publishing news favorable for the government of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves, since it was produced by the official press service of the Portuguese crown.
In 1821, after the ending of the ban of private newspaper circulation, appears the first non-imperial printed publication, “Diário do Rio de Janeiro,” though there existed already the “Correio Braziliense,” published by Hipólito José da Costa at the same time as the Gazeta, but from London and with forcefully advocated political and critical ideas, aiming to expose the administration's flaws. The first newspaper in Peru was “El Peruano,” established in October 1825 and still published today, but with several name changes.
Asia
During the Tang Dynasty in China (618–906), the Kaiyuan Za Bao published the government news; it was block-printed onto paper. It is sometimes considered one of the earliest newspapers to be published. The first recorded attempt to found a newspaper of the modern type in South Asia was by William Bolts, a Dutchman in the employ of the British East India Co. in September 1768 in Calcutta. However, before he could begin his newspaper, he was deported back to Europe. In 1780 the first newsprint from this region, “Hicky's Bengal Gazette,” was published by an Irishman, James Augustus Hicky. He used it as a means to criticize the British rule through journalism.
The “Jobo,” which is discussed in the “Annals of the Joseon Dynasty,” is published in 1577 as a privately run commercial newspaper. It was printed daily and covered a range of topics, including weather, constellations and current affairs. In 2017, a Korean monk claimed to have discovered an extant copy of the “Jobo.”
Middle East
The history of Middle Eastern newspapers goes back to the 19th century. Many editors were not only journalists but also writers, philosophers and politicians. With unofficial journals, these intellectuals encouraged public discourse on politics in the Ottoman and Persian Empires. Literary works of all genres were serialized and published in the press as well.
The first newspapers in the Ottoman Empire were owned by foreigners living there who wanted to make propaganda about the Western world. The earliest was printed in 1795 by the Palais de France in Pera. Indigenous Middle Eastern journalism started in 1828, when Muhammad Ali, Khedive of Egypt, ordered the local establishment of the gazette “Vekayi-i Misriye” or “Egyptian Affairs.” It was first paper written in Ottoman Turkish and Arabic on opposite pages, and later in Arabic only, under the title "al-Waqa'i'a al-Masriya."
The first non-official Turkish newspaper, “Ceride-i Havadis” or “Register of Events,” was published by an Englishman, William Churchill, in 1840. The first private newspaper to be published by Turkish journalists, “Tercüman-ı Ahvâl” or “Interpreter of Events,” was founded by İbrahim Şinasi and Agah Efendi and issued in 1860. The first newspaper in Iran, “Kaghaz-e Akhbar” or “The Newspaper,” was created for the government by Mirza Saleh Shirazi in 1837. The first journals in the Arabian Peninsula appeared in Hijaz, once it had become independent of Ottoman rule, towards the end of World War I. One of the earliest women to sign her articles in the Arab press was the female medical practitioner Galila Tamarhan, who contributed articles to a medical magazine called "Ya'asub al-Tib" or “Leader in Medicine” in the 1860s.
Industrial Revolution
By the early 19th century, many cities in Europe, as well as North and South America, published newspaper-type publications though not all of them developed in the same way; content was vastly shaped by regional and cultural preferences. Advances in printing technology related to the Industrial Revolution enabled newspapers to become an even more widely circulated means of communication, as new printing technologies made printing less expensive and more efficient. In 1814, “The Times” (London) acquired a printing press capable of making 1,100 impressions per hour. Soon, this press was adapted to print on both sides of a page at once. This innovation made newspapers cheaper and thus available to a larger part of the population.
In 1830, the first inexpensive "penny press" newspaper came to the market: Lynde M. Walter's “Boston Transcript.” Penny press papers cost about one sixth the price of other newspapers and appealed to a wider audience, including less educated and lower-income people. In France, Émile de Girardin started "La Presse" in 1836, introducing cheap, advertising-supported dailies to France. In 1848, August Zang, an Austrian who knew Girardin in Paris, returned to Vienna to introduce the same methods with "Die Presse", which was named for and frankly copied Girardin's publication.
Online
As of 2007, virtually all major printed newspapers produced online editions distributed over the internet which — depending on the country — may be regulated by journalism organizations such as the Press Complaints Commission in the UK. But as some publishers find their print-based models increasingly unsustainable, web-based "newspapers" have also started to appear, such as the “Southport Reporter” in the UK and the “Seattle Post-Intelligencer,” which stopped publishing in print after 149 years in March 2009 and became an online-only paper.
Since 2005 in the UK more than 200 regional newspapers have closed down resulting in a 50% decline in the number of regional journalists. A 2016 study by King's College, London, found that the towns that lost their local newspapers receded from democratic values and experienced the loss of public faith in the authorities.
A new trend in newspaper publishing is the introduction of personalization through on-demand printing technologies or with online news aggregator websites like Google news. Customized newspapers allow the reader to create their individual newspaper through the selection of individual pages from multiple publications. This "Best of" approach allows revival of the print-based model and opens up a new distribution channel to increase coverage beneath the usual boundaries of distribution. Customized newspapers online have been offered by MyYahoo, I-Google, CRAYON, ICurrent.com, Kibboko.com, Paper.li for Twitter and many others. With these online newspapers, the reader can select how much of each section — politics, sports, arts, etc. — they wish to see in their news.
Circulation and readership
According to the Guinness Book of Records, the daily circulation of the Soviet newspaper “Trud” exceeded 21,500,000 in 1990, while the Soviet weekly “Argumenty i Fakty” boasted a circulation of 33,500,000 in 1991. According to United Nations data from 1995 Japan has three daily papers — the “Yomiuri Shimbun,” “Asahi Shimbun” and “Mainichi Shimbun” — with circulations well above 5.5 million. Germany's “Bild,” with a circulation of 3.8 million, was the only other paper in that category. In the United Kingdom, “The Sun” is the top seller, with around 3.24 million copies distributed daily. In the U.S., “The Wall Street Journal” has a daily circulation of approximately 2.02 million, making it the most widely distributed paper in the country.
While paid readership of print newspapers has been steadily declining in the developed OECD nations, it has been rising in the chief developing nations of Brazil, India, Indonesia, China and South Africa, whose paid daily circulation exceeded those of the developed nations for the first time in 2008. In India, “The Times of India” is the largest-circulation English newspaper, with 3.14 million copies daily. According to the 2009 Indian Readership Survey, the Dainik Jagran is the most-read, local-language (Hindi) newspaper, with 55.7 million readers. According to Tom Standage of “The Economist,” India currently has daily newspaper circulation of 110 million copies.
A common measure of a newspaper's health is market penetration, expressed as a percentage of households that receive a copy of the newspaper against the total number of households in the paper's market area. In the 1920s, on a national basis in the U.S., daily newspapers achieved market penetration of 123%, meaning the average U.S. household received 1.23 newspapers. As other media began to compete with newspapers, and as printing became easier and less expensive giving rise to a greater diversity of publications, market penetration began to decline. It wasn't until the early 1970s, however, that market penetration dipped below 100%. By 2000, it was 53% and still falling. Many paid-for newspapers offer a variety of subscription plans. For example, someone might want only a Sunday paper, or perhaps only Sunday and Saturday, or maybe only a workweek subscription, or perhaps a daily subscription. Most newspapers provide some or all of their content on the internet, either at no cost or for a fee. In some cases, free access is available only for a matter of days or weeks, or for a certain number of viewed articles, after which readers must register and provide personal data. In other cases, free archives are provided.
Advertising
A newspaper typically generates 70–80% of its revenue from advertising, and the remainder from sales and subscriptions. The portion of the newspaper that is not advertising is called editorial content, editorial matter or simply editorial, although the last term is also used to refer specifically to those articles in which the newspaper and its guest writers express their opinions. This distinction, however, developed over time; early publishers like Girardin in France and Zang in Austria did not always distinguish paid items from editorial content. The business model of having advertising subsidize the cost of printing and distributing newspapers — and, it is always hoped, the making of a profit — rather than having subscribers cover the full cost was first done, it seems, in 1833 by “The Sun,” a daily paper that was published in New York City. Rather than charging 6 cents per copy — the price of a typical New York daily at the time — it charged 1 cent and depended on advertising to make up the difference.
Newspapers in countries with easy access to the web have been hurt by the decline of many traditional advertisers. Department stores and supermarkets could be relied upon in the past to buy pages of newspaper advertisements, but due to industry consolidation are much less likely to do so now. Additionally, newspapers are seeing traditional advertisers shift to new media platforms. The classified category is shifting to sites including Craigslist, employment websites and auto sites. National advertisers are shifting to many types of digital content including websites, rich media platforms and mobile.
In recent years, the advertorial emerged. Advertorials are most commonly recognized as an opposite-editorial which third parties pay a fee to have included in the paper. Advertorials commonly advertise new products or techniques, such as a new design for golf equipment, a new form of laser surgery or weight-loss drugs. The tone is usually closer to that of a press release than of an objective news story. Such articles are often clearly distinguished from editorial content through either the design and layout of the page or with a label declaring the article as an advertisement. However, there has been growing concern over the blurring of the line between editorial and advertorial content.
Journalism
Since newspapers began as a journal or record of current events, the profession involved in the making of newspapers began to be called journalism. In the yellow journalism era of the 19th century, many newspapers in the United States relied on sensational stories that were meant to anger or excite the public, rather than to inform. The restrained style of reporting that relies on fact-checking and accuracy regained popularity around World War II. Criticism of journalism is varied and sometimes vehement. Credibility is questioned because of anonymous sources; errors in facts, spelling and grammar; real or perceived bias; and scandals involving plagiarism and fabrication.
In the past, newspapers have often been owned by so-called press barons and were used for gaining a political voice. After 1920 most major newspapers became parts of chains run by large media corporations such as Gannett, The McClatchy Company, Hearst Corp., Cox Enterprises, Landmark Media Enterprises LLC, Morris Communications, The Tribune Company, Hollinger International, News Corp., Swift Communications, etc. Newspapers have, in the modern world, played an important role in the exercise of freedom of expression. Whistle-blowers, and those who "leak" stories of corruption in political circles often choose to inform newspapers before other mediums of communication, relying on the perceived willingness of newspaper editors to expose the secrets and lies of those who would rather cover them. However, there have been many circumstances of the political autonomy of newspapers being curtailed. Recent research has examined the effects of a newspaper's closing on the reelection of incumbents, voter turnout and campaign spending.
Opinions of other writers and readers are expressed in the op-ed or "opposite the editorial page" and letters to the editors sections of the paper. Some ways newspapers have tried to improve their credibility are: appointing ombudsmen, developing ethics policies and training, using more stringent corrections policies, communicating their processes and rationale with readers and asking sources to review articles after publication.
Impact of television and the internet
By the late 1990s, the availability of news via 24-hour television channels and the subsequent availability of online journalism posed an ongoing challenge to the business model of most newspapers in developed countries. Paid newspaper circulation has declined, while advertising revenue — the bulk of most newspapers' income —has been shifting from print to social media and news websites, resulting in a general decline. One of the challenges is that many online news websites are free to access. Other online news sites have a paywall and require paid subscription for access. In less developed countries, cheaper printing and distribution, increased literacy, a growing middle class and other factors have compensated for the emergence of electronic media, and newspaper circulation continues to grow.
In April 1995, “The American Reporter” became the first daily internet-based newspaper with its own paid reporters and original content. The future of newspapers in countries with high levels of internet access has been widely debated as the industry has faced down-soaring newsprint prices, slumping ad sales, the loss of much classified advertising and precipitous drops in circulation. Since the late-1990s, the number of newspapers slated for closure, bankruptcy or severe cutbacks has risen — especially in the United States, where the industry has shed a fifth of its journalists since 2001.
The debate has become more urgent lately, as the 2008–2009 recession shaved newspapers' profits and as once-explosive growth in web revenue has leveled off, forestalling what the industry hoped would become an important source of revenue. At issue is whether the newspaper industry faces a cyclical trough or dip, or whether new technology has rendered print newspapers obsolete. As of 2017, an increasing percentage of millennials get their news from social media websites. In the 2010s, many traditional newspapers have begun offering "digital editions," accessible via computers and mobile devices. Online advertising allows news websites to show catered ads, based on a visitor's interests.
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