Allow me to take you back in time to a period where news barely existed beyond your own village, and a time where it felt hard to be unified with your Nation because talking about Newcastle was about as alien as discussing events in Spain. This was what England was like before the wider spread of news - if village papers existed the biggest stories going would involve two foxes and twelve chickens, hardly the media thrill-ride that exists today. Plus, with no phones to hack you couldn't even listen to the farmer's sexy voicemails.
Before the Gutenberg Printing Press was invented in 1487 there were a few false-starts to the spread of news; the Roman Empire had a news sheet in the form of the Acta Diurna and similar ideas were employed in 8th Century China, with news sheets being the main focus again. Mass production of these was incredibly hard as they were handwritten, and even if thousands could be produced to satisfy the dedicated readers, by the time they were all written up it was three weeks later. Even then, old news was bad news.
After a period of roughly 800 years the printing press changed everything; from Germany to England, from Belgium to Portugal, Europe was being swept by a new form of news, a form that could be mass produced and delivered nationwide. In fact, you could argue that easier access to news helped spearhead the improval of roads and transportation methods, allowing your rural village in Cornwall to be connected to large cities such as Manchester and London, uniting the Nation as a collective noun and allowing people to claim that they are from England as opposed to just Wessex or Hertfordshire. The spread of news was revolutionary on a number of levels.
However, just because the spread of news was now free, it hardly meant that the press in itself was free. In the 15th Century Henry VII enacted state controls to "curb lewd and naughty matters" from coming out in the press. If the MP's of the time had spent their expenses on dirty prostitutes the news would not have spread due to censorship. Bad news is awful news in this case as you couldn't say anything about it in case it had a devastating effect on the King and his power.
Another way the State controlled the media was through taxation, or, more to the point, Stamp Duty. For every paper that was sold a certain ammount had to be paid to paid to the government. This figure kept increasing over a number of years, eventually leading the newspapers to out-price a great deal of consumers. This coincided with levels of social unrest around the time of the Civil War, so it could be seen as a way of controlling those who could read the news, the social elite who had the government's interests in both their minds and their pockets.
Inevitably, the rise of the printing press saw the spread of new ideas. Religions could now use the new technology to spread the words of their various gods and beliefs to a whole new audience. This is evident in the rise of the Jedi Council. Along with this, the 18th and 19th Centuries saw a new power emerge: the radical press. Unhappy with the government for taxing newspapers, members of the public took matters into their own hands and started to print leaflets and booklets broadcasting anti-government views with low production and distribution costs, allowing the working classes to look through the windows of government and witness their social injustice. Understandably, these developments did not sit well with the government who started to clamp down hard on the radicals spreading propaganda.
Over the coming century the decline of the radical press was inevitable; liberal reforms were passed through government that eventually lead to the abolishment of stamp duty in 1856, with printing tax abolished in 1853. Technological innovations such as steam presses, telegraphy and quality paper paved the way for industrial and commercial groups to create mass markets, tailoring their own publications for specific target audiences across the country. Of course, the better technology allowed more publications to enter the market and on a smaller time-frame. Weekly publications and daily publications were becoming common. The ramifications of this are still felt today - the main newspapers with the largest audiences started to attract advertising revenue which would help towards the production costs, effectively sidelining the radicals who had to dilute their political agendas and turn to crime and smaller issues in order to attract readers. This is an early form of tabloidisation.
In 1896 Lord Northcliffe became the first of many press barons. He held proprietorial power over the Daily Mail and was able to control everything from the stories that went into the paper and it's extreme political agenda. During the 1930's the paper famously handed it's support to the Nazi party in Germany, running the headline 'Give a cheer to the black shirts.' Over the coming years many others would use their publications to spread their own views on developments within the public interest.
Rupert Murdoch is the latest and most significant of these, his own rise to power is interesting in itself but what I'm concerned with is his influence on the world of newspapers. In 1987 he relocated his newspapers to Wapping in London, putting many people out of work who could not make the commute. By producing papers in Wapping he was significantly cutting production costs and was thus increasing his profit margins. The world of news has developed into one that revolves around money. More recently the competition for stories lead journalists at Murdoch's News of the World to hack the phones of people in dire situations and celebrities in an attempt to get some gossip. The ongoing Leveson Enquiry into Media Ethics has seen this notable newspaper close and put many others under scrutiny.
So what next for the newspaper industry? Nobody knows. So far we have the emergence of tablet computers and phones that allow you to download copies straight to your device, usually with a monthly subscription fee to make up for money lost on the physical copy. But the more mobile and technological aware we become the smaller we'll want our news to be. Social networking sites such as Twitter allow people already on the scene of a breaking news story to give their own account of events.
If this is the way journalism's going then it's important to be one step ahead of the game. Tweet me, message me, follow me. @GarraTweets
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