The Invention of News
How the World Came to Know About Itself
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
“A fascinating account of the gathering and dissemination of news from the end of the Middle Ages to the French Revolution” and the rise of the newspaper (Glenn Altschuler, The Huffington Post).
Long before the invention of printing, let alone the daily newspaper, people wanted to stay informed. In the pre-industrial era, news was mostly shared through gossip, sermons, and proclamations. The age of print brought pamphlets, ballads, and the first news-sheets. In this groundbreaking history, renowned historian Andrew Pettegree tracks the evolution of news in ten countries over the course of four centuries, examining the impact of news media on contemporary events and the lives of an ever-more-informed public.
The Invention of News sheds light on who controlled the news and who reported it; the use of news as a tool of political protest and religious reform; issues of privacy and titillation; the persistent need for news to be current and for journalists to be trustworthy; and people’s changing sense of themselves and their communities as they experienced newly opened windows on the world.
“This expansive view of news and how it reached people will be fascinating to readers interested in communication and cultural history.” —Library Journal (starred review)
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Pettegree (The Book in the Renaissance) delineates the history of news delivery in Europe over the course of four centuries in this comprehensive and occasionally dense volume. He tackles this ambitious task both methodically and confidently, charting the ways in which news initially traveled, beginning in 1450 with the years following the invention of printing. Publishers then experimented with pamphlets and broadsheets, new types of books that were "far shorter and cheaper than the theological and scholarly texts that had dominated the market in manuscripts." These helped to make news a part of popular culture. Pettegree attributes the early need for political and economic information to their roles in commerce. Merchants in 14th and 15th-century Italy, for example, had to obtain "vital data on which to base business decisions." They relied on it. "But to act on a report that turned out to be false, or exaggerated, could be more disastrous than not to have acted at all." Trustworthiness was key back then and continues to be a primary concern in journalism. Though Pettegree does not directly address parallels between the emerging news industry centuries ago and the complexities of mass media today, readers will recognize them. The similarities keep his discussion relevant.
