But he admits that the first modern sheet of news appeared in Venice about the year 1536, that it was manuscript, and was read aloud in certain parts of the city—a journal that proved a great attraction, for it was issued once a month only, and narrated in polished stirring words how the Venetians fared in their war against Turkey. The fee paid for reading this sheet in manuscript was a gazzetta, and the news-sheet gradually got the name of the coin (The Gazette). At least Blount, in his Glossographia published in the seventeenth century, would lead on to this conclusion, giving as the definition of the word gazzetta, “A certain Venetian coin scarce worth one farthing; also a bill of news or short relations of the occurrences of the times, printed most commonly at Venice, and thence dispersed every month in most parts of Christendom.” It was not until 1612 that the gazzettas of the Venetians first appeared as numbered sheets but some years previously the thirst for news—now well-nigh unquenchable in every civilized part of the globe—had spread to England.
All through the Middle Ages the news-letters were restrained both by church and state. The privilege of printing them was withdrawn, and by the year 1500 they virtually had ceased to exist. When they reappeared they were under strict government direction and censorship. The use of movable type and the printing press now facilitated their production, but all authority frowned on them save that authority which made use of them for its own ends.
The newspaper censorship of the next one hundred and fifty years was the severest ever known. Lord Burleigh, who was Prime Minister in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, seems, however, to have understood the value of publicity—understood that a handful of facts is worth a hatful of rumors when it comes to influencing the people. The appearance of the Spanish Armada in 1588, with its one hundred and twenty-nine ships, its twenty thousand soldiers and its ten thousand sailors, bent on the invasion of England, had long been looked for, and on its approach the people were overcome with hysterical excitement. But Burleigh had a news-letter printed from day to day telling the exact facts of the situation and the panic subsided.
Dr. James Melvin Lee, head of the Department of Journalism in New York University, believes that the first newspaper to be printed in the English language was published in Amsterdam, December 2, 1620, and in proof of his belief he produces a facsimile of the sheet. It was half sheet folio and had no title. A descriptive of the battle of Weissenberg was its chief feature.
In a discussion as to the early use of the word “reporter,” Mr. Henry N. Cary, a New York journalist, quotes from a pamphlet of 1613 of which the title is:
The Wonders of this windie winter, by terrible stormes and tempests, to the losse of lives and goods of many thousands of men women and children. The like by Sea and Land hath not been seene nor heard of in this age of the world. London. Printed by G. Eld for John Wright, and are to be sold at his shop neer Christ-church dore.
In this pamphlet is the following:
Ships were perishing to the number of a hundred, and forty seafaring men, besides other passengers, both of men and women which at that time made their watery graves in the deep sea. This first strooke feare into the hearts of people, which hath since seconded with many calamities, which lieth heavily upon the heart of the reporter.
The details of this storm’s destruction are far less interesting to us than is the way they circulated the news in 1613 when there were no newspapers.
For the next one hundred years the news-sheet was the chief source of information to the English people. A few weekly newspapers were started, the first being edited by Nathaniel Butter, in 1622. It was called the Weekly News, but it seems to have had few readers. The people stuck to the news-sheets in which they had confidence. Possibly they did not credit Butter’s yarns. Pendleton quotes two of them as specimens of seventeenth century journalism: