The Invention of News: How the World Came to Know About Itself
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This extraordinarily busy life left little time for activities we associate with journalism: the searching out or development of stories, research and crafting of articles. Composition of the weekly issue would continue up to the last minute, but to set a whole issue of a thousand copies printed on a single press demanded that the composition of the text began almost as soon as the last issue was complete. Advertisements or letters held over from the previous week could be set up first, but publishers were aware that it was for news that subscribers bought their paper, and they would only tolerate so many thin issues before cancelling an order. ‘I desire you to erase out my name from among the number of your subscribers,’ wrote a reader of The British Spy in December 1728, ‘unless in your next you give me a just reason for the barrenness of your intelligence.’13 So while it was tempting for proprietors to increase revenue with several columns of advertisements, they could only go so far. Letters and other contributed pieces could not be allowed to crowd out news. As Samuel Johnson correctly remarked, writing for the first issue of The London Chronicle (January 1757), ‘The first demand made by the reader of a journal is that he should find an accurate account of foreign transactions and domestic incidents.’14
For foreign news, which continued to claim first place in every newspaper, publishers were entirely dependent on traditional sources. Few could afford to maintain paid correspondents in any foreign city. Working with limited resources and under severe time constraints, their regular weekly issue was in its way a marvel of creation; a tribute to ingenuity and the dense network of communication that brought news from Lyon to Berlin, and Vienna to Birmingham. But the urgency of deadlines left little time for reflection. Eighteenth-century newspapers are striking for an absence of design innovation. Such advances as we see in the creative use of white space and ruling to separate different items are slow and incremental. Virtually no use is made of headlines, or of illustration, beyond small woodcuts of ships to identify the shipping news. The order of news was determined largely by external factors: that is, the order in which reports were received in the shop. There was no guarantee that the most important items would appear first, or even on the first page.
Newspapers continued, by and large, to steer clear of editorial comment. This was particularly true of papers published in towns where theirs was the only newspaper. Since this was the case in the vast majority of places that boasted a newspaper in eighteenth-century Europe, the contentious press of London was very much the exception. But occasionally a newspaper man rose above the anonymity of the everyday to espouse a cause. Such a man was Andrew Brice of Exeter, editor of Brice's Weekly Journal. In 1726 he was moved to protest against the dire conditions endured by inmates of the West Country prisons. Having fired his opening salvo in a pamphlet Appeal for Justice, Brice was contacted by several prisoners held in Exeter prison, and he used the columns of his paper to publicise their plight. Matters came to a head when a confined merchant made specific accusations against the Keeper of the Exeter prison, George Glanvill. Glanvill sued Brice, and although Brice pleaded his cause in the Weekly Journal, the case went against him. Unable to pay a fine of £103, the editor absconded. The story ends badly, and there is little doubt that the stalwart citizens of Devon would have stood stoutly behind the officers of the law rather than the quixotic defender of the rights of felons. A man ahead of his time, Brice was a rare example of a type that later generations would come to honour: the campaigning journalist.15
The courageous Brice found few imitators in the eighteenth-century press. Most newspaper publishers maintained strict neutrality in local political issues. The exception was, once again, London. Here the rise of political journalism in the late eighteenth century introduced significant change, but not necessarily advantageous to newspaper writers. In England most of the professional writers whose names have come down to us were paid agents of government. They were not employed on the staff of any particular title, but simply supplied copy to papers friendly to the ministry as required, putting the best face on foreign news or casting aspersions on the motives and blackening the names of opposition politicians. They also wrote pamphlets: just like Defoe a half century before, whether a piece of persuasive writing appeared in a serial publication or a free-standing pamphlet was largely immaterial. We know of their work not because they were especially gifted, but because their names appear in Treasury accounts of their payments. For the most part their careers were mean and inglorious, though government newspapers were willing to pay substantial sums to attract the best talent. Even the sententious Samuel Johnson was prepared to accept a pension from the Earl of Bute, favourite and minister of George III. John Wilkes, who served the contrary cause, gleefully referred to him as ‘Pensioner Johnson’. A few years earlier in the Dictionary that made his name (1755) Johnson reflected the cynicism of the time, defining ‘Gazetteer’ as a term ‘lately of the utmost infamy, being usually applied to wretches who were hired to vindicate the court’.16 Clearly, he was not yet conscious of his own lucrative future as a hired pen.
The assumption that a newspaper writer was little more than a paid agent of politicians ensured that ‘journalist’ would be a term of opprobrium well into the nineteenth century. Writing for the newspapers was not considered a respectable occupation. Probably greatly to their advantage, it was thought mildly degrading to fight a duel against a newspaper man. To have taken paid employment for a newspaper also ensured a man would be barred from the legal profession in England, according to a regulation of 1807. As late as 1860 it apparently merited serious discussion whether a man who had been a staff writer on The Times was thereby disqualified from potential nomination as a magistrate.17
Politicians had a complex view of the men of the press. Although absolutely convinced of the need to manage the press, they continued to hold in contempt those who made their living in this way. Even a professional writer like Sir Walter Scott affected to regard journalism as a disreputable calling. ‘Nothing but a thorough-going blackguard ought to attempt the daily press unless it is some quiet, country diurnal’ was a typically forthright view. When attempts were made to entice his friend John Gibson Lockhart to edit a new London paper, Scott advised against it. ‘I should think it rash for any young man, of whatever talent, to sacrifice nominally at least, a considerable portion of his respectability in society in hopes of being an exception to a rule which is at present pretty general.’ Another friend agreed: ‘I should not receive an offer of the editorship of a newspaper as a compliment to my feelings as a barrister and a gentleman, however complimentary it might be as to my talents.’ Even after the passage of the Great Reform Bill (1832), a drama in which the newspapers played so material a part, the same stigma applied. In 1835 The London Review was firm on the point: ‘Those who are regularly connected with the newspaper press are for the most part excluded from what is, in the widest extension of the term, called good society.’
Interestingly, such strictures applied specifically to newspapers; the same consideration did not apply to the new political journals. Here a gentleman could offer his talents and, indeed, make a reputation, the point being that contributors to journals wrote under their own name, whereas newspaper men sheltered behind the cloak of anonymity. It was this, along with their tendency to switch sides with the seasons, that drew down on them such opprobrium:
How can men help shunning contact with men who have the power of inflicting secret injury, and who are known to be in the habit of using that power against the members of society …. How can society respect men who show so little respect for themselves and each other; who, when their gains are threatened, can talk, it is true, in a lofty tone about the high character of the Press of their country for talent and integrity, but who, in general, are occupied in bandying with each other the lowest slang of the pothouses, or imputations of gross dishonesty and dense ignorance?18
It is a singular fact that in contrast to the newspapers, not only the political journals but also pamphlets were h
eld in high esteem. At the end of the eighteenth century, pamphlets were considered an entirely reputable medium for political discussion; a remarkable enhancement of their status since the early days of print. It is a reminder, if one were needed, that too simple a view of news gathering as a series of evolutionary steps, from manuscript to print, and from pamphlets to newspapers, risks distorting reality. Well into the nineteenth century, great reformers and political philosophers addressed a wide public in pamphlets.
Newspaper men did not help their cause by accepting fees to suppress stories about the private lives of the great (this was known as selling ‘paragraphs'). Some low-rent ventures were effectively established for this specific purpose.19 In the view of the great campaigner William Cobbett, the failure of his short-lived newspaper was explained by his refusal to stoop to such practices:
It was not, I found, an affair of talent but of trick. I could not sell paragraphs. I could not throw out hints against a man's or woman's reputation in order to bring the party to pay me for silence. I could do none of those mean and infamous things by which the daily press, for the far greater part, was supported, and which enabled the proprietors to ride in chariots, while their underlings were actually vending lies by the line and inch.20
Letters Lately Arrived
Here we are confronted with one of the great paradoxes of the eighteenth-century news world: that the increased involvement of professional news men in news production was seen as diminishing, rather than enhancing, the credibility of news. This is why so many newspapers published official communications verbatim: the lack of editorial intervention was seen as a guarantee of their integrity. Equally in demand were reports from participants: a despatch penned by a general at the front, or an eyewitness account of some great event or disaster.21
This use of private or semi-public letters as a cornerstone of news reporting drew on a long-standing tradition where the authority of a report was closely connected to the standing of the news bearer. We have seen this in the instructions despatched with trusted couriers along the post roads of the Roman Empire, and in the exchange of correspondence in medieval Europe. The tradition persisted in the assumption that news exchanged in private correspondence between persons of rank could be believed because the credit – the honour – of the writer lay behind the intelligence conveyed. This assumption of reliability was obviously compromised when news was published, in pamphlet form for profit, by men of lower rank.22
Publishers attempted to counter this insinuation by appropriating for the commercial news market the forms and conventions of the private letter. Thousands of news pamphlets in the sixteenth century describe themselves as ‘a letter’ (French lettre, German Brief, Italian lettera), a ‘true despatch’ and so on. Sometimes they do indeed give the text of such a despatch, often verbatim and in full, complete with the opening salutation and closing greeting.
This epistolary form could also be abused. In the inflamed international confessional conflicts of the later sixteenth century nothing was more telling than the publication of intercepted letters revealing the perfidious plans of one's devious opponents. The inevitable response of the embarrassed writer was to complain that the published letters were a forgery or invention. Sometimes they were, though the authenticity of tone of such correspondence was often damning. In the seventeenth century the letter form was also a predictable vehicle for political satire, never more so than during the French Fronde. In this period of wild protest against the rule of Cardinal Mazarin, almost five hundred pamphlets described themselves as ‘letters’: the fact that some were entirely in verse rather undermined the claim.23 But the publication of genuine intercepted correspondence continued to be practised right through to the end of the eighteenth century, and often with telling effect. In the American War of Independence the British army routinely published such of General Washington's despatches as fell into their hands, and carefully monitored the effect this had on enemy morale.24
The letter enjoyed an uncommon status because it was, until the end of the sixteenth century, the attribute of men of power and rank. To be able to write a letter, observing the correct forms, marked one out as a person of education. Ensuring that it reached its destination was only possible if the writer had access to the postal network, or could employ a courier. All of these aspects of correspondence were expensive, and therefore likely to be the prerogative of members of the social elite. These were, aside from scholars, generally individuals who by virtue of their social status were politically active and informed. Private correspondence among these higher ranks of society was a natural extension of their public life. Alongside family news they could be expected to discuss business dealings and political events likely to impact on their prospects and standing. A good example is the correspondence of Viscount Scudamore, a Justice of the Peace and Member of Parliament who also served several years as Charles I's ambassador to Paris.25 Scudamore lived through turbulent times, and while resident at his family seat in Herefordshire felt the need to keep in touch with events. He also had the means to do so. Four of his regular correspondents were professional news men, who charged up to £20 per annum for their weekly newsletters (a reasonable living wage for a country vicar). Scudamore also heard regularly from several government officials, the Tuscan ambassador in London and a lifelong friend, Sir Henry Herbert. Scudamore's brothers provided military news, and other relatives sent printed pamphlets. Many of these letters were personal but not wholly private. They were expected to be shared with further family members, neighbours and other leaders of local society. In this way local hierarchies built a network of news-sharing equivalent to that operated for some centuries by international merchants.
Such news networks however, remained, for some centuries the exclusive preserve of the social elite. It was only in the eighteenth century that the capacity for correspondence was extended to a wider range of citizens. The potential implications for Europe's news networks were very significant.
The Age of Correspondence
George Washington was admirably sanguine about the occasional publication of his captured letters. He wrote so many – around twelve thousand are still extant – that some were bound to go astray. By this point the exchange of letters, with friends, family and business partners, had become routine, and not just for the established leaders of society who, like Washington, had access to privileged circuits of communication. In the eighteenth century the practice of letter-writing moved beyond the elites; it became a familiar social practice for many millions of people in Europe and North America.
The eighteenth century was the age of correspondence. Advances in education, postal networks and the falling costs of writing materials fuelled the boom in letter-writing. And this was, for the first time, a communications revolution that affected men and women in almost equal measure. The eighteenth century went a long way to closing the yawning educational gap between the sexes. In Amsterdam by 1780 betrothal agreements were personally signed by 85 per cent of men and 64 per cent of women, compared to 57 per cent of men in 1630 and 30 per cent of women. In France only 29 per cent of men and 14 per cent of women signed in 1690; one hundred years later the percentages were 48 and 27 per cent. These figures were depressed by the leavening effect of France's large rural hinterland (literacy was much higher in the cities and especially so in Paris), but even in rural areas the advance was striking. In the rural territory governed by the city of Turin in northern Italy the percentage of male readers rose from 21 to 65 per cent in eighty years, and female readers from 6 to 30 per cent. In the city itself 83 per cent of husbands and 63 per cent of wives could sign their marriage contracts in 1790.26
Women were also well represented among the social classes propelled by the expanding world economy into the unfamiliar possession of a modicum of surplus income. Younger, unmarried women, unencumbered by family responsibilities, embraced with particular eagerness the opportunities to engage in regular communication with family friends and potential suitors.<
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The new craze for letter-writing was supported by a powerful infrastructure. The expansion of school education (and particularly schooling for girls) was particularly important. Thereafter induction in the particular craft and conventions of correspondence was encouraged by a host of epistolary handbooks. This was a venerable genre, and popular in polite society from the time Erasmus had placed correspondence at the heart of humanist self-fashioning. His two primers of letter-writing were instant best-sellers.27 Erasmus provided one model and Cicero another; but as letter-writing moved beyond the elite, so the letter-writing manuals adapted their style and contents to less confident purchasers. This was a gradual process; the medieval dictamen convention, so stifling to individuality in the letter-writing culture of the Middle Ages, proved very powerful. George Snell's Right Teaching of 1649 advocated a letter-writing structure clearly modelled on these medieval prescriptions, as did several of the French Secrétaires.28 In January and February 1789, on the very eve of the French Revolution, an inventory was compiled of the goods of Estienne Garnier, a deceased printer and bookseller from the northern French city of Troyes. Among his very considerable stock were three letter-writing manuals: the Secrétaire à la mode, the Nouveau Secrétaire Français and Secrétaire des dames.29 They contained a selection of model letters for a variety of social situations. The Secrétaire à la mode was conveniently divided into two categories, business letters (letters of notification, complaint or making excuses) and complimentary letters (congratulations, thanks, consolation or letters announcing a visit).