News reporting goes back thousands of years, perhaps to the first humans or even the first animals that could communicate to one another about such things as approaching predators.  The potential for "mass media," however, was not realized until the middle of the 15th century, when German inventor Johannes Gutenberg's development of movable type gave people a relatively fast, inexpensive means of producing hundreds or thousands of fliers, books, and eventually newspapers.  Gutenberg, William Caxton, and the American printers who followed them made or purchased small metal blocks, each with an individual letter, punctuation mark, or other symbol on it.  They then arranged these blocks in trays to spell words.  By applying ink to the letters and then pressing large sheets of paper down on them, they could print pages, which they then cut to create fliers or assembled into books or other publications.  The tool that these printers used is called a printing press.  Even then, it appears that newspapers--if defined as regular publications devoted to current events and made available to the general public--did not begin to appear in earnest in Europe until the early 17th century.

By modern standards, colonial newspapers were small publications featuring out-of-date, often toothless coverage of a small range of subjects. Most colonial papers had four pages, measuring about 10 by 15 inches. They did not have headlines and contained no illustrations, except for the printer’s trademark (known as a colophon) and a few woodcuts that went along with advertisements. The paper used for colonial newspapers was made in England from rags. Until 1769 colonial papers were printed on printing presses imported from England. Each page was printed as follows. First, the type was set by hand and locked in a form. The bed of the press was rolled out, and the type was placed on it. Ink was applied to the type. The paper was moistened in a trough and placed over the type. Then the bed was rolled back under the press, and the platen or pressure plate was pressed against the type from above. When the platen was released, the bed was rolled out again, and the paper was removed and hung on a wire to dry. When it was dry, it was run through the press again, this time with the type for the reverse side of the page. After 1769 there were paper mills in the new United States, but they could not meet the demand for paper. Paper was made from linen and other cloth. George Washington, the American commander in chief, made a special plea to women to save cloth to be made into paper.

                                                                                                                                                         Pennsylvania Gazette: 1750
Perhaps the most noteworthy weakness in these early newspapers, especially those printed in the first decade or two of the century, was a lack of controversial coverage.  If, as has been famously declared, a newspaper's job is to "raise hell," then early publications such as Campell's Boston News-Letter barely raised an eyebrow.  The main reason was control by government authorities, who feared the power of even a fledgling press.  The First Amendment, which promised freedom of the press, was not to come until 1791.  In the meantime, journalists had to cope with a tradition of British censorship. Things changed somewhat when James Franklin, brother of Benjamin, established the New England Courant in 1721. Its style was bold and its literary quality high.  Franklin even challenged religious and political authorities, setting a precedent for journalists to come.  The press was still far from free, however, as Franklin's own case illustrates: some two years after he began his feisty newspaper, authorities banned him from publishing it.

This Censorship continued until 1791 when the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States was passed. The First Amendment of the Constitution protects the freedom to share and spread ideas not only in newspapers, books, magazines but also on the radio and television. It protects information from being censored or restricted by the government before it is published or broadcast. There are some limits, though. Written or published statements that damage a person’s reputation or endanger the nation’s safety are not protected by freedom of the press.

Passing the First Amendment gave new life to newspapers and business began to boom for publishers. Now that people could read interesting articles and get information about things that mattered to them the demand for newspaper grew significantly. In addition to supplying noteworthy news, improvements were made to the printing press so that parts moved automatically and both sides of the paper could be printed at the same time. Steam began to be used to power presses and made printing much faster. Another printing milestone occurred when pictures were added. A process known as photoengraving was developed in the 1860s and 1870s. The dark and light parts of a photograph were separated, and points for each were laid out on a plate. Points for dark areas were placed closed together, and points for light areas were spaced out. The ink used in printing transferred each point to paper. The engraved reproduction of the photograph was called a halftone.

[Excerpted from: M. Emery, E. Emery, with N. L. Roberts, The Press and America: An Interpretive History of the Mass Media, 8th ed. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1996)]