Independent television 4.92

A newspaper is a periodical publication containing news, other informative articles (listed below), and usually advertising. A newspaper is usually printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. The news organizations that publish newspapers are themselves often metonymically called newspapers. Most newspapers now publish online as well as in print. The online versions are called online newspapers or news sites.

Newspapers are typically published daily or weekly. News magazines are also weekly, but they have a magazine format.

General-interest newspapers typically publish news articles and feature articles on national and international news as well as local news. The news includes political events and personalities, business and finance, crime, severe weather, and natural disasters; health and medicine, science, and technology; sports; and entertainment, society, food and cooking, clothing and home fashion, and the arts. Typically the paper is divided into sections for each of those major groupings (labeled A, B, C, and so on, with pagination prefixes yielding page numbers A1-A20, B1-B20, C1-C20, and so on). Most traditional papers also feature an editorial page containing editorials written by an editor, op-eds written by guest writers, and columns that express the personal opinions of columnists, usually offering analysis and synthesis that attempts to translate the raw data of the news into information telling the reader "what it all means" and persuading them to concur.

A wide variety of material has been published in newspapers. Besides the aforementioned news and opinions, they include weather forecasts; criticism and reviews of the arts (including literature, film, television, theater, fine arts, and architecture) and of local services such as restaurants; obituaries; entertainment features such as crosswords, horoscopes, editorial cartoons, gag cartoons, and comic strips; advice, food, and other columns; and radio and television listings (program schedules).

Most newspapers are businesses, and they pay their expenses (such as journalists' wages, printing costs, and distribution costs) with a mixture of subscription revenue, newsstand sales, and advertising revenue (other businesses or individuals pay to place advertisements in the pages, including display ads, classified ads, and their online equivalents). Some newspapers are government-run or at least government-funded; their reliance on advertising revenue and on profitability is less critical to their survival. The editorial independence of a newspaper is thus always subject to the interests of someone, whether owners, advertisers, or a government. Some newspapers with high editorial independence, high journalism quality, and large circulation are viewed as newspapers of record.

Many newspapers, besides employing journalists on their own payrolls, also subscribe to news agencies (wire services) (such as the Associated Press, Reuters, or Agence France-Presse), which employ journalists to find, assemble, and report the news, then sell the content to the various newspapers. This is a way to avoid duplicating the expense of reporting.

Circa 2005, there were approximately 6,580 daily newspaper titles in the world selling 395 million print copies a day (in the U.S., 1,450 titles selling 55 million copies).[1] The late 2000s–early 2010s global recession, combined with the rapid growth of free web-based alternatives, has helped cause a decline in advertising and circulation, as many papers had to retrench operations to increase profitability.[2] The decline in advertising revenues affected both the print and online media as well as all other mediums; print advertising was once lucrative but has greatly declined, and the prices of online advertising are often lower than those of their print precursors. Besides remodeling advertising, the internet (especially the web) has also challenged the business models of the print-only era by democratizing and crowdsourcing both publishing in general (sharing information with others) and, more specifically, journalism (the work of finding, assembling, and reporting the news). In addition, the rise of news aggregators, which bundle linked articles from many online newspapers and other sources, influences the flow of web traffic. However, as more and more online newspapers go to pay walls, these sources should begin to dwindle.

Contents

1 Definition
2 History
2.1 Gazettes and bulletins
2.2 Newspapers
2.2.1 Europe
2.2.2 Americas
2.2.3 Asia
2.2.4 Middle East
2.3 Industrial Revolution
3 Categories
3.1 Frequency
3.1.1 Daily
3.1.2 Weekly and other
3.2 Geographical scope and distribution
3.2.1 Local or regional
3.2.2 National
3.3 Subject matter
3.4 Technology
3.4.1 Print
3.4.2 Online
3.4.3 Custom
4 Organization and personnel
5 Zoned and other editions
6 Format
7 Circulation and readership
8 Advertising
9 Journalism
10 Impact of television and Internet
11 See also
12 Footnotes
13 Further reading
14 External links
14.1 Newspaper archives

Definition

A newspaper typically meets four criteria:[3][4]

Publicity: Its contents are reasonably accessible to the public.
Periodicity: It is published at regular intervals.
Currency: Its information is as up to date as its publication schedule allows.
Universality: It covers a range of topics.

History
Gazettes and bulletins

In Ancient Rome, Acta Diurna, or government announcement bulletins, were produced. They were carved in metal or stone and posted in public places.

In China, early government-produced news sheets, called Dibao, circulated among court officials during the late Han dynasty (second and third centuries AD). Between 713 and 734, the Kaiyuan Za Bao ("Bulletin of the Court") of the Chinese Tang Dynasty published government news; it was handwritten on silk and read by government officials. In 1582, there was the first reference to privately published newssheets in Beijing, during the late Ming Dynasty.[5]

In Early modern Europe the increased cross-border interaction created a rising need for information which was met by concise handwritten newssheets, called avvisi. In 1556, the government of Venice first published the monthly Notizie scritte, which cost one gazetta, a small coin.[6] These avvisi were handwritten newsletters and used to convey political, military, and economic news quickly and efficiently to Italian cities (1500–1700)—sharing some characteristics of newspapers though usually not considered true newspapers.[7]

However, none of these publications fully met the classical criteria for proper newspapers, as they were typically not intended for the general public and restricted to a certain range of topics.
Newspapers
Main article: History of newspapers and magazines
See also: List of the earliest newspapers
Europe
See also: History of British newspapers
Title page of Carolus' Relation from 1609, the earliest newspaper

The emergence of the new media in the 17th century has to be seen in close connection with the spread of the printing press from which the publishing press derives its name.[8]

The German-language Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien, printed from 1605 onwards by Johann Carolus in Strasbourg, is often recognized as the first newspaper.[9][10] At the time, Strasbourg was a free imperial city in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation; the first newspaper of modern Germany was the Avisa, published in 1609 in Wolfenbüttel.

Other early papers include:

The Dutch Courante uyt Italien, Duytslandt, &c. ('Courant from Italy, Germany, etc.') of 1618 was the first to appear in folio- rather than quarto-size. Amsterdam, a center of world trade, quickly became home to newspapers in many languages, often before they were published in their own country.[11]

The first English-language newspaper, Corrant out of Italy, Germany, etc., was published in Amsterdam in 1620. A year and a half later, Corante, or weekely newes from Italy, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Bohemia, France and the Low Countreys. was published in England by an "N.B." (generally thought to be either Nathaniel Butter or Nicholas Bourne) and Thomas Archer.[12]

The first newspaper in France was published in 1631, La Gazette (originally published as Gazette de France).[6]

The first newspaper in Portugal, A Gazeta da Restauração, was published in 1641 in Lisbon.[13] The first Spanish newspaper, Gaceta de Madrid, was published in 1661.

Post- och Inrikes Tidningar (founded as Ordinari Post Tijdender) was first published in Sweden in 1645, and is the oldest newspaper still in existence, though it now publishes solely online.[14]

Opregte Haarlemsche Courant from Haarlem, first published in 1656, is the oldest paper still printed. It was forced to merge with the newspaper Haarlems Dagblad in 1942 when Germany occupied the Netherlands. Since then the Haarlems Dagblad has appeared with the subtitle Oprechte Haerlemse Courant 1656.

Merkuriusz Polski Ordynaryjny was published in Kraków, Poland in 1661.

The first successful English daily, The Daily Courant, was published from 1702 to 1735.[11][15]
Americas
See also: History of American newspapers
Diario de Pernambuco, founded in November 1825 is the second oldest newspaper in South America, after El Peruano, founded in October of that same year.

In Boston in 1690, Benjamin Harris published Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick. This is considered the first newspaper in the American colonies even though only one edition was published before the paper was suppressed by the government. In 1704, the governor allowed The Boston News-Letter to be published and it became the first continuously published newspaper in the colonies. Soon aft