The History of News

During the 17th century, most news was spread through posters, pamphlets and broadsides - a single sheet of paper printed one on side which continued to co-existed with the first newspapers published weekly in the 17th century. Printing was strictly controlled in Britain and the first newspaper printed in Britain was printed by Joris Veseler in Amsterdam around 1620.
The printing press was first invented in 1440 but spread more rapidly after the civil war. During the civil war, the demand for news rose and the first London Gazette was published in 1665. The first national newspaper published was The Daily Universal Register which later became The Times in 1788. The first publications were in the 16th and 17th century after the development of the printing press and most of the quality broadsheet newspapers around today were founded before 1896 such as The Times, Daily Telegraph, the Financial Times and The Observer. For most of the 19th century, newspapers were targeted at the richer and better educated people until late in the 19th century when most of the population could read and write.


The coronation of George VI was one of the first events to be recorded by the BBC in 1936. By 1948, The BBC was producing its own news footage in the form of live sounds at the scenes of accidents and ceremony's such as Elizabeth II's coronation.
The BBC was the first national broadcasting organisation and its first daily news bulletin was read in 1954. It last 20 minutes and was introduced as an 'Illustrated summary of the news...followed by the latest film of events and happenings at home and abroad'.


A restriction of this first news bulletin was that the news reader could not be seen; it consisted of a series of maps and photographs while the presenters voice could be heard, followed by a film in the second half which was not very 'visually impressive'. Shortly after, newsreaders were shown on camera, however another restriction was that there was no autocue so they had to constantly glance down at their script.
Another problem with news was that each story was only focused on for a minute so that audiences did not get bored, however, there was a lack of depth in every news story.



CNN was one of the first news companies to have their own website, launched in August 1995. BBC News was one of the first in Britain, launching their website in 1997.



Timeline:
1620 - First newspaper in Britain printed in Amsterdam
1665 - London Gazette first published
1788 - First national newspaper published, The Times
1954 - BBC's first daily tv bulletin started
1995 - CNN launched the first news website
1997 - BBC launched their news website