To hear some folks tell it, if there is anything that digital technologies are killing off faster than the printed book, it is the printed newspaper.
We readily acknowledge the impact of such technologies, but wonder if the pronouncement of death isn't a bit premature. After all, the first thing that a lot of folks did after Barack Obama was elected President was run out and buy a newspaper (or two or three) and store it for posterity. The same thing happened when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, when the two space shuttles blew up, when Richard Nixon resigned the presidency, when JFK, MLK and RFK were assassinated, and so on. There may soon come the day when We the People preserve our most compelling national memories digitally instead of in print, but we are not there yet....
Notwithstanding which, newspapers certainly don't get much respect, as Nicholson Baker pointed out some years ago in his controversial tome Double Fold. Libraries microfilm 'em and toss 'em out. Individual readers either toss 'em or recycle 'em (to cushion shipments, or as lining for bird cages or, shredded, as cat litter). Enterprising funeral directors use shredded newspapers (as well as sawdust) as part of the embalming process (as well as stuffing for the pillows and linings used in coffins). Newspapers no longer seem to attract much serious attention as a collectible.
Storage is a big problem. And the issue is not just one of available space. Virtually all newspapers since the late 19th century have been printed on paper that degrades very rapidly. Acid-free folders can slow the process down a bit, but cannot reverse it. This makes actually handling favorite newspapers from this period a bit too risky for most collectors.
A simple solution to this problem is to collect earlier newspapers. The earliest of all are the proto-newspapers known as newsbooks, the first English-language editions of which appeared at the beginning of the 17th century. Aside from their historic importance, most newsbooks were published in small formats and all were printed on rag paper, making storage a much less dicey proposition than is the case for post-19th century newspapers. Moreover (and somewhat surprisingly), most newsbooks currently available in the marketplace are quite underpriced given their rarity and historical importance. As Mitchell Stephens points out,
The early newspapers...were generally printed in one of two formats: in the style of the Dutch papers, or "corantos," in which the reports were packed densely only two or perhaps four pages; or the style of the early German weeklies, which were pamphlets in which the news was spread over eight to twenty-four pages. The various English publishers, including Butter and Bourne, who sometimes competed but often worked together on series of early English newspapers, first used the Dutch style, but switched to the German style by 1622.
News items in these early newspapers were still printed pretty much as they came into the print shop. News of a battle in the Thirty Years War, which was then raging on the Continent, might appear under the name of Vienna, Frankfort or Prague or any other of the handful of cities in which it might have found its way into a letter or a newspaper that in turn found its way to that print shop. A newspaper might report under one date that a city was under siege and then under another date that it had fallen. It was a system of journalism that was easy on printers but not on readers....
Folks interested in delving more deeply into the history of these earliest newspapers will want to have at hand Dahl's Bibliography of English Corantos and Periodical Newsbooks 1620-1642, as well as the title depicted above left....
Recent Comments