The trials and tribulations which resulted in modern newspapers should not be forgotten.
How silly of me to think that students would be edge-of-the-seat interested in something that happened more than 300 years ago, especially to a news medium which is shrinking before their eyes.Not everyone tuned out (and thanks to those who stayed awake) but it's difficult to make the fight for freedom of the press seem "up there" in excitement with the latest about Brad and Angie or the octuplets mom.
Perhaps later in life students will wonder about the birth of American newspapers and dig more deeply into their origins.
Some of the information we covered:
Difficulty of printing — Presses used in 1692 hadn't changed much from the one Gutenberg used 250 years before. They were made mostly of wood with a lever-operated screw to bring the platen down to the form on the bed of the press. The type was inked by a sheepskin ball filled with wool and attached to a hickory stick; the apprentice boy held two such sticks, transferring the ink from the slab to the form and often getting more ink on himself than the form. It took a full-grown man to pull the lever which resulted in the printing impression being transferred to the paper. 200 impressions per hour was considered a top rate of speed.
Little news; no local news — News gathering consisted of two primary sources: other newspapers and ship's captains. Recognizing the value of other newspapers, editors would give ships captains a stack of their own papers in exchange for single copies from other areas. Ship's captains, on occasion, could provide eyewitness accounts of some news events; typically the aftermath of a natural disaster such as a hurricane or earthquake. For these reasons, for the most part, news printed in newspapers of this era was at least one month old and more typically 6 months old and most of it happening hundreds, if not thousands of miles away. Towns were so small that everyone knew what was going only locally. It was for this reason that a newspaper rarely had local news in their pages.
A third source of news was from people who wrote letters to the editor. These letters were not the kind that we think of today when we hear that phrase. Rather, some people made a hobby of writing letters to editors of faraway newspapers giving the details of a recent major news event in their area. One could say that these were the first reporters although they never got paid for their efforts. ..It is from these people that we owe the original of the term "Foreign Correspondent" and "War Correspondent" used still today in the newspaper trade.
A newspaper editor in colonial times certainly had to be creative to fill the pages of his paper. Take for example the Boston News-Letter of August 10, 1719. Despite having correspondents in New York, Newport, Piscataqua (Portsmouth), Philadelphia, and Salem, the following excerpt appeared:
"There is nothing arrived either here or Philadelphia since my last, and therefore not a word of News. It is now a North East storm of Wind and Snow, blows hard and is very Cold."
Then, came Hearst and Pulitzer with their amazingly ersatz accounts of the sinking of the Maine. The Journal offered a reward to attract attention and The World provided a fascinating illustration of the blast with tiny sailors flying off in all directions. Amazing
So, you see, little tidbits of fascinating facts can cause a greater interest in the subject but can't always find their place in a class lecture-discussion.