newspaper

Daily or weekly publication in the form of folded sheets containing news and comment. News‐sheets became commercial undertakings after the invention of printing and were introduced in 1609 in Germany and 1616 in the Netherlands. In 1622 the first newspaper appeared in English, the Weekly News, edited by Nicholas Bourne and Thomas Archer. Improved printing (steam printing in 1814, the rotary press in 1846 in the USA and in 1857 in the UK), newsprint (paper made from wood pulp), and a higher literacy rate (those able to read) led to the growth of newspapers. In the 20th century production costs fell with the introduction of new technology. The oldest national newspaper currently printed in the UK is The Observer (1791). The world's most widely‐read newspaper is Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun, with a daily circulation of 10 million.

History
One of the earliest newspapers, the Roman Acta Diurna, said to have been started by the emperor Julius Caesar, contained handwritten announcements of marriages, deaths, and military appointments, and was posted in public places. In England by 1645 there were 14 news weeklies on sale in London, but the first daily was the subsidized pro‐government Daily Courant (1702). Arrests, seizure of papers, and prosecution for libel or breach of privilege were employed by the government against opposition publications, and taxes and restrictions were imposed 1700–1820 in direct relation to the growth of radical opinion. The last of these taxes, stamp duty, was abolished in 1855.

A breakthrough was the Linotype machine that cast whole lines of type, introduced in Britain in 1896; and better train services made national breakfast‐time circulation possible. There were nine evening papers in the London area at the end of the 19th century, and by 1920, 50% of British adults read a daily paper; by 1947, just before the introduction of television, the average adult read 1.2 daily papers and 2.3 Sunday papers; in 1998 about 60% of adults read a daily paper, over 65% read a Sunday paper, and about 90% read a regional or local paper.

The first generation of press barons, Beaverbrook, Northcliffe, and Rothermere in the UK, and Hearst in the USA, used their power to propagate their own political opinions. Newspaper proprietors now may own papers that espouse conflicting viewpoints. For commercial reasons, diminished choice and increased monopoly among the press occurs throughout Europe and the USA. Some countries, such as Sweden, have a system of governmental subsidies to encourage competition.

Newspapers in the first half of the 20th century reinforced the traditional model of British society, being aimed at upper, middle, or working‐class readers. During World War II and until 1958, newsprint rationing prevented market forces from killing off the weaker papers. Polarization into ‘quality’ and ‘tabloid’ newspapers followed. Sales of national newspapers that have closed, such as the News Chronicle, were more than 1 million; they were popular with the public but not with advertisers. Papers with smaller circulation, such as The Times and the Independent, survive because their readership is comparatively well off, so advertising space can be sold at higher rates. The Guardian is owned by a non‐profit trust. Colour supplements have proliferated since their introduction by some Sunday papers in the 1960s. The sales of the mass‐circulation papers are boosted by lotteries and photographs of naked women; their news content is small. Some claim not to be newspapers in the traditional sense; their editorial policy is to entertain rather than inform.

British newspapers cover a political spectrum from the moderate left to the far right. Investigative reporting is restricted by stringent laws of libel and contempt of court and by the Official Secrets Act. The Press Council was established in 1953 to foster ‘integrity and a sense of responsibility to the public’, but had no power to enforce its recommendations. In December 1989 all major national newspapers agreed on a new code of conduct to prevent possible new legislation by instituting a right of reply, a readers' representative, and prompt correction of mistakes, resulting in the Press Complaints Commission a voluntary regulatory body, from 1991.