From : Bernard Poulet, La fin des journaux et l’avenir de l’information, Gallimard 2009.

A democratic history

The history of information is a long road which I will not detail here, but it is important to understand its underlying logic. Let us remember that it all starts, for the Moderns, at the beginning of the Renaissance. One usually sets this beginning with the Fugger-Zeitungen, the ‘Letters’ of the Fuggers of Ausburg, whose purpose was to orient the commercial and financial strategy of those German bankers who contributed to the election of CharlesV to the head of the Holy Empire. At first these were simple copies of Avvisi, produced by professionnals of diplomatic and political information, and established in Venice, which were sent throughout Europe. These letters then contribute, with the reports from diplomates and spies, to create a system of information reserved to small elites who, thus, opened up one to the other and learnt to know each other throughout Europe.

The circulation of this econo-political news which is known, granting a bit of exageration, as a ‘revolution in communication in the XVIth Century’, permits to create links of trust between merchants. Information on prices, quotes, but also on the fortune of merchants, the projects of kings and the conditions in various countries organizes a dialogue between a few actors who had at their disposal what resembles our confidential letters.

In parallel one could find a popular press of « occasionnels » that recounted extraordinary events, of « canards » for human interest stories, then of « libelles » and « placards », who recounted rumours of a political character, pamphlets or base rumours, which abound with the invention of printing arouns 1440, religious wars and conflicts in Europe. They foreshadow the first periodical publications, which will deserve consideration, at the beginning of the XVIIth Century, as the true ancestors to newspapers.

THE GAZETTE of Théophraste Renaudot(1631), the first true newspaper of France, was in point of fact under the influence of the powers-that-be -, in particular of Cardinal Richelieu. The Revolution saw the flowering of many publications (nearly 400 in 1790), in which political debates take place and which will send more than one to the gallows. Marat, Brissot, Desmoulins, Hébert, for the better known : already, journalists engaged in politics and political actors in journalism.
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