The first newspapers were nothing like our papers today. They were more like fetters containing news. In the fifth century B.C., there were men in Rome who wrote these newsletters and sent them to people who lived far away from the capital.

Something more like our papers was established by Lucius Caesar in 60 B.C. He had the government publish a daily bulletin for posting in the Forum. Devoted chiefly to government announcements it was called Acura Diurna, which meant “Daily Happenings.”

One of the chief needs for getting news quickly in early days was for business purposes. Businessmen had to know what important things had happened. So one of the first newspapers, or newsletters, was started in the sixteenth century by the Fuggers, a famous German family of international bankers. They actually established a system for gathering the news so that it would be reliable.

In Venice, at about the same time, people paid a fee of one gazefa to read notices that were issued by the government every day. These were called Notizie Scritte (“Written News”.)

The first regular newspaper established in London was the intelligencer in 1663. Most early papers that were established could be published only once a week, because both communication and production were slow.

The first American newspaper, Public Occurrences, was started in Boston in 1690, but the governor of the colony quickly stopped it. Benjamin Franklin conducted the Pennsylvania Gazette from 1729 to 1765. The people were so eager to have newspapers that by the time of the American Revolution there were 37 of them being published in the Colonies!

One of the most influential newspapers ever published is the London Times, which began to be published in 1785 as the Daily Universal Register.