Brief History and Timeline of Journalism

If we talk about gathering and transmitting news in this way, we are all reporters. If we go back to our older days, people verbally transmitted news, and as we can see with the progress in technology, we have new sources through which we get news. Previously, people who traveled brought news from outside their land and delivered it to their land, and it spread like wildfire in different towns.

In journalism, the main and primary source of news would be the printing press, i.e., newspapers, and in the later 20th and 21st centuries, people got their news from sources like radio and television. Print media has always played an important role in giving the news to the mass population. In the past, the literacy rate was low, so there were fewer people to read newspapers, but with the gradual increase in literacy, newspapers gained popularity. When news gathering got importance, we saw a rise in news agencies and publications. Later, we saw the birth of the telegraph, radio, and television as elements of journalism.

Print media is a new innovation. Then we are wrong we can date back in 59 B.C Rome circa, at that time news was noted down in Acta Diurna. Later in China, while Tang dynasty somewhere in 618- 907 A.D prepared a report named Bao which was given to the officials to keep them updated with the events. To witness first-ever regular news publication we must go back in 1609 in Germany. As time goes by the value of newsgathering increase. News agencies came to play and started to hire people who would gather news and write on them and later evolved as a profession.

Journalism as a profession no one ever imagined it as a profession. In earlier days we just saw it as a simple process of gathering and disseminating the ongoing topics. But later it gained popularity when people started to use it to promote their propaganda. We talk about journalism in America journalist started their work in an organized way and the first ever foundation of journalism took birth in England, 1883.

The timeline history of journalism:

1. Somewhere in 1556, the government of Venice introduced the monthly written notices known as Notiziescritte in which everything regarding politics, military activities, and economic news was conveyed in Europe.
2. The Gazette de France was in play in 1632 in France as a first-ever newspaper of France. The physician of the king Theophrastus Renaudot introduced it. It was used to promote the propaganda of the monarch. All these newspaper were checked before getting published.
3. James Augustus Hickey started India’s first newspaper as an editor which was named as Hickey’s Bengal Gazette in 1780 and later in 1826 on May 30th started a Hindi newspaper UdantMartand, in Calcutta.
4. Somewhere in 1920’s radio and television evolved as sources of news. Before the Second World War many experimental televisions were studied and put into action in the 1940s. Radio reached its peak popularity in the 1930s and 1940s, but later television also gained popularity but not completely eliminating radio.
5. Let us talk about the latest phenomenon, i.e. internet journalism. People can now access news anywhere and at any time thanks to the rapid growth of internet usage. Many newspapers faced difficulties and bankruptcy due to the internet journalism. Her audience doesn’t require any paid subscription. Something like mobile journalism is also taking its place and evolving as the easiest method to acquire news through social media and other websites of different news channels by using the internet as the main source.

Journalism is an evolving field. It is getting bigger and stronger as a professional field. It has changed over the past few decades and is still developing day by day with growing technology. From carving on walls to writing on scribes to writing on paper to typing on the computer to typing on the mobile phone, it shows us how it is changing each day. Therefore, there are many more innovations left to unfold in this world in the field of journalism.