История письма и чтения. Асафова Г.К. - 116 стр.

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sympathies ran their own often scurrilous newspapers or simply bribed journalists

with occasional handouts and annual stipends, but later in the century there

emerged a more sophisticated reader who demanded, and received, an independent

viewpoint. Eminent newspapers of the time included the Morning Post (1772), The

Times (from 1788, but started as the Daily Universal Register in 1785), and The

Observer (1791), each of which is still published (although the Morning Post was

later merged with the Daily Telegraph). Censorship continued in the guise of

frequent libel prosecutions, and as late as 1810 the radical political essayist

William Cobbett was imprisoned and fined for denouncing flogging in the army,

but the principle of a free press, at least in peacetime conditions, had been firmly

established.

The need of news

“A community needs news,” said the British author Dame Rebecca West,

“for the same reason that a man needs eyes. It has to see where it is going.” For

William Randolph Hearst, one of America's most important newspaper publishers,

news was “what someone wants to stop you printing: all the rest is ads.” Both

idealistic and mercenary motives have contributed to the development of modern

newspapers, which continue to attract millions of regular readers throughout the

world despite stern competition from radio and television. Modern electronics,

which has put a television set in almost every home in the Western world, has also

revolutionized the newspaper publishing process, allowing many more newspapers

tobe born. An increasing number of these new newspapers are given away free,

their production costs being borne entirely by the revenue from advertisements,

which are of much greater importance than they were in Hearst's day.

Newspapers can be published daily or weekly, in the morning or in the

afternoon; they may be published for the few hundred inhabitants of a small town,

for a whole country, or even for an international market. A newspaper differs from

other types of publication by its immediacy, characteristic headlines, and coverage

of a miscellany of topical issues and events. According to the Royal Commission