История письма и чтения. Асафова Г.К. - 121 стр.

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establishing the New York Associated Press agency. Between 1870 and 1934, a

series of agency treaties divided the world into exclusive territories for each major

agency, but thereafter freedom of international operation was reinstated. The press

agencies ensured a continuous supply of international “spot news”–i.e., the bare

facts about events as they occur–and raised standards of objective news reporting.

For their feature pages, American newspaper editors came to rely on the feature

syndicates, which supplied ready-to-use material from medical columns and book

reviews to astrological forecasts and crossword puzzles.

Growth of the newspaper business in the English-speaking world

Advances in newspaper production matched a quickening in the pace of life

for the millions of people who read newspapers in the late 19th century. The

railways, which transported newspapers rapidly from town to town, contributed to

the breakdown of rural isolation, while the steamship and the telegraph brought

nations closer together. Mass-produced newspapers with a broad appeal became

available for the newly literate or semiliterate industrial worker. Circulations of

some popular papers were climbing toward 1,000,000 by the end of the century,

and newspaper publishing and advertising had become big business.

CONTROLS OVER PRINTING

The church at first had every reason to welcome printing. Bibles (preferably

in Latin), missals, breviaries, and general ecclesiastical literature poured from the

early presses of Europe; and the first best-seller in print was a devotional work by

Thomas à Kempis, De imitatione Christi (Imitation of Christ), which went through

99 editions between 1471 and 1500. Such sales were matched, however, between

1500 and 1520 by the works of the humanist Erasmus, and, after 1517, by those of

the “heretic” Martin Luther. The church had always exercised censorship over

written matter, especially through the universities in the late Middle Ages. As the

works of the reformers swelled in volume and tone, this censorship became