Early Journalism

So in this lecture we began to see and to make the more apparent links in the timeline of journalism! I'm not sure about others but it has often been difficult to make them, so having a big timeline up and explained by Chris certainly helped!

So humans are 35,000 years old and of course it is impossible to theorise what happened between then and first recorded, well, anything!- which was 6,000 years before Christ.

First writing was the Chinese pictographic writing- every character had a word- eventually led to to Chinese typewriters, obviously some time later though, which used simplified pictures to create phrases.
Following this was cuneiform writing, again a pictorial writing which was fairly abstract; lines and a few symbols to create complicated ideas. Created with a 'cune' - a type of knife used to cut clay and stone to write on tablets with- able to utilised by all of the eastern areas of Europe.

Then of course comes the Lindesfame Gospel; an old style Latin/Anglo Saxon typography. Very few books of it survive but Christianity in the western world saved this ancient type of writing after writing it all out into the faster developing forms of type and print.

It did astound me how progress happened over such a long time frame with no exact ideas of dates and brings to mind the importance, as a journalist, of dating and timing events, so that arguments and ideas can be created and relayed with surety- an imperative of journalistic accuracy.
1920's sees Caxton's printing press which is outstripped by the 20 years later Gutenberg's printing press which become jovially known as 'Bible making machines' - the Bible of course being the first book to go in to mass production! Printing press has massive benefits to the imparting of knowledge between generations- all that was lost before will be lost no more! Einstein says it gives man a kind of immortality as they now had the ability to save the ideas of the deceased.
Then comes the Renaissance and the selling of books for money and thus a new industry.

1517 and the reformation by Martin Luther promotes the Bible being mass produced and the church begin to encourage literacy so all can be joined by the word of the book.
What follows is mostly to do with the wars of the Tudors and the Spanish all today with America and its riches to be had!
Most notably, 1620- Mayflower and the American colonies and the Stuarts, 1641-51 and the English Civil War, Tudors making England wholly Protestant and defined as non Catholic, 1660 Stuart Monarchy back in power, Charles II promising an easy going monarchy, 1660 Addison publishes writing which is witty and broad minded, undogmatic and not like a puritan, 1667 of course puts the spotlight on John Locke, and his open minded and considerate writing, and finally followed some more less notable political 'confusements' as we referred to them in our lecture.

Finally in 1688 the Stuarts are deposed and William of Orange comes from Holland to take the reigns over the English, whilst the rest of the Stuarts make haste and flee to Ireland and Scotland.
1690 and the battle of the Boyne, the mopping up of the infidels and its recording in history, 1700 and Newton, made ever famous because of his word being able to be spread through writing, and then in 1702 comes the first ever Newspaper! and a form of Journalism is born! Mass money was then to be made in printing and commercialism through advertisement and insurances all offered by people through the newspaper.

Times move on again and the English dissolves elements of sovereignty to join with Scotland which prompts the war on the Jacobite's. Tribal people from the Scottish clans who had no national identities but all seemed at war together- often referred to as the 'Tartan' people. They eventually get totally destroyed by the English armies who line up with their canons and cut down the Scottish- defending themselves with simple swords and shields.
After all the bloody history this is why the Union Flag becomes known as 'The Butcher's Apron' as it contains colours from all the flags the English armies harmed in some way or other, or in the case of the Scottish, totally eradicated.