Newspapers Over Time

Today, not many people actually look at the news paper for news. I mean, why would we when we can get the summed up version at any time that's convenient for us? But what was a newspaper like for people before the age of technology? To them, a newspaper was "a publication issued at a regular and usually close intervals, especially daily or weekly, and commonly containing news, comment, features, and advertising." Newspapers were first seen in Europe in the 17th century. To be more specific, 1609 in Wolfenbüttel. In the United States, some of the first newspapers included The Boston News-Letter, Publick Occurrences, and The American. In an issue of the New York Times published on October 13, 2015, the leading headline was "Dell to Buy EMC for $67 Billion". Other headlines included promotions in big companies or to fairly famous people, discussion of the problems in Libya, and updates on the current political standings. Have you ever wondered what it means to be the "newspaper of record"? Yeah, so have I. I just thought it meant the paper was noteworthy and held the highest publishing/selling rate. I was wrong.... According to Wikipedia, "A newspaper of record is a major newspaper that has a large circulation and whose editorial and news-gathering functions are considered professional and typically authoritative. A newspaper of record may also be a publicly available newspaper that has been authorized or maintained by a government to publish public or legal notices, and therefore serves as a "newspaper of public record"." The nation's first newspaper of record was The New York Times deemed this title in 1913 and believed to have been given the title by librarians. A second paper that could be considered a newspaper of record is the Los Angeles Times. The difference in looking at an actual newspaper versus the internet it simple; one you know is real and the other can be questionable. Online, anyone has access to the information meaning anyone can change the facts, thus, the true story is never known. In the paper, the facts come straight from the sources and right into the machines. Even though the information can be changed overtime it is more reliable than what we read online. We also tend to only see what the social media sources want us to see when we read the news online. They want to grab the public's attention and thus they direct the news are certain groups of people whether its gender, age, or race. This often results in the omission of key facts and parts of the truth only to make the story more engaging. In the paper, everything is there for us. We have the option to pick and chose what parts we read but nothing has been omitted. Also, the newspaper actually makes people have a conversation. Online there's always that comment section allowing people to speak freely without having to use their actual name. People need to have that face to face interaction from time to time because, without it, we lose a piece of our humanity. 

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