Johann Carolus

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Johann Carolus was the publisher of the first printed weekly news-periodical, called "Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien" (Collection of all distiguished and commemorateable news).

This pamphlet was published in Strasbourg, which is now in France but then an imperial free city in the Holy Roman Empire. In 2005, the World Association of Newspapers accepted evidence that Carolus's pamphlet was printed beginning in 1605, not 1609 as previously thought. The Relation was soon followed by other periodicals, such as the Avisa Relation oder Zeitung.

World Association of Newspapers, as well as many authors^[1], regard the Relation as the world's first newspaper. It gathers several stories and is published on a weekly basis. However, this can be disputed. Authors like Stanley Morison categorize the Relation either as a newsbook or a news-pamphlet^[2]. This is due to the fact, that it still employs the format and most of the conventions of a book. (It is printed in quarto size, it features a separate title page, the text is set in single wide column etc.) By this defininion, the world's first newspaper is the Dutch Courante uyt Italien, Duytslandt, &c. from 1618.

[edit] Notes and references

1. ^ Many authors do not make a distinction between a newsbook/pamphlet and a newspaper. See for example: Chappell, W. (1999) A Short History of the Printed Word. Hartley & Marks, Vancouver. Smith, A. (1979) The Newspaper: an international history. Thames and Hudson Ltd, London.
2. ^ Morison, S. (1980) The Origins of the Newspaper. In Selected Essays on the History of Letter-Forms in Manuscript and Print, (Ed, McKitterick, D.) Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,

[edit] External links

• World Association of Newspapers, "Newspapers: 400 Years Young!"
• World Association of Newspapers, "A Newspaper Timeline"
• Mitchell Stephens, "History of Newspapers," from Collier's Encyclopedia
• "400 Jahre Zeitung," exhibition at Gutenberg Museum, Mainz, Germany