Let's face it: we all have news cycle fatigue. If it's not struggling to find reliable sources online, then it's figuring out how to sift through the myriad of competing (and sometimes conflicting) headlines that roll across our TV screens, cell phones and social media accounts.
But when did the news, in all of these varied and sundry forms, become integral to our lives? And why do we even follow it?
Survival? Desire to help and empathize?
Staying informed? Entertainment?
Our answers will vary from story to story, but one thing is certain. We live in a culture in which the news has become almost impossible to ignore.
So today I'm giving you guys the inside scoop the history of the news. We will talk about when and how letting the public know what has been happening domestically and globally became an international phenomenon.
In his book, Mitchell Stephens defines news as "new information about a subject of some public interest that is shared with some portion of the public." Stephens also provides a useful chronology of how the news came to be.
Since humans have existed, they have wanted to share their news. We might imagine cavemen grunting and signaling furiously to warn of an imminent attack, smoke-signals, or stories of Greek messengers running to tell about military victories, speakers ascending to the platform at the Roman forum to present political edicts, and West African griots who shared news and oral traditions within their own communities.
Eventually, oral reports evolved into written ones. Julius Caesar ordered the daily records of Senate proceedings (or acta) to be posted in public.
Some upper class Romans even got their own hand-written copies to read at home. However, it was the Chinese Han dynasty, and not the Romans, who according to legend invented paper in 105 CE.
