Stop the Presses...
...or, at least, they tried to.
I have promised you guys an occasional trip across the Channel to 18th century France. Well, that is where we are going today!
Eighteenth-century newspapers would have appeared alien to a modern reader. If you were to open one of the hottest, most sought-after news sheets of the day, then instead of dynamic headlines, subheads, or illustrations, you would find columns of crowded type recounting long-forgotten events in a style akin to a dull research paper. Yet, to contemporaries, these dense texts were "passionately exciting reports".
Although 18th century is notorious for its flood of printed word - some laudable, some not so much - the production of these journals was inherently limited by the wooden hand press, a technology largely unchanged since Gutenberg's era, which lacked the capacity of Victorian power-driven machinery.
Newspaper printing was a demanding profession, too. The eight workers at the Gazette de Leyde kept a rigid schedule, working twenty hours on printing days (from 8 A.M. to 4 or 5 A.M. the next day), followed by at least a four-hour shift for cleaning and redistributing type. It was quite gruelling: the entire eight-page issue of the Gazette de Leyde, typically comprising two four-page sections (the ordinaire and a supplement), represented at least three man-days of typesetting work due to the minuscule "petit romain" and "petit texte" type used.
However, it would not be fair to omit the fact that these men’s (and sometimes women’s - printing business was one of the few sectors still considered suitable for female apprentices) jobs provided a regular income, often leading to long-term employment and benefits like retirement pay, a stark contrast to most trades of the era.
News acquisition was a dance as complex as any reel in the assembly rooms. Editors like Jean Luzac of the already mentioned Gazette de Leyde relied on a mix of sources: professional correspondents, manuscript newsletters (nouvelles à la main), diplomatic and political contacts, other newspapers, and even stories from interested private parties. Correspondents, often engaged in other activities, were paid regular sums for dependable news. Pascal Boyer, the Gazette de Leyde's Paris correspondent from 1781 to 1789, was an experienced newsman with good social contacts, frequenting government institutions and potentially having sources within key political bodies like the Parlement de Paris. Governments, too, were expected to supply information about wars and public affairs. However, due to slow communication and limited financial resources, editors faced challenges in verifying information by cross-checking with multiple observers.
War news was a priority for most papers - they always sold like hot cakes, even if they were often presented as dry catalogues of units and posts involved. That style only became "more voluminous and often more emotional" during the French Revolution. The Gazette de Leyde notably treated parliamentary discussions as newsworthy, elevating the status of assemblies over monarchs - which does not seem radical to us today, but was seriously skirting the edge of the permissable back then.
If the English press was rather infamous for its irreverence, in 18th-century France, the prevailing assumption was that subjects had no right or need to know what their rulers were doing or, sometimes, even what the laws of their country were. However, French kings, despite their absolute power, had rather paradoxically clumsy administrative tools for implementing their will. Many officials had purchased or inherited their offices tasked with such matters, making them difficult to remove even if they refused to obey royal edicts.
Censorship was a key tool. Most European newspapers were either government-sponsored or government-controlled court gazettes, which were precensored and heavily focused on court ceremonial. The Gazette de France, for example, would report on royal family attendance at Mass or court presentations, but rarely on actual political conflicts, presenting the king's will as omnipotent. Such court gazettes were typically cheaper and reached their audience quicker, often having higher circulations in their home states than foreign competitors.
However, maintaining rigid press controls within France was complicated by the existence of sovereign states with less restrictive press policies, particularly the nearby Dutch Republic. The Netherlands in particular were brimming with the French-speaking descendants of Huguenots who escaped there during the harrowing persecutions by the government of Louis XIV a couple of generations ago - and many, like the publishers of Gazette de Leyde, still retained their contacts back home.
Several independent publications challenged the dominance of milk-and-water court papers:
The Dutch-printed, French-language Gazette de Leyde stood out as Europe's newspaper of record. It provided a detailed chronicle of political events across Europe, often printing news suppressed domestically. Daringly, it even openly linked the assassination attempt on Louis XV to the king's mishandling of religious disputes and was sympathetic to the French parlements' resistance against royal authority. Notably, Jean Luzac, its editor, never allowed favors or bribes to influence its editorial policy, distinguishing it from many contemporaries… granted - he had a lucrative second career and could afford it!
The Jansenist Nouvelles ecclésiastiques managed to avoid censorship in France for much of the 18th century, providing extensive coverage of confrontations between the parlements and the crown. However, being a religious publication, it had quite a bias of its own!
Other international gazettes, like the London-based Courrier de l'Europe, were often tightly controlled by the governments that subsidized them, leading to a reputation for servility and incomplete, pro-ministerial reporting on French affairs. Similarly, the Prussian-controlled Courier du Bas-Rhin, while lively, adopted a pro-Prussian line in international affairs.
Beyond printed newspapers, manuscript newsletters (nouvelles à la main) thrived, at least in big cities. These handwritten bulletins offered quicker delivery and the lure of being free from censorship, although police surveillance was still a reality. They often contained personal anecdotes and gossipy comments about public figures that printed gazettes avoided, resembling the scandalous "paragraphs" of the English press. However, they could be quite costly, hard to distribute, and harder to produce. They also lacked the verifiable credibility of printed gazettes, often relaying unverified rumors.
The flexibility of pamphlets also allowed them to evade censorship more easily. They could vary in length, style, and topic, serving as crucial vehicles for political opinion and often providing factual background for readers or even sparking other publications. Indeed, the suspension of censorship just before the Estates-General convened in 1789 led to a "flood of pamphlets" expressing the ideas of Enlightenment throughout France.
The fragmented and controlled nature of 18th-century news dissemination meant that truly comprehensive and objective reporting, especially on domestic political matters in France, was a rarity. It took the revolutionary upheavals of 1789, including the suspension of censorship, and the continuous open sessions of the National Assembly, to fundamentally transform the journalistic landscape, leading to a new era of press freedom… and quite a lot of other things with their own set of challenges.
This was fascinating! I can’t help but wonder what it would look like if we had such pamphlets as those today. Great piece!