From the first stone proclamations carved and left in the middle of town squares to the near-instantaneous international news wire services of the 21st Century, the way we get our news has gone through some monumental changes. Here’s how far we’ve come.
- The Early Edition%3Cbr%3ENews used to be conveyed purely through word-of-mouth, from village to village. But the farther the word gets from the mouth, the more inaccurate the information can become. The first evidence of written information disseminated to the masses is from 2400 BC in Egypt. Many cultures used metal engravings or stone carvings, but due to the illiteracy rate among the common people, many of these were still read aloud by town criers.
- The “New” News%3Cbr%3EThe idea of actual newspapers really began around 1400 in Italy and Germany with hand-written documents. The printing press was utilized as early as 1600 in Germany, to mass-produce documents for distribution. As the industry progressed, news agencies and news outlets began to formalize the operation, and the more modern idea of journalism was slowly born, complete with reporters, editors, news wires, and dedicated distribution mechanisms.
- The Latest Breaking News%3Cbr%3EWith each new advancement in technology comes new ways to share news with a larger group of people. Radio supplanted newspapers, television supplanted radio, and the Internet has supplanted everything. International news wire services are able to report on news that is quite literally happening as we watch. Mobile technology allows field reporters to capture video footage of an event and immediately send or stream it to the web, bypassing many of the time-consuming steps of the previous news publishing machine.
%3Cbr%3E
%3Cbr%3E
What might the next step be? For instance, how will wearable technology (such as Google Glass) change the face of journalism? What new Internet interaction will enhance our ability to stay globally connected? And what innovation is waiting in the wings that we can’t even yet imagine?