Dr. James Melvin Lee, head of the Department of Journalism in New York University, believes that the first newspaper to be printed in the English language was published in Amsterdam, December 2, 1620, and in proof of his belief he produces a facsimile of the sheet. It was half sheet folio and had no title. A descriptive of the battle of Weissenberg was its chief feature.
In a discussion as to the early use of the word “reporter,” Mr. Henry N. Cary, a New York journalist, quotes from a pamphlet of 1613 of which the title is:
The Wonders of this windie winter, by terrible stormes and tempests, to the losse of lives and goods of many thousands of men women and children. The like by Sea and Land hath not been seene nor heard of in this age of the world. London. Printed by G. Eld for John Wright, and are to be sold at his shop neer Christ-church dore.
Ships were perishing to the number of a hundred, and forty seafaring men, besides other passengers, both of men and women which at that time made their watery graves in the deep sea. This first strooke feare into the hearts of people, which hath since seconded with many calamities, which lieth heavily upon the heart of the reporter.
The details of this storm’s destruction are far less interesting to us than is the way they circulated the news in 1613 when there were no newspapers.
For the next one hundred years the news-sheet was the chief source of information to the English people. A few weekly newspapers were started, the first being edited by Nathaniel Butter, in 1622. It was called the _Weekly News_, but it seems to have had few readers. The people stuck to the news-sheets in which they had confidence. Possibly they did not credit Butter’s yarns. Pendleton quotes two of them as specimens of seventeenth century journalism:
A true relation of the strange appearance of a man-fish about three miles within the river Thames, having a musket in one hand and a petition in the other, credibly reported by six sailors who both saw and talked with the monster.
A perfect mermaid was by the last great wind driven ashore near Greenwich, with her comb in one hand and her looking-glass in the other. She seemed to be of the countenancy of a most fair and beautiful woman, with her arms crossed, weeping out many pearly drops of salt tears; and afterwards she, gently turning herself upon her back again, swam away without being seen again any more.