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The Paragraph as Information Technology: How News Traveled in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Will Slauter
Will Slauter*
Affiliation:
Centre de recherches historiques (EA 1571)Université Paris VIII
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Abstract

The newspapers of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world copied, translated, and corrected each other. Part of the technology facilitating the transmission of international news was the paragraph, a textual unit that was easily removed from one source and inserted into another. In eighteenth-century London the paragraph became the basic unit of printed news, relaying political messages and also providing the means by which these messages could be analyzed. Subject to a whole range of editorial interventions, the form and content of news reports evolved as they circulated from one place to the other. Integrating scholarship on journalism in Europe, Great Britain, and the United States, this article compares reports in French, English, and Spanish-language newspapers in order to understand the process of newsmaking. Two detailed examples from the American Revolutionary war demonstrate how political news in the Revolutionary age was a collaborative process linking printers, translators, readers, and ship captains on both sides of the Atlantic. In doing so it highlights the importance of the paragraph as an object of historical study.

Type
Atlantic History
Information
Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales - English Edition , Volume 67 , Issue 2 , June 2012 , pp. 253 - 278
Copyright
Copyright © Les Éditions de l’EHESS 2012

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References

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29. See, for example, London Evening Post: September 26, 1771; August 30, 1774; November 12, 1774; and March 17, 1778. Middlesex Journal: October 8, 1771; April 16, 1772; and April 18, 1772. Public Advertiser: November 17, 1772; July 3, 1773; and November 3, 1773. Morning Chronicle: May 11, 1773; December 6, 1773; December 25, 1773; January 2, 1775; April 4, 1776; June 26, 1776; and March 30, 1778. Morning Post: August 31, 1776; March 8, 1777; and September 29, 1778. Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser: March 14, 1776; May 13, 1778; May 16, 1778; June 2, 1778; October 17, 1778; and November 30, 1779.

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32. In the Gazetteer’s account book, the entry for August 30, 1787 reads “paid for a paragraph,” 6 pence. C 104/68, vol. E, fol. 22, National Archives, Kew (PRO).

33. When the Earl of Sandwich sent a paragraph to the Public Advertiser in 1773, he spoke of himself in the third person, using the voice of an anonymous “paragraph writer”: “We hear that the Earl of Sandwich has caused an action to be brought against the printer of the London Evening Post of the 2nd of February, in order to vindicate his honour against the infamous falsehood contained in that paper.” Sandwich to H. S. Woodfall, 3 February 1773, Add. 27, 780, fol. 21, British Library, London.

34. Cited in Barker, Newspapers, Politics, and Public Opinion, 44.

35. John Adams Diary, 3 September 1769, Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive, Massachusetts Historical Society, http://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/ .

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43. Boston Post Boy, June 8, 1761, p. 2, col. 1.

44. The same paragraph appears word for word on page 306 of the Public Ledger on March 31, 1761 and undoubtedly in other London newspapers.

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71. Journalistic plagiarism was noticed by French readers as well. In 1777, for example, a reader accused the Journal historique et politique of having copied the Courier de l’Europe “word for word” without any reference. “Among you Journalists, plagiarism is to a certain extent the norm, and I would not have the slightest objection if it were exercised in good faith; but why this affectation to reprint your Gazette under the title Journal, and then give excerpts of all that seems worth collecting from the foreign Gazettes without mentioning the Courier de l’Europe!” See Courier de l’Europe July 18, 1777, pp. 111-12. For general information on plagiarism, see: Johns, Adrian, “The Ambivalence of Authorship in Early Modern Natural Philosophy,” in Scientific Authorship: Credit and Intellectual Property in Science, eds. Biagioli, Mario and Galison, Peter (New York: Routledge, 2003), 68-90 Google Scholar; Kewes, Paulina, ed., Plagiarism in Early Modern England (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003 Google Scholar).

72. Evening Post, copied by Aurora General Advertiser, January 19, 1805, p. 2.

73. See Pasley, “The Tyranny of Printers,” 32.

74. On April 27, 1901, the San Jose Mercury News republished the following small paragraph, citing the Chicago News: “‘Credit to whom credit is due,’ is an old saying that the scissors editor frequently overlooks.”

75. Papers of Benjamin Franklin, 25:59.

76. Courier du Bas-Rhin, October 29, 1777, p. 707 and November 1, 1777, pp. 715-16.

77. Courrier d’Avignon, October 24, 1777, p. 344; Morning Chronicle, November 8, 1777, p. 2, col. 2; London Chronicle, November 6-8, 1777, p. 454; and London Evening Post, November 6-8, 1777, p. 3, col. 2.

78. Public Advertiser, November 18, 1777, p. 2, col. 3; London Evening Post, November 15-18, 1777, p. 3, col. 1.

79. Gazette de France, November 28, 1777, pp. 479-80; Courrier d’Avignon, December 9, 1777, p. 394; Journal historique et politique, December 10, 1777, p. 407; and Gazeta de Madrid, December 16, 1777, pp. 498-99.

80. The phrase was used by Jonathan Williams Jr. in a letter to William Temple Franklin, 27 July 1780, WTF, vol. 102, fol. 88, American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia.

81. Morning Post, November 3, 1777, p. 2, col. 1; Morning Chronicle, November 3, 1777, p. 3, col. 2; and London Chronicle, November 1-4, 1777, p. 438.

82. New York Gazette; and the Weekly Mercury, September 22, 1777, p. 2, col. 1.

83. See the November 4, 1777 issues of London Chronicle, London Evening Post, Morning Chronicle, Morning Post, Public Advertiser, and Gazetteer.

84. London Evening Post, November 11-13, 1777, p. 3, col. 1; Gazette d’Utrecht, November 18, 1777, p. 4; Gazette de Leyde, supplement, November 11, 1777; Journal historique et politique, November 20, 1777, p. 267 and November 30, 1777, p. 322; and Courrier d’Avignon, November 28, 1777, p. 382.

85. See Public Advertiser, November 3, 1777, p. 3, col. 3.

86. Courrier de l’Europe, November 7, 1777, pp. 366-67; Public Advertiser, November 5, 1777, p. 2, cols. 1-2.

87. Morning Post (November 6, 1777), p. 2, col. 2; London Evening Post (November 4-6, 1777), p. 3, col. 2.

88. Lynch, Jack, Deception and Detection in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Hampshire: Ashgate, 2008 Google Scholar).

89. Slauter, Will, “Forward-Looking Statements: News and Speculation in the Age of the American Revolution,” Journal of Modern History 81 (2009): 759-92 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

90. For example, Pennsylvania Packet, September 11, 1777; Pennsylvania Evening Post, September 13, 1777; Boston Gazette, September 22, 1777; and New York Gazette; and the Weekly Mercury, September 22, 1777.

91. Gazette de Leyde, November 11, 14, and 18, 1777; Courrier de l’Europe, November 7, 1777, p. 367; Journal historique et politique, November 20, 1777, pp. 264-68; Courrier d’Avignon, November 25, 1777, p. 378; Gazette d’Utrecht, November 18, 1777; and Gazette d’Amsterdam, November 21, 1777.

92. Révolutions de Paris, October 12, 1789 and October 19, 1789.

93. Burrows, Simon, “The Cosmopolitan Press, 1759-1815,” in Press, Politics and the Public Sphere in Europe and North America, 1760-1820, eds. Barker, Hannah and Burrows, Simon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 23-47 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

94. Courrier de l’Europe, November 7, 1777, p. 367; Courier du Bas-Rhin, November 15, 1777, p. 753; Gazette d’Utrecht, November 18, 1777, p. 4; Journal historique et politique, November 20, 1777, pp. 265-68; Courrier d’Avignon, November 21, 1777, p. 376; and Journal Encyclopédique, December 15, 1777, p. 563.

95. See Censer, The French Press in the Age of Enlightenment, chap. 4; Charles, Shelly, “Sur l’écriture du présent,” in Les gazettes européennes de langue française (XVIIe-XVIIIe siècle), eds. Duranton, Henri et al. (Saint-Étienne: Publications de l’université de Saint-Étienne, 1992), 177-85 Google Scholar.