The predecessors of newspapers

NEWSPAPER PREDECESSORS

The Chinese developed woodblock printing during the Sui dynasty (581-618) and metal moveable type in the Song (960-1276). Paper was invented by Cai Lun in 105 AD.

the first western-style newspaper was published in China in 1815. the language it was published in was Portuguese. The first successful Chinese-language newspaper was published in Hong Kong in 1864.

(Lamont 2007, p 5-6)

GAZETTES

Gazettes were produced daily,and distributed across the empire, with abridged editions for local distribution. Gazettes were created by central ministries, provincial governments, and local authorities. Content of these gazettes included edicts, memorials to the Emperor, announcement of appointments, and the court diary.Government policies was further announced by posters, and notices were read aloud to the illiterate.

ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT

There were highly varied accounts of when gazettes were supposed to have first began production. Henrietta Harrison argued that they started in the 15th century. Joan Judge said that the predecessors of the gazettes started as metropolitan gazettes (dibao) in the tang dynasty (618 - 907), or even in the Han dynasty (206 BCE – 220 AD). The Kauyan Za Bao (Bulletin of the Court) is also claimed to be the first newspaper, and was started in the 8th century. The daily news was collected by editors and hand-written on silk by writers.  It was sent to the provinces and read by imperial officers during the Kaiyuan era(Cecilia, "Who Invented the Newspaper?").

By the end of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), gazettes were called guanfangbaozhi (“official newspapers”), or guanbao for short. Tens of thousands of guanbao circulated in China. Some sources said gazettes were mostly read mostly by government officials, but others argued that they were widely read and discussed by commoners as well.

“While gazettes were the ‘official medium of communication’ between the courtland the provinces, they were technically ‘a form of private correspondence sent to provincial authorities by their accredited agents in the capital,’ as opposed to a sort of internal newsletter for all bureaucrats. This suggests that the gazettes were customized or restricted to specific subsets of the bureaucratic population, based on location or rank. It also suggests that the gazettes may have been copied by hand in earlier times” (Lamont 2007, p 4).

WORKS CITED

(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985), 362.

Cecilia. "Who Invented the Newspaper?" Sikantisblog.com. 28 July 2009. Web. 13 Feb. 2012. <http://www.sikantisblog.com/wp/?p=1630>.

"Chinese Paper Invention." Chinese Culture. Web. 13 Feb. 2012. <http://chineseculture.about.com/library/weekly/aa_invention_paper02a.htm>.

Henrietta Harrison, China: Inventing the Nation (London: Arnold, 2001), 112

Joan Judge, Print and Politics: John King Fairbank, China: A New History (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of HarvardUniversity Press, 1992), 84. Judge, 17.

Lamont, Ian. "The Rise of the Press in Late Imperial China." Diss. Harvard University Extension School, 2007. Scribd. 27 Nov. 2007. Web. 13 Feb. 2012. <http://www.scribd.com/doc/5021205/The-Rise-of-the-Press-in-Late-Imperial-China>.

Leo Ou-fan Lee and Andrew J. Nathan, “The Beginnings of Mass Culture: Journalism andFiction in the Late Ch'ing and Beyond.” In David Johnson, Andrew J. and Nathan, Evelyn S. Rawski (eds.),Popular Culture in Late Imperial China‘Shibao’ and the Culture of Reform in Late Qing China(Stanford,CA: Stanford University Press, 1996), 20.

Lee and Nathan, 362.

Xiuming Zhang, “Hanzi yinshua de fazhan,” etc., in Zhonghuo yinshua shi(Shanghai: RenminPublishing Co., 1989) 669-729. Cited in Christopher Alexander Reed,Gutenberg in Shanghai: Mechanized  Printing, Modern Publishing, and their Effects on the City, 1876-1937  (doctoral dissertation) (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1996), 144.