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Journalism History

Europe

Jürgen Wilke

Europe is the cradle of journalism. This does not only apply to the term, but also to the matter itself. The term has a French origin, deriving from the French word for “day” (jour). It came into use as a result of the French Revolution in 1789 when the printed press became a forum for opinion-making (Barnhurst & Nerone, 2009, p. 19). In the nineteenth century, the concept also established itself in other European countries. However, the job title “journalist” had already been used earlier, at first probably for the staff of the Journal des Sçavans, the first scientific magazine that had been launched in Paris in 1665. Only at the end of the eighteenth century did “journalist” receive its more general significance and slowly substituted older terms, e.g., the German word Zeitungsschreiber (“newspaper writer”). In many European languages, “journalism” and “journalist” became popular, not only in French and English, but also in German Journalismus), in Italian (giornalismo), in Portuguese (jornalismo), and in Czech (žurnalismus). Spanish is an exception, focusing on the regularity of the function as the core of the term (periodismo).

It depends on the definition of the term when and where the history of journalism starts. Chalaby (1998), who defines it as a “field of discursive production” (p. 334) with its own norms such as objectivity and neutrality, spoke of journalism as an “Anglo-American invention” and dated it back to the nineteenth century. But this would ignore the fact that well-directed efforts to obtain and to distribute news are much older. If journalism is actually defined more generally, namely according to Barnhurst and Owens (2008) as a “constellation of practices that have required special status within the longer domain of communication through a long history that separated out news sharing from its origins in interpersonal communication” (p. 2557), its history goes further back.

Europe is a continent with numerous countries and languages. Today, there are approximately 50. The modern political order has developed since the Middle Ages and has been changed again and again by wars and power-political arguments. Some countries were able to keep their identity for a long time, e.g., Great Britain, France, and Spain. In general, these were centralized states. In other countries, e.g., in the German Empire, federal structures existed. Germany and Italy only became nation-states in the nineteenth century, other countries only in the twentieth (e.g., Czechoslovakia) or after the political change in 1989 (e.g., Slovenia, Croatia). The changes in European history naturally influenced journalism in Europe in a variety of ways.

Europe also has a multitude of languages. In principle, this results in obstacles to communication. Besides several Indo-Germanic languages, which also include the Roman and the Slavic languages, there are Uralic languages (e.g., Finnish and Hungarian).

The cultural variety of Europe makes it difficult to describe the history of journalism on this continent coherently. As a result of political and language barriers, this field of activity developed respectively mainly in the national context. This also applies to its scientific exploration, which moreover has mainly concentrated on the history of the press (and other media) and less on the history of journalism as professional practice. Thus there are primarily national presentations of press history available, for England (Andrews, 1968; Aspinall, 1973; Boyce, Curran, & Wingate, 1978), France (Bellanger, Godechot, Guiral, & Terrou, 1969–1972), Germany (Stöber, 2005; Wilke, 2007, 2008), Italy (Murialdi, 1995, 1996), and Spain (Barrera, 1999; Fuentes & Sebastiàn, 1997). Only a few exceptions are comparative and transnational (Dooley & Baron, 2001; Mompart & Otto, 1999; Smith, 1979; Welke & Wilke, 2008).

Despite these national differences, the history of journalism in Europe also has commonalities and similar developmental courses. Besides influences between European countries there were also extra-European – particularly US – influences. These influences varied, however, over time and had differing dynamics.

Prehistory of Journalism

If journalism is thus generally defined that its basis is news, i.e., not private news, but news satisfying public interest, this job already existed before technical means of distribution were available. Thus it is possible to speak of a prehistory of journalism (Baumert, 1928; Barnhurst & Nerone, 2009). The human interest in news is given by nature and motivated by society. It was satisfied in the Middle Ages by persons such as singers and gleemen who moved from place to place and informed people about events they had heard of. In Germany, these gleemen were later called wandernde Journalisten (“wandering journalists”; Scherer, 1920). In England, the presenters of ballads and commemorative poems fulfilled a similar function. From the eighth century, events were laid down in written form in the “Anglo-Saxon Chronicles”. They may thus be regarded as a “precursor of the press” (Giffard, 1982).

The need for news grew in early modern times due to expeditions, discoveries, and the expansion of trade relations. Large trading companies fostered an extensive correspondence with their branches. In Europe, real information exchange networks developed; their basis was the extension of the post lines (Raymond, 2006). In this context a real trade with written news developed. In the early seventeenth century, Philipp Hainhofer ran an office in the South German city of Augsburg where news was copied and delivered to interested persons – mostly sovereigns (Schmolke, 1962). Benedetto Dei had done something similar a century earlier in Venice. There, handwritten avvisi developed out of traders' letters (Infelise, 2002, 2007). In France, nouvelles à la main also circulated, and indeed still later, as they remained outside the supervision of the authorities (Bellanger et al. 1969–1972, vol. 1; Moureau, 1999).

The Corresponding Journalism of the Early Press

The decisive precondition for the development of journalism in Europe was the invention of printing technology by Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz in the middle of the fifteenth century. With this, it became possible to produce and to distribute writings and messages quickly and in large numbers. First, this technology was above all used for clerical and religious purposes. But soon it was also used to copy news. As printing shops soon also developed in other places in Europe, such prints were produced in many countries. They had different names, but were widely similar with respect to content and form (Dooley & Baron, 2001). In Germany they were called Newe Zeytungen, in the Netherlands Couranten, in France Canards, in England “Corantos,” “Diurnalls,” or “Newsbooks,” in Spain Relaciones, and in Portugal Relaçãos. In Venice, they got the name Gazette. These individual prints mostly described political, military, and social events, but also disasters and sensations.

The printers received this news from correspondents who were in places where important events happened or where much information from other places passed through. These correspondents thus fulfilled a journalistic function. This justifies the concept of a “corresponding journalism” (korrespondierender Journalismus; Baumert, 1928). In general – as was the case for written newspapers – three groups of correspondents came to the fore (Wilke, 2008): (1) civil servants and legates residing in sovereign courts or on diplomatic missions; (2) representatives who were based in other trading towns for their companies; (3) educated correspondents, members of universities and monasteries. These three groups were able to deliver news of different kinds, i.e., political, economic, and cultural news.

Over a century elapsed before Newe Zeytungen, Corantos, Newsbooks, Diurnalls, etc., became the periodic newspaper, the first mass medium of modern times published regularly with specific publication intervals. As far as we know, this occurred for the first time in Strasbourg in 1605 after several intermediate stages. The printer Johann Carolus started to print written news and to turn them into a weekly newspaper (Relation). The first complete volume dates back to 1609. In the same year, a second newspaper in Germany (Aviso) was published. This “business model” was so successful that soon newspapers in other places followed.

Germany led the way in the development of the newspaper; in the seventeenth century, there existed more newspapers in Germany than in all other European countries put together. In other European countries it took years or decades before they were ready (Dooley & Baron, 2001; Welke & Wilke, 2008). The first followers were the Netherlands. In 1618, the first newspaper was published in Amsterdam, followed by Antwerp in 1620. In France, Théophraste Renaudot introduced the first weekly newspapers to the market in 1631 (Gazette). The Oxford Gazette (1665) is considered the oldest periodic newspaper in England and was preceded by numerous newsbooks (Raymond, 1993, 1996). In 1666, it changed its name to London Gazette. In Spain, the earliest known newspaper was in Barcelona in 1641 (Gaceta Barcelona); 20 years later, the Gaceta Nueva in Madrid followed. In 1643, the first Italian newspaper was published regularly, two years later the first one in Swedish (Ordinarie Post Tijdender). Newspapers in Polish followed in 1661 (Merkuriusz Polski) and in Danish in 1672 (Extraordinaire Relation). The first Russian newspaper was published in 1703.

The newspapers of the seventeenth century (and the majority of those of the eighteenth century) were very similar to each other (Wilke, 1987b). They were in quarto or octavo and consisted of four to eight pages. They mostly offered sober written accounts of political and military events from different parts of Europe, provided by the correspondents on location. Thus it was still “corresponding journalism.” More journalistic functions were not yet necessary. News selection was not needed as the news flow was still limited and all available information was printed if possible. A layout with headlines and captions was abandoned. The accounts were merely supplied with the name of the location and the date of their origin. They mainly came from other countries, meaning that there was a dominance of foreign correspondence. In England, this declined very early on (Wilke, 1987a, 2010).

To begin with, printers did their work without journalists, and a newsroom was not necessary. We know only of a few cases where news in the seventeenth century was edited and (linguistically) processed by a person whose particular responsibility this was. The news flow increased in the eighteenth century in such a way that someone had to assume the task of selection and preparation for printing. But only large newspapers which attached importance to original accounts and which did not want simply to reprint other papers (which frequently happened) could afford this.

Articles expressing opinions were also almost completely absent from early newspapers. Correspondents did not wish to tell readers their personal views, but inform them so that they could form their own opinions. Their perception of their role, so to speak, was to be neutral, objective correspondents. This conception was also due to press control. In the decades after the invention of printing technology, censorship and other controlling measures had been introduced in all European countries (Siebert, 1965). The periodical press was also subject to these measures. The publication of undesired news and opinions would thus have been inhibited. The newspapers mainly addressed an educated readership; knowledge for understanding the coverage could be assumed. Circulation was still limited and amounted to hardly more than a few hundred copies.

The Development of Opinion Journalism

In the eighteenth century, the role of journalism in Europe started to change. This first happened in England, for several reasons. When the British parliament did not renew the Licensing Act in 1695, there was in practice press freedom (Siebert, 1965). Henceforth there was no pre-censorship of printed material. Although there were other prohibitive measures, be it with the help of charges at court or as a consequence of the tax on printing paper (stamp tax), newspapers could now become organs of public debate – the more so as England had a long-established parliament in which controversial debates were conducted. However, parliamentary reporting remained regulated even after 1695 and has only been tolerated since 1772.

As early as the sixteenth century, special print media had developed to publicly multiply opinions and convictions. They were called Flugschriften in Germany (Wilke, 2008) and “pamphlets” in England (Raymond, 2003). During the Reformation and the subsequent religious conflicts, they achieved a huge circulation. They were mostly written by the spokesmen of religious and social movements themselves and thus were not actually journalistic products. In the Catholic countries of Europe, there were fewer of them and they did not flourish.

The abolition of the Licensing Act in England not only led to a rapid increase in the number of newspapers. Strong competition also developed, so that papers now and then shut down very quickly. The Daily Universal Register was one of the longer-lived papers. It appeared for the first time in 1785; three years later it was renamed The Times, the newspaper which was to become the flagship of independent British journalism. In this phase, newspapers in the United Kingdom began to differ from those on the Continent. They could take greater liberties both with regard to content and style. Journalists neither wanted nor were forced to restrict themselves to sober information, but could also express their opinions. It was advantageous that with the Whigs and the Tories, a bipolar party system already existed in England. However, this journalism was often non-autonomous, as many papers were financially supported by the government, the parties, or other social groups (Aspinall, 1973).

In other European countries, opinion journalism developed later than in England. In France, freedom of opinion and press was introduced in 1789 by the Revolution. Until then, control in this centralized state had been particularly strict. Basically, there was only one single newspaper: the Gazette, founded in 1631. It appeared in Paris, but was reprinted in provincial towns. Criticism could be found at most in the philosophic magazines of the Enlightenment (Censer, 1994). However, information which could not be published in the French kingdom could be printed in the exile press, which was represented by several titles (above all in Holland and on the Lower Rhine). Forbidden prints were produced clandestinely and smuggled over the border.

In 1789, the outbreak of the French Revolution led to an explosion of the press in Paris; above all, it now published opinions. Within a short time, the number of press organs rose to hundreds (Bellanger et al., 1969, pp. 443–461; Popkin, 1990). Several prominent and radical revolutionaries worked as journalists, among them Camille Desmoulins, Jean-Paul Marat, and Jacques René Hébert. At first, press freedom made it possible for ideologically and politically competing organs to coexist, even those supporting the monarchy. However, this changed when the king was arrested and executed in 1791, after which all necessary measures were taken to silence the supporters of the old system.

Evidence for a new understanding of the journalistic role also arose in Germany in the late eighteenth century where, again, it was primarily writers who spoke out for the Enlightenment. One of them was Wilhelm Ludwig Wekhrlin. His ideal was the journalist as Spion des Publikums (“spy of the readers”), who not only conveyed news, but also warned readers against false ideas (Wilke, 1993). He also called the journalist a Sittenrichter (“judge of public morals”) and an Advokat der Menschheit (“advocate of humanity”), and thus anticipated modern concepts of the role. In practice, this understanding of the role could hardly be realized. Although there had actually been a certain relaxation of press control in the German Empire in the eighteenth century, the French Revolution led to a further tightening of control when German sovereigns felt threatened by the spread of revolutionary ideals.

Starting in the eighteenth century and increasing in the early nineteenth century in most European countries, writers and poets tried to work as journalists. This has led to the characterization of “literary journalism” (Baumert, 1928). Famous authors like Balzac, Dumas, and Hugo in France, Heine and Fontane in Germany, and many less renowned writers earned their living at least temporarily by working as a journalist. For others, journalism was a starting point or transition stage in their striving for a political career. This has shaped the image of journalism in these countries for a long time (O'Boyle, 1967/1968).

It has been claimed that since its beginning, the press was a male domain. However, this does not mean that women were insignificant. They were already active in the English newsbooks of the Puritan Revolution (Nevitt, 2006). In Germany, women were frequently owners of print shops as early as the seventeenth century if their husbands died and they continued their work. Here, however, female journalists appeared for the first time in the eighteenth century as editors of magazines addressing a female readership (Madland, 1988). In the political press, female journalists were admitted only later. In Germany, Louise Otto published the Frauen-Zeitung (“Women's Newspaper”) after the 1848 Revolution, promoting women's interests and needs. In Victorian England a women's press movement started and formed a women's political press (Tusan, 2005).

Commercialization in the Nineteenth Century

As late as the early nineteenth century – in some countries even much later – journalism in Europe suffered from official control or dependence on financial support. Further suppression at the beginning of the century can be attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, who strictly regimented the press. He used it as a political means of power, reduced the number of titles, and decreed that only Moniteur, the state newspaper, could be reprinted. In 1811, he re-established censorship in France. His influence also led to a disciplining of the press in other countries. The press was impoverished, but also released opposing forces in Prussia and Spain. When Napoleon had to abdicate in 1815, a glorious new era for the press and journalism seemed to dawn, but this did not last long. In the German Confederation, strict censorship was again decreed in 1819 for three decades, and even in France the return of the Bourbon monarchy led to restoration of censorship. The July Revolution of 1830 brought an increase in oppositional organs which could no longer be suppressed despite new attempts to limit their liberties.

However, the scope of the press was also limited commercially. The political newspapers had to finance themselves mainly via their sale price. In the eighteenth century, advertisements could be published more or less only in special prints: “Advertisers” in England, Intelligenzblätter in Germany, and Affiches in France. Only after liberalization of the state advertising monopoly (in Prussia in 1850) and the abolition of the advertisement tax (in England in 1855, in Germany in 1874), could commercialization of the press begin in these countries. In the United States, this development had already commenced in the 1830s, when publishers there created the popular mass newspaper, the penny press, which offered completely different content than the previously dominant party press. This example was first followed in France. In 1836, two newspapers of the presse à bon marché, as it was called there, were published: Emile de Giradin's La Presse and Armand Dutacq's Le Siècle. Both made advertisements their essential support and financial source. Thus the sales price could be lowered and mass circulation could be achieved. Formation of political opinion, however, was not yet relinquished. To catch the interest of more readership groups, the cultural part (feuilleton) of the newspaper was created. At the end of 1836, La Presse had a circulation of 10,000 copies; ten years later it was 20,000 copies; during the Revolution of 1848, it was allegedly sometimes even 70,000.

In the nineteenth century, Le Petit Journal became the most successful newspaper in France (from 1862). It was cheap; its price was only half as much as that of La Presse. The content consisted mainly of the mediation of practical knowledge and news from daily life, especially miscellaneous news (so-called faits divers), as well as novels “below the line.” After two years, 260,000 copies of the newspaper were being printed; in 1887, it was 1 million. Palmer (1983) considers Le Petit Journal as “la naissance du journalisme moderne” (“the birth of modern journalism”) in France. This also included reportage and interviews as new journalistic forms of presentation. The names of grands reporters became famed (Martin, 2005).

Starting in the 1850s, the popular daily press also became established in Great Britain (Engel, 1996). The trigger had been the abolition of the stamp tax in 1855. The opener was the Daily Telegraph and Courier in the same year; it would increase its circulation to 250,000 copies by 1880. Several further cheap mass newspapers were launched around the turn of the century: Daily Mail (1896), Daily Express (1900), and Daily Mirror (1903).

In Germany, the commercialization of the press started later than in Britain. Opinion and party press had only come into existence after the 1848 Revolution, and it only gained ground when the German Empire was founded in 1871 and a national parliament existed. The beginnings of the mass newspaper date back to that time. The special newspaper type which developed was called General-Anzeiger. It was also mainly financed by advertisements and tried to win a broad readership, above all with the help of local coverage and renunciation of political and religious controversies. Entertainment was also given much space. General-Anzeiger were published in Berlin and other large cities and achieved a circulation which until then had not existed in Germany.

In the nineteenth century, the exemplary function of US journalism took root in many places in Europe, above all in Great Britain. Thus it became common to talk of the Anglo-American model. Later, US customs in journalism also swept through other European countries (Høyer & Pöttker, 2005; Broersma, 2007). But the key word “Americanization” also frequently had a negative overtone. The phenomenon described by this was considered a threat to indigenous (journalistic) culture and was therefore rejected. In Germany, at least, one must speak of the “belated modernization” of journalism. The US author Mark Twain stated this satirically at the beginning of the 1880s. After providing a formidably long list of what he felt was missing from German papers – humorous columns, police court reports, prize fights and dog fights, horse races and other sporting events, banquet speeches, curious oddities, etc. – he addressed the question of what such papers actually did contain:

A movement like the early twentieth-century muckrakers in the United States did not emerge, although social reports developed in Germany and Austria. However, they were generally published not in the independent press but primarily in the party press and low-circulation magazines of the Left (Requate, 2004).

The Professionalization of Journalism

During the course of the nineteenth century, a professionalization of journalism started in Europe. The need for journalists increased because the press expanded in several respects. Above all, innovations in printing technology contributed to this expansion. The number of newspapers increased considerably, formats became larger, and the number of pages grew. Content also became more varied, which led to a differentiation into different sections. In the middle of the nineteenth century, newspaper readers had 30–60 times as much to read as those two centuries before (Wilke, 1987b).

Before 1848, the number of journalists in Germany was estimated at around 400; at the end of the century there were probably 2,500 (Requate, 1995). However, this would still not be enough. The London Times had considerably more foreign correspondents at its disposal than did French newspapers (Chalaby, 1996). The increase in personnel was accompanied by an extension of editorial departments (Wilke, 2003).

Contrary to popular assumptions, journalists in the nineteenth century were highly educated. The profession attracted intellectuals and literate persons who did not have any other job opportunities in society or were refused due to political reasons. The development of professional unions also underlined advancing professionalization. Between the 1880s and World War I, such organizations were founded in all the largest European countries (Kutsch, 2008, p. 325).

Between Political Instrumentalization and Technical Innovation: Journalismin the Twentieth Century

The development of journalism in Europe in the twentieth century was above all influenced by two groups of factors. On the one hand, there were the restraints resulting from political conditions. On the other hand, there were technical innovations which produced new mass media. These mass media again constituted new challenges for journalism and forced it to adjust to changing demands.

Historically, the twentieth century was above all characterized by totalitarian regimes and two world wars. These circumstances more or less restricted the autonomy of journalists in many countries and even destroyed it. In Russia, where the liberalization of the press after the death of Czar Nicholas I in 1855 had started comparatively late, the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 led to the establishment of a totalitarian communist system. Following the guidelines of V. I. Lenin, journalism had to fulfill three tasks: propaganda, agitation, and organization. With this, journalists were again degraded to servants of political rulers. As a consequence, journalism in the Soviet Union was called the “antithesis of the Anglo-American news paradigm” (Lauk, 2005).

It was not very different in the fascist dictatorships established in Italy in the 1920s and in Germany after 1933. Journalists were to serve the ruling ideology and to support the goals of the government. For this, the Nazi regime in particular erected an ingenious system of media control. Besides legal regulations and organizational means, it consisted of detailed instructions to the correspondents of German newspapers during official press conferences in Berlin (Wilke, 2005). Importance was also attached to journalistic formation aligned with the purposes of party and government. Although Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels did not wish to have a uniform press as this would have aroused suspicion among the population, newspapers were to express the same things with different voices.

Journalists were under particularly intense pressure during the two world wars (1914–1918, 1939–1945). As a general rule, censorship was again introduced in all the countries involved and there were attempts to turn the press into a means of propaganda. This even applied to countries which had retained their democratic order, such as Great Britain. Here, official authorities were also instructed to influence journalists, who were to represent the interests of their countries to the outside world and to strengthen the war morale of the indigenous population.

After World War II, this open or hidden instrumentalization of journalism generally came to an end in the democratic countries. Europe was now divided into two blocs: the West closely linked to the United States, and the Eastern bloc to which the Soviet Union extended its power. The Eastern bloc consisted of the Baltic countries, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria, as well as Yugoslavia, which strived for a certain autonomy. The German Democratic Republic that had been established on the territory of the Soviet occupation zone in Germany in 1949 was also among the Soviet satellite states. In all these countries, the Soviet model of journalism was introduced and imposed with state instruments of power. In the authoritarian regimes of Europe still existing after 1945 (Spain, Portugal), journalism also remained under state influence, although this was less strictly exerted than in the communist countries (Fuentes & Sebastiàn, 1997, pp. 253–276, 293–316).

Development in Western Europe was different. With the restoration of democracy, the environment for journalism also changed. In the Western occupation zones of Germany, the Allied powers strived to create the conditions for a free and independent journalism. Above all the Americans tried to ensure that their journalistic models were adopted by the Germans. In the early postwar years, they tried to do this by means of strict control and direct instructions (Wilke, 2003). One of the central norms was the separation of news and opinion in order to overcome the opinion journalism that had been cultivated in Germany since the end of the nineteenth century and which had been taken to extremes under the Third Reich. One of the guiding principles of the US “re-education” of German journalists was: “It is the duty of a non-partisan press to serve the public impartially with unbiased presentation of the news” (cited by Wilke, 2003, p. 68). Intentions to restructure the newsrooms of German daily newspapers according to the Anglo-American model failed, however, to be realized.

Undoubtedly, there was an “Americanization” of journalism in (West) Germany after 1945. One example is the acceptance of the “inverted pyramid” news form with “lead” and “body.” Previously, this had hardly been used in German journalism. On the other hand, “Americanization” was also opposed. The chances for a continuation of German traditions increased when the Federal Republic of Germany became sovereign in 1949 and press freedom was introduced. Skepticism regarding a thorough Anglo-American influence on German journalism has been confirmed by the findings of scientific studies since the 1970s. They revealed the wish to criticize grievances and champion values and ideas as the primary professional motivation of German journalists, ahead of neutral information brokerage. A comparison of German and British journalists can be summarized by the alternatives “missionary” and “bloodhound” (Köcher, 1986). Another study showed that US journalists wanted to advocate ideas and values considerably less than did their German and Italian counterparts (Donsbach & Patterson, 2004).

Another difference between British and German (and continental) journalism is the organization of the newsroom and the editorial departments (Esser, 1998). Journalistic work in Great Britain is based on the division of labor; different tasks, from the research of information to the layout of the newspapers, are performed by different persons (the principle of editorial control). In Germany, on the other hand, the holistic organization still dominates; all tasks are or can be completed by one journalist, i.e., a journalist both reports and comments (the principle of journalistic autonomy).

These differences are also based on different press systems. The newspaper market in Great Britain is the most strongly commercialized market in Europe. In this market, the London tabloid newspapers dominate; they have to be sold in the street every day and thus try to attract readers with revelations, sensations, “sex and crime,” etc. Even The Times adjusted to this trend. In Germany, the regional and local press are still dominant; they are delivered to subscribers and do not have to convince their readers to buy them again each day. The sensation press is only represented by one title, Bild, although with a high circulation.

After 1945, a new beginning and the continuation of traditions also came together in Italian journalism. After restoration of press freedom, new newspapers were launched (Murialdi, 1995, 1996). The party system was fragmented. The parties needed their own outlets, which led to a revival of the opinion and party press. “Political parallelism” is reflected in this. According to Hallin and Mancini (2004), this is characteristic of the “Mediterranean and polarized pluralist model” of media organization. Italy (as well as other Southern European countries) is a prototype for this. Journalism has political and literary roots. A mass circulation press never fully emerged. “The style of journalism tends to give substantial emphasis to commentary. Newspapers tend to represent distinct political tendencies” (Hallin & Mancini, 2004, p. 98). Polarized pluralism is produced by many distinct parties, ranging over a wide political spectrum. In contrast, there is the “North/Central European or democratic corporatist model”. The Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands, and Germany adhere to this model, with typical forms of social regulation and with three coexistences: between political parallelism, a mass circulation press, and a high level of journalistic professionalization. Great Britain (and the USA) is assigned to the third model, the “North Atlantic or liberal model.” Commercial newspapers developed rather early, with little state involvement, marginalizing media with distinct ideological viewpoints. “In each, an informational style of journalism has become dominant and traditions of political neutrality tend to be strong – though with very important exceptions in the British press” (Hallin & Mancini, 2004, p. 198). A scandal shocked the public when the British tabloid News of the World, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, was closed in July 2011 due to allegations of phone hacking and corruption.

The development of journalism in Europe (as in other parts of the world) in the twentieth century was furthermore influenced by technological innovations. The discovery of wireless telegraphy resulted in the development of the radio as an auditory mass medium. All European countries introduced this new medium in the 1920s. Radio was mostly organized by the state or had close links to the state, except in Great Britain: here, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) adopted the character of a public service company in 1927 with a Royal Charter. The Italian fascists also introduced this model. The nature of audio and the organizational structures had consequences for journalism in broadcasting. The medium itself was often used for education and entertainment, but informational broadcasts were also included. Journalistic formats were first determined by the example of the press; over time they were supplemented by specific presentational forms such as reportages and interviews.

After World War II, another mass medium arose: television. Although its beginnings date back to well before the war, its distribution had been interrupted and delayed by hostilities. Thus television started more or less at the same time in the 1950s in most European countries (Bignell & Fickers, 2008) and rapidly established itself within a decade. In some countries (e.g., France) its organization remained close to the state; in the Eastern bloc it belonged completely to the state (as did radio). The majority of Western European countries followed the BBC model and offered TV in different variations as “public service” – in the Scandinavian countries, in Germany, in Austria, in Switzerland, and at first also in Italy. Journalism now also meant moving pictures and conveying information visually. In turn, new formats had to be created. This process can be divided into four periods (Bourdon, 2000).

At its beginnings TV news followed the radio model and used film reports like the newsreels. “First of all, mastering technology came before discovering news content” (Bourdon, 2000, p. 63). After overcoming marginality and uncertainty, TV news gained political value. The 1960s “were the golden age of current affairs programs” (Bourdon, 2000, p. 68). Only later, from the 1970s onward, did TV news became a specific genre, more or less presented by an “anchor,” adapted from the US example. Despite corporate control, journalists in public service TV were largely independent and relatively free from the pressure of audience ratings and viewers' preferences. Newscasts and magazine programs had a serious character and expressed criticism that was not welcomed within the world of politics. This changed in the 1980s when private broadcasting was permitted in Western Europe due to new transmission technologies such as cable and satellite. Many new broadcasting stations financed themselves exclusively with the help of commercials. Their radio and TV programs have to follow audience preferences. This also applied to journalism. The consequences were more “infotainment” and an increasing visual tabloidization of TV news. Bourdon (2000) suggests that this was a “triumph of deregulated television over journalism” (p. 76). Kevin Williams (2005) argues: “The development of European journalism in the twentieth century is portrayed as the gradual demise of the literary and the political form. The Anglo-American model is increasingly dominant in the European media systems, eroding the differences which characterized journalism in these societies” (p. 68).

Although this description may in principle be correct, national journalistic cultures did not simply dissolve everywhere. In some places they still maintain their individual character, e.g., in Greece (Papathanassopoulos, 2001). That is why Williams (2005) also states: “However, there are still sufficient differences to distinguish journalism in Europe” (p. 79; cf. Deuze 2002).

Prospects: Journalism in the Twenty-First Century

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, journalism in Europe (as in other parts of the world) is again undergoing extensive change. Politically, German reunification and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1990–1991 meant that in Eastern Europe formerly federated states became independent, and in general (re)democratization began. This also led to the reform of journalism in those countries (Aumente, Gross, Hiebert, Johnson, & Mills, 1999). Innovations and existing traditions combined in various ways. Publishing houses and broadcasting stations were acquired by Western media enterprises. However, they depend on domestic journalists who must be well informed about their respective countries.

The majority of the former Eastern bloc states have meanwhile become members of the European Union. Today, 27 countries belong to the EU. In this process of European unification, journalism has also acquired new responsibilities. Many expect it to contribute to the development of a European public sphere so that it becomes more than just an agglomeration of national publics.

As well as political causes, technological innovations have also changed journalism over the last two decades. Since the mid-1990s, the Internet has provided a new field of activity for journalists. “Old” media are present in the World Wide Web today. In addition, there are multimedia presentational forms that enable interactive communication. By means of Web 2.0, passive recipients have become active producers of user-generated content. Professional journalism has entered into competition with citizen journalists, especially with bloggers, etc.

Thus, today, European journalism is in a state of flux. Technological developments and innovations in the production and distribution of news have not only changed the profession but are “threatening the privileged status if not the survival of the old professional sort” (Preston, 2008, p. 1).

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