Newspapers without journalists

The development of newspapers neither introduced nor replaced organised news dissemination. News usually went slower by the printed newspaper than by word of mouth and by written newsletters, until the telegraph. Initially, newspapers were more a printer's than a writer's project and consequently almost two and a half centuries elapsed before the newsroom became an integrated part of the newspaper house. In the meantime newsgathering and content providers were organised outside the print shop. The systems for production and content were occasionally integrated when an extended circle of owners met to plan the next issues of a journal or a newspaper. This article compares some features of these developments in London during the eighteenth century and in the Scandinavian capitals in the nineteenth century. London was far ahead of the Scandinavian capitals in the size and sophistication of text production during the eighteenth century. However, from the middle of the nineteenth century, new technology seemed to close this gap.