Monetized Gossip

A (very) brief history of news

In his 1964 book, Understanding Media, Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan observed that bad news sells good news: natural disasters and violent murders capture attention. Once our eyeballs are trained on the page, that reporting is subsidized by businesses selling “solutions” to all our woes.

Nevermind that these solutions are often to non-problems—a fact McLuhan understood. As media theorist Neil Postman wrote 21 years later,

What the advertiser needs to know is not what is right about the product but what is wrong about the buyer.

This tug-of-war between an obsession with discord and strife and the purported harmony provided by an aspirational business product can be found in the origins of the news industry.

The first few centuries of news involved merchants sharing tales from strange lands with other merchants. Such gossip was good for business: these people here have this; this land is now being occupied by those people, so don’t go there. This news prototype was oral or handwritten and became an important currency for doing international business.

Over time, local rulers became interested in such gossip, as it provided intel about their neighbors. The first instance of monetized gossip (which is basically what news was, and in many ways, remains) occurred when medieval Italian elites paid for subscription newsletter services in the 16th century. The avissi hand wrote a few dozen copies of stories collected from merchants and sold them to landlords and kings for exorbitant prices.

This era coincided with the invention of the printing press, a technology that made Martin Luther the first viral star. There’s no Reformation without the ability to quickly copy and distribute his Ninety-five Theses, something Luther never intended when nailing his handwritten letter to the church door. (Luther later influenced Nazi Germany with his antisemitic pamphlets, so his legacy is mixed.)

Printing shops made the distribution of information accessible to more people than ever, though that too was a controversial blessing: printers would have their shops closed if they offended the local government. News evolved as a lesson in selective reporting. No surprise, then, that fake news and misinformation also resides at the heart of this industry. If kings didn’t want their citizens to know about a battlefield loss, well, that loss became a victory in the morning edition.

Indulgences—"a way to reduce the amount of punishment one has to undergo for sins"—were an early sign that printed information generates income. This phenomenon helped shape the burgeoning press industry, inspiring news gatherers to regularly publish stories for a growing base of subscribers. Political and business leaders became increasingly dependent on stories from lands far and near. A weird mix emerged that we’re still grappling with today: elites wanted reliable information so they could more accurately do business or war, while the public loved sensational narratives irrespective of their validity. Printers tried to scratch all itches.