The Trade in News by John B. Thompson

I found this article in the packet, extermly interesting. It talks of the earliest forms of communication before the printing press. To think that people at one point in europe got their news via word of mouth from pedlers or clergy is astonishing to look back on. Today we can simply click a mouse to get up to the minute information from the smallest town in the entire world and it is more than likely accurate. You can keep in touch with a relative in a different country by picking up the phone or sending them an email, and get feedback instantly. To imajine a world where you would not get any news of importance for maybe a week after it happened is completly unrealistic in today's terms. Also, as word of mouth was a main source of communication, we can only imagine how story's could have changed from person to person, before the news became completly wrong from the original story. The printing press and a daily newspaper clearly changed the world for the better. It is kind of sad,however, to see that technology was so needed and helped back then, but the advances in technology now take a simple daily publication and basically make that too outdated.