Mass Communication: Historical development of World Press

Historical development of World Press

The World Press Institute was founded in 1961. Since then, over 500 international journalists have participated in its fellowship program. The World Press Institute has been the premier organization in the United States. It provides international journalists with the opportunity to investigate the country. It was founded at Macalester College in 1961 by Harry Morgan. It is concerned with values, institutions, customs, regions and peoples. The world press institute is a private, nonprofit organization which is supported by a wide range of foundations.

The World Press Institute is located in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota. The initial fellowship of world press began in September 1961. There were 12 fellows who spend several months at Macalester College in St. Paul where they had a specialized designed curriculum emphasizing course in American History. They also engaged in informal weekly seminars with academic, business and professional leaders of the Twin Cities and gave more than 100 talks before American audiences.

The fundamental principles of press freedom are celebrated in may 3 every year. It helps to evaluate press freedom around the world. It helps to defend the media from attacks on their independence. It also pays tribute to journalists who have lost their lives in the exercise of their profession.
Each year over 100 national celebrations takes place to commemorate this Day. UNESCO leads the worldwide celebration by identifying the global thematic. It also organizes the main event in different parts of the world every year. ( World press Institute)

Before, the institute of World press was founded. People used to use different methods. Some of them are as follows:

1. Speech

It is the systematic way of information sharing by the help of sound. The history of human civilization started with the development of speech. Along with the origin of human being, they started to communicate using sound. But, at that time the communication was poor, unclear to each other and meaningless. Only around 10 thousand years ago, human being systematically started using language to each other. Sanskrit and Hebrew are regarded as the oldest languages of the World.

2. Writing

In the past, ancient people carved some signs and symbols in caves, trees, stones etc. The habitual signs gradually turned to be alphabets to them. Many Nepali alphabets have been derived from different signs. Cha alphabet has physical similarity with birds and chha alphabet has some similarity with an umbrella, etc. Chinese alphabets are nothing other than the past used pictures.

3. Acta-Diura

The Roman term act diurnal literally means ‘ daily activities’ which means it is like the gazette of the Government. It is used by the Roman Emperor Julius Caesar in 59 Bc to inform his soldiers about the wars. Caesar wanted to inform the public about important social and political happenings. Media scholars say that the Acta Diurna was the first mass media tool used ever in the history of the mass media.

4. Letter Blocks

In the 4^th century, people in china used wooden blocks which have carved symbols within them. It was used to print in paper and clothes. It was an idea to put embroidery in the fancy clothes of the time. During the 8^th century, Chinese started metal blocks for the printing purpose. A Chinese emperor printed Buddhist’s treatise “ Tripitaka’ with the help of block letters. Similarly, in Indus Valley civilization, Aryans used different stamps to print many alphabets.

Moving printed press in the history of the World

1.GUTTENBERG’S PRESS

A German citizen named Johannes Guttenberg invented printing press in 1453. The Johannes Gutenberg's printing press, which relied on moving metal type. It worked by casting individual letters and symbols of the type in the die, arranging them and pressing them to paper.

The History of modern mass media really begun from this point. He printed 300 Bibles and exported to Paris, the capital of France for the first time. His invention largely assisted the Renaissance in Europe. Guttenberg’s machine was a significant milestone in the media history.

2. PENNY PRESS

In the first half of 19^th century, the price of American newspaper was expensive as in Europe. Penny is the British unit of money like paisa in Nepal. Poor and lower class people could not buy and read papers at that time. A young journalist of 22 years founded the paper on September 3, 1833. The newspaper was on four letter-size pages and filled with human interest stories, short police reports, crime stories, sex scandals, etc. apart from political news.

The Penny Press was most famous for its low price, a penny per paper. It became popular with the American public because while other papers were priced around six cents. They were able to sell their paper for just a penny. The low price made newspapers and the news available to more than just upper-class citizens for the first time. The labor and lower classes were able to purchase a paper and read the news. As more people began buying papers throughout the country, the news and journalism became more important overall.

During the penny press, various changes were made to the newspapers. Newspapers also pay more attention to their surrounding communities and report of important information more diligently and objectively. Newspapers changed their coverage when they no longer relied on daily sales to make profit.

3. TELEGRAPH

Telegraph is the method of sending the messages over long distances by using wires that carry electrical signals. Samuel Morse introduced a new communication technology in 1830. Then, Claude Chappe, a French citizen made some contribution to building the foundation of the telegraph. This technology was called ‘ the telegraph’ which helped to type information sent from some distant place.

Teleprinter and telex were further development in this field. Alexander Graham Bell, an American invented the telephone in 1876. Then, the verbal message was sent successfully through the wire. Both telegraph and telephone were the milestones in the history of mass communication. They contributed enough to change the nature of news gathering of earlier times.

4. PHOTOGRAPHY

The word is derived from two Greek words for light (photo) and writing (graphein). The photography was not invented earlier . It had been experimenting in the early years. In 1839, Sir John Herschel used the first term “ Photography” then photographic process became public.