{"id":10694,"date":"2010-08-27T12:47:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-27T12:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mugshotmonday.com\/site2\/i-stumbled-across-this-historical-fact-while\/"},"modified":"2010-08-27T12:47:00","modified_gmt":"2010-08-27T12:47:00","slug":"i-stumbled-across-this-historical-fact-while","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mugshotmonday.com\/site2\/i-stumbled-across-this-historical-fact-while\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"
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I stumbled across this historical fact while reading Thomas C. Leonard’s 1995 book, News for All: America’s Coming-of-Age With the Press. He writes, “When Americans chose the news, they were often not simply thinking of stories they wished to read; they were thinking of another reader.” <\/p>\n

Leonard’s example is the Boston News-Letter, first published in 1704. Its proprietor, John Campbell, deliberately left blank space in its pages so subscribers could annotate and otherwise append their ideas and “news” to the newspaper. These amendments weren’t aimless jottings, either. Newspapers were routinely shared after purchase, and the notes readers added in the spaces and margins were designed to edify the friend or acquaintance the reader next forwarded his paper to.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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“The Proto-Internet of 1704<\/a>”<\/em> by Jack Shafer<\/p>\n

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[via<\/a>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Great story that I had not heard of. This made me think of an idea:\u00a0 It might be an interesting experiment to get a crowd of people who are well versed in commenting\/twittering\/facebooking, and hand out little booklets where each one has an individual short news story, or photo, or something on the cover, and then ask everyone to hand-write their comments inside and pass it on. Use serious news stories as well as absurd\/funny photos. They could write their initials on others’ comments they “like”. Be sure to tell everyone to seek out the booklets to check on what others have written so they can add more.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I stumbled across this historical fact while reading Thomas C. Leonard’s 1995 book, News for All: America’s Coming-of-Age With the Press. He writes, “When Americans chose the news, they were often not simply thinking of stories they wished to read; they were thinking of another reader.” Leonard’s example is the Boston News-Letter, first published in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[290,2984],"class_list":["post-10694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-quote","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-journalism","tag-socialmedia","post_format-post-format-quote"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mugshotmonday.com\/site2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mugshotmonday.com\/site2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mugshotmonday.com\/site2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mugshotmonday.com\/site2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mugshotmonday.com\/site2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mugshotmonday.com\/site2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10694\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mugshotmonday.com\/site2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mugshotmonday.com\/site2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mugshotmonday.com\/site2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}