Early permutations of what we modern folk might recognize as journalism, emerged in Renaissance era Europe,

so around the 15th and 16th centuries. And there were precursor publications,

newsletters basically, leading up to that time. And these newsletters saw success and were most

long-lived in trade-focused regions like Venice, but also further eastern parts of China.

These newsletters were usually one-sheet explications of things that have happened, alongside data,

like the value of certain trade goods, expected arrival times for ships, and government-decrete tax figures.

The idea was that you could learn all this stuff from people on the street, and by visiting

all sorts of experts running different businesses down by the docks and working at government

buildings. But these one sheets aggregated such data, did all the work for you, and compiled a

bunch of useful stuff into a single document, and people who could make use of this information,

or who were just interested in around-town happenings and had the monetary resources to pay for such things would be willing and able to invest in receiving it each day, or in some cases each week or month, or at some other publishing cadence.

These newsletters were originally handwritten, which put a cap on how many

could be produced in a given period. With the emergence of the printing press and movable

type in Europe, that scale massively increased, allowing newsletter businesses to expand in scope,

because rather than having to handwrite dozens or hundreds of individual documents,

you could write out the day's newsletter in movable type once and then use that assembled

movable type plate to print off as many copies as you wanted in a relatively short period of time,

saving a lot of money and effort and allowing for far faster turnaround,

which also opened up the possibility

of publishing more than one of these newsletters each day, if warranted. The funding model for this

early newsletter-based news distribution system was straightforward. Usually it was a subscription

paid by the recipient of the newsletter directly to the person publishing that newsletter.

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