In early modern Europe (1500–1700), journalism originally consisted of handwritten newsletters used to convey political, military, and economic news quickly and efficiently throughout the continent. They were often written anonymously and delivered through a complex system of couriers. They are divided into the Italian avvisi (Italian: [avˈviːzi]; singular: avviso) and the German contemporary equivalent Zeitungen (literally: newspapers). From 1605 in Germany, and in the next decades in other European countries, the newsletters started to be printed as well. Because handwritten material was less subject to censorship and quicker to be produced, handwritten newsletters continued to be produced in parallel with printed newspapers for all the 17th century, and sporadically also in the 18th century.
Origin The avvisi found their origins, and peaked, in the early modern Italian world in Rome and Venice. In the Middle Ages, diplomats, merchants, and scholars would gather information and keep records about news that were relevant to them through journals, account books, and letters. The latter of these became part of a complex network of correspondence, such as that compiled in the Fuggerzeitungen, the Medici court's epistolary archive, and the Urbinate collection in the Vatican Library. Over time, this information that had been provided for free eventually was sold by specialists and distributed by couriers in order to meet the high demand for such a product. Multiple factors in 16th century Venice gave rise to the print culture in which the Avvisi originated. These were the growing local publishing industry, an Italian culture that encouraged the recording of private and public events, the relatively high literacy and education of the aristocracy that produced and consumed print, and the participation in European political and commercial correspondence networks by Venetians as a necessity of trade. In fact, Venice's print industry was so large that its 150 presses by the end of the 16th century more than double its closest rival (Paris), and accounted for between one seventh and one eighth of the European output in that period. However, the Italians' production of news would eventually fall behind in output and readership to German news writers. Germany and the Spanish Netherlands followed a similar process to Italy later on in the century, with Antwerp and Cologne emerging as significant producers of news sheets, in their case called Zeitungen. These reports originated more significantly from commercial sources than their Italian predecessors. German zeitungen reached the peak of (preserved) production in the 1590s, with an almost six-fold increase in the number of zeitungen in the information distribution records of the Fugger banking family (Fuggerzeitungen) between 1578 and 1595.
Content
The content and character of the avvisi differed between cities, especially between Rome and Venice. Roman avvisi contained ecclesiastical, political, and criminal intrigue, taking advantage of opposing factions willing to divulge state secrets or official gossip for their own benefit. These were then read by church and government officials as well as the nobility. Such was the partisan (and sometimes scandalous) comments on public affairs that they became censored by the Pope and several copyists were imprisoned or executed. Venetian avvisi, however, were more conservative in their coverage of such events and more preoccupied with commercial matters. This is not to say that there was no public criticism of public figures in Venice, but rather they often took other forms such as in satire performed during the carnival of Venice and other such festivals as well as pasquinades. Both cities' avvisi became more diversified over time, eventually anticipating modern newspapers. Italian states originally sourced individual news pieces from German regions in Italian, but over time they began receiving them as part of complete translations of zeitungen. As a consequence, news from Central and Western Europe began to spread throughout Italy in almost identical versions due to the consolidation of news sources, and vice versa through a similar process. The German zeitungen were also somewhat different in content to the avvisi, usually a third shorter and would mention much fewer people. In addition, zeitungen would usually report four or five items, whereas the number of items and detail in avvisi would vary based on proximity to the events. Zeitungen would also cover military aspects of conflicts in more detail than the politically and legally-inclined avvisi.
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