by Edward Penn

Created on: May 26, 2008

Since the dawn of civilization man has craved information and hungered knowledge.
The earliest known evidence of an organized news media can be traced all the way back to the first century b.c., when Julius Caesar ordered a news bulletin to be posted around Rome for the citizens to read, the bulletin was titled Acta Diurna which translated means Daily Events and contained important information and current events. The earliest evidence of a newspaper, or a distributed news bulletin, can be traced back to 750 a.d. in China.

These early forms of news media were basically hand written, until the 1400's when Johannes Gutenburg developed the first printing press. For the first time in history, publications could be mass produced allowing more people than ever before to be exposed to news media, making the printing press the single greatest innovation and contribution to news media at that time.

Newsletters began appearing in Europe around the 1500's in Germany, England, and the Netherlands. In America similar publications were gaining popularity in the 1700's. Publications like Alexander Hamilton's The Federalist's Papers and Thomas Paine's Common Sense played a large role in forming the very democracy that Americans enjoy today.

By the 1800's news letters evolved into newspapers not unlike the ones of today, and the newspaper business was becoming one of the most profitable industries in America, producing some of the wealthiest men in America. Many of the newspapers that were founded in the 1800's went on to become world renowned publications which are in circulation today, like the New York Times, founded in 1851, and the Washington Post, founded in 1877.

Until the 1900's there had only been one category of news media, print media, little had changed in over a thousand years. That was then, the technological advances that were introduced beginning in the 1920's brought about a revolution in news media that continues to this day. It all began with radio, in the 1920's the first radio broadcasts were aired which soon marked the beginning of broadcast media. The next addition to the broadcast media family were newsreels which came about with the invention of motion pictures. Next on the scene was television, which by the 1960's had made newsreels obsolete, and in 1968 ABC, CBS, and NBC debuted the first ever Nightly News.

The Federal Communications Commission was established in 1934, charged with regulating all communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and

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