Andrew Pettegree

Long before the invention of printing, people wanted information. Andrew Pettegree tracks the history of news in ten countries over the course of four centuries—from gossip, civic ceremony, sermons, and proclamations to printed pamphlets, edicts, journals to the local and worldwide news as we know it today. In The Invention of the News: How the World Came to Know About Itself, Pettegree investigates who controlled the news and who reported it, news as a tool of political protest and religious reform, issues of privacy and titillation, reliability and trust.