In 1928 there were 337 journals published in Paris, of which two were official dailies. There were 127 sporting newspapers, of which five were dailies. The number of newspapers published in the provinces was 3,100, including publications of all descriptions. France was the first country to have national newspapers with sales of over t,000,o0o. The sale was stimulated more by two serial stories run by each paper than by news, but since the war news has become more conspicuous in such widely circulated papers as the Petit Parisien (1,200,000), Le Petit Journal (5,000, 000), Le Matin (900,000), and the Journal (800,000), which may be described as the "Big Four of the Paris Press." Following upon these in point of sales comes the Echo de Paris (800,000). The better-known political papers are Le Temps, the venerable Journal des Debats (founded in 1789 by Baudouin), La Liberte, L'Oeuvre, L'Humcznite and the Ere Nouvelle. The Figaro (begun 1854, but a daily from 1866) maintains its unique position. Characteristics of all the popular Press are still signed articles and serial stories. There is a popular daily illustrated paper, Excelsior, established 1910, and numerous dailies devoted to sport, finance, the drama, motoring, etc. Every phase of politics is rep resented in the Paris press, from Legitimist to Communist, and every trade and interest has its organ.
Improvements have taken place in the mechanical equipment of the French press in recent years, and there has been a marked increase in illustrated weeklies and monthlies. The best known weeklies are the dignified Illustration and the gay Vie Parisienne, which flourished during the war, the literary Annales Politiques et Litteraires, and a light variety paper Nos Loisirs. The Revue des Deux Mondes, the Mercure de France and the Revue Heb domadaire are the best known monthlies. The sale of the French press is pushed all over Europe. The chief news agency, Havas, has official support. There is also a universal wireless service which broadcasts news and propaganda. It is a subsidiary of the wireless company, which holds a concession from the State.
English journalism in France was for nearly a century mainly associated with Galignani's Messenger (1814-1904), which was killed by the competition of the Paris edition of the New York Herald. It had been preceded by Sampson Perry's Argus (r809), a Napoleonic organ. In May 1905 a new era of English journalism on the Continent began by the institution of the Paris edition of the London Daily Mail. There are three other papers printed in English : the Chicago Tribune, the New York Herald-Tribune and the Paris Times (evening).
Printed newspapers in Germany begin with the Avisa Relation oder Zeitung (1609), followed by the Frankfurter Journal, in 1615 of Egenolph Emmel. The following year saw the foundation of the Frankfurter Oberpostamtszeitung—continued until the year 1866 as Frankfurter Postzeitung. Fulda appears to have been the next German town to possess a newspaper, then Hildesheim (1619) and Herford (1630). In the course of the century almost all German cities of the first rank possessed their respective jour nals. The earliest in Leipzig bears the date 166o. The Rostocker Zeitung was founded in 171o. The Hamburgischer Correspondent (1714) was originally published under the name of Holsteinische Zeitungs-Correspondenz, two years earlier, and was almost the only German newspaper which really drew its foreign news from "our own correspondent." Berlin had in the i8th century two papers, those of Voss (the Vossische Zeitung, 1722) and of J. K. P. Spener (1749-1827 ; the Spener'sche Zeitung, or Berlinische Nctchrichten, 5772). Some half-dozen papers which glimmered in the surrounding darkness were the reservoirs whence the rest replenished their little lamps. On the whole, it may be said that the German newspapers were of very small account until after the outbreak of the French Revolution. Meanwhile the ms. news-letters, as in earlier days, continued to enjoy a large circula tion in Germany. Many came from London. The correspond ence, for instance, known under the name of "Mary Pinearis"— that, apparently, of a French refugee settled in London—had a great German circulation between 1725 and 1735. Another series was edited by the Cologne gazetteer, Jean Ignace de Roderique, also a French refugee, and remembered as the subject of a characteristic despatch from Frederick II. of Prussia to his en voy in that city, enclosing too ducats to be expended in hiring a stout fellow with a cudgel to give a beating to the gazetteer as the punishment for an offensive paragraph. The money, it seems, was earned, for Roderique was well-nigh killed. At Berlin itself, Franz Hermann Ortgies carried on a brisk trade in these news-letters (1728-5735), until he too came under displeasure on account of them, was kept in prison several months, and then exiled for life. Nor, indeed, can any journal of a high order be mentioned of prior appearance to the Allgemeine Zeitung, founded at Leipzig by the bookseller Cotta (at first under the title of Neueste Weltkunde) in 1798. Its articles gave offence to the Austrian court, and the paper had to change both its title and its place of publication. It had been commenced at Tiibingen, and removed to Stuttgart ; it was then transferred to Ulm, and again to Augsburg. It was Cotta's aim to make this the organ of states men and publicists, to reach the public through the thinkers, to hold an even balance between the rival parties of the day, and to provide a trustworthy magazine of materials for the historians to come; and, in the course of time, his plan was so worked out as to raise the Allgemeine Zeitung into European fame. Cotta was also the founder, at various periods, of the Morgenblatt, which became famous for its critical ability and tact, of Vesperus, of Das Inland, of Nemesis, of the Oppositionsblatt of Weimar (for a time edited by Bertuch), and even of the Archives Parisiennes.