Lecture 3: Joseph Addison

Joseph Addison is seen as the first journalist of the western world, in a period known as the "restoration" ( starting in 1660). His tone was satirical and dry, and he used many elaborate insults to create humour at a time of superficial politeness which he often used in his writing. He was xenophobic and so many of his articles were targeting foreigners, and he often comes across as having an heir of superiority as he was very nationalistic. He often mocked the style of the empiricists from which economists developed, therefore he often satirised the nature of trade, such as in "The Adventures of a Shilling" and "The Royal Exchange". He also criticises intellectuals and "Authors" for being "hindered... from communicating their thoughts" saying that writings should be straight forward and to the point. He can be quite spiteful in his papers, such as in "On the Essay Form" where he alludes to "Vermin" who he intends to "make a string of them, in order to hang them up in one of my papers". This is a very no-nonsense approach and suggests that he is not afraid of alienating readers.

Early Journalism: Reformation, Printing, Civil War, Defoe, Addison and Hogarth

"Journalism is the business of turning information into money" - Chris Horrie

However, this requires the ability to print and distribute the information, which was made possible by Guttenburg's invention of the printing press in the 1440s. This was, according to Einstein, the most important invention ever, as without the ability to print and distribute information, discoveries such as the telescope or the laws of relativity would be discovered over and over again, but the public would never get to know about it. From this invention onwards, there were massive advances in technology, because the information was able to be distributed and therefore added to by many people.

Therefore, journalists are there to empower and spread knowledge and this was enabled by the printing press. Before this, monks sat in monasteries for their whole life times copying the bible out over and over again so that it wasn't lost. The chinese pictographic language became more and more complex and was near enough impossible to print or write in any way economically. The egyptian hieroglyphics were not much better than this. The Summarian cuneform script made up of dashes, know as the oldest modern language, was also difficult to distribute widely, however it marked a turning point moving from pictographic descriptions of the objects to more abstract symbols. Therefore, as late as the dark ages, distribution of knowledge was pretty much impossible. Even in the dark ages, around the ti me of the Lindesfarne Gospel, books had to be constantly copied because the ink faded and the pages fell apart. This made it difficult to write anything down, and this lack of information led to the term "dark ages" because we have very little information about this time period.


Looking at the "early modern period" / "Restoration:


6,000 BC – Chinese pictographic script
4,000 BC –Egyptian hieroglyphic writing
3,800 BC – Summarian cuneform Script
740 – Lindesfarne Gospel
1440s - Guttenburg’s printing press (Caxton 1420s)
1460s - Lorenzo Medici, Florence, The Renaissance
1517 - Martin Luther, 95 theses (reformation)
1540 - Henry VIIIth - Tudor wars of religion
1563 – Foxe’s Book of Martyrs - Pulpit as news media
1588 - Spanish Armada – Elizabeth Tudor
1620 - The Mayflower – American colonies / Stuarts
1641-1651 – The English Civil War
1660 – Restoration of Stuart monarchy Charles II / Restoration literature
1667 – John Locke – Essay on Human Understanding
1688 – The Glorious Revolution/ Act of Settlement /William of Orange
1690 – Battle of the Boyne (James II – attempted Jacobite restoration).
1700 – Issac Newton
1702 – The Daily Courant
1703 – Daniel Defoe – pilloried for his pamphleteering
1707 – Act of Union with Scotland (Battle of Culloden 1745)
1709 – The Spectator / The Tatler / Joseph Addison – Whig ascendancy
1731 – Hogarth – Gin Alley (‘photojournalism)
1775 – Samuel Johnson’s dictionary
1776 - American revolution
1789 – French revolution
1815 – Waterloo