Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/06921_Field_TCUM T486.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 1KB | 16 lines

participation. This participation is communal rather than
private, inclusive rather than exclusive. Further features of its
form can best be grasped by a few random views taken from
outside the present form of the press. Historically, for example,
newspapers had waited for news to come to them. The first
American newspaper, issued in Boston by Benjamin Harris on
September 25, 1690, announced that it was to be “furnished
once a month (or if any Glut of Occurrences happen, oftener).”
Nothing could more plainly indicate the idea that news was
something outside and beyond the newspaper. Under such
rudimentary conditions of awareness, a principal function of
the newspaper was to correct rumors and oral reports, as a
dictionary might provide “correct” spellings and meanings for
words that had long existed without the benefit of dictionaries.
Fairly soon the press began to sense that news was not only to
be reported but also gathered, and, indeed, to be made. What