The Printing Press, and other technologies
The invention of the printing press and the beginnings of journalism are synonymous. It was the ability to disseminate periodicals to large groups of people that made what we now call journalism a comprehensible concept (Emery).
In fact, the development of the printing press, with its capacity to produce a limited and yet vastly improved (as compared with hand-copying) number of copies of any publication contributed to the characters of the first newspapers. They were highly local, focusing on the events of a very small geographical area (University, Journalism). Not until later did papers begin to report on national events, and most respected papers remain, to this day, locally produced.
Yet the printing press was not the only technology that contributed to the development of the media as we have it today.
