History Extra Podcast

Episode: Breaking news! How stories spread in early modern Europe

Date: September 30, 2025
Host: Ellie Cawthorn
Guest: Joad Raymond Wren
Main Theme: Exploring how news was collected, disseminated, and consumed across Europe from the late Middle Ages to the dawn of modern mass media, dismantling myths and drawing parallels with today’s world.

Episode Overview

This episode features historian Joad Raymond Wren discussing the intricate and surprisingly rapid mechanisms by which news circulated across early modern Europe (c. 1400–1800). Drawing from his research and new book, The Great Exchange, Wren reveals how networks of merchants, diplomats, proto-journalists, and emerging postal services created an environment where news was both expected and discussed—even shaping concepts of European identity. The conversation digs into logistics, audiences, trust, translation challenges, and the enduring lessons for our digital age.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What Constituted "News" in Early Modern Europe?

[02:56 – 05:20]

• News wasn't limited to politics or war—it included trade, disasters, court affairs, wonders, and local sensations.
  • "If you look at newsletters...it'll be financial news...but more generally, news of war, battles, court activity, royal ceremonies, disasters, floods, plagues, earthquakes, and so on."
    (Joad, 03:14)
• News also entertained and revealed community morals, often blending fact and legend.
  • "I think news has always been to entertain as well as inform...strange births...They tell you something about how God is feeling about your community..."
    (Joad, 04:05)
• Importantly, news is defined less by content than by a shared understanding:
  • "What defines the news is a particular kind of communication. It's one person saying to another person, this is what happened...the exchange between these two people..."
    (Joad, 04:37)

2. An Appetite and Network for News

[05:20 – 07:25]

• Contrary to the “isolated villager” myth, people sought out and discussed news actively in public spaces (barbershops, markets, eventually coffee houses).
  • "The complaints that there's too much news...that the cobbler might be reading his newspaper rather than fixing your shoes, begins around 1500."
    (Joad, 05:42)
• News described as a “buzz” or “hum,” with linguistic metaphors common across many languages.
  • "News is presented as noisy...the buzz of news...in Dutch, German, French, Italian, Spanish and English."
    (Joad, 06:54)

3. Who Were the News Spreaders?

[07:25 – 10:24]

• Merchants: Important early drivers, acting as links between worlds.
• Ambassadors: With the rise of resident ambassadors (late 15th century), diplomats became habitual gatherers and exchangers of news, both for state and personal use.
  • "Ambassadors gather local news and send it back...and in return, are sent news gathered from other resident ambassadors..."
    (Joad, 08:17)
• Proto-journalists and Newswriters: By the 16th century, individuals gathered and distributed news, though not yet with an investigative mindset—more as compilers.
  • "They're not what we think of as investigators...they gather and relay news in a really kind of neutral fashion."
    (Joad, 09:33)

4. News Formats: The Rise of the Avviso

[10:24 – 12:26]

• Early paper newsletters (avvisi) established a recognizable format: paragraphs, each covering a discrete event, gathered by date/location, and circulated to subscribers.
  • "Avizi are collections of paragraphs of news...they look like, to our modern eye, individual news stories."
    (Joad, 11:18)
• The first printed newspaper (1605, Strasbourg) closely resembled these avvisi.

5. The Logistics: Postal Networks and Communication Speed

[12:26 – 22:13]

• The expansion of regular postal relays—from Milan’s service (1385) to continent-wide networks—was key.
• Letters/news traversed great distances, limited by how far a horse could travel before tiring.
  • "A horse will do this for between about 16 and 25 kilometers, and then they get tired...that's the speed at which a piece of news can move."
    (Joad, 17:56)
• Average news speeds: 1.5 to 5 km/h, with Europe-wide delivery taking from days to weeks.
  • "In reality, most stories travel...between about one and a half kilometers an hour and just under five. Venice to Brussels, Frankfurt, London—news could take 10 to 28 days."
    (Joad, 19:03, 19:49)
• These speeds established expectations—people waited for “updates” and developed habits of following ongoing stories.

6. Translation and Trust

[22:13 – 28:25]

• Most translation was done by practical amateurs (merchants, bilinguals); “jobbing translators” did much of the work.
  • "A lot of merchants develop functional language skills...jobbing translators...talented at gisting."
    (Joad, 22:41)
• Literal translation was expected for news fidelity; deviations could result in legal punishment.
  • "There is an expectation that when you translate, you will translate literally...people being thrown into prison for fiddling with translations..."
    (Joad, 24:13)
• News paragraphs preserved metadata (dates, places)—“citing your sources” as a trust mechanism.
  • "This is a habit of preserving information about dates and place in the paragraph..."
    (Joad, 25:41)
  • "It's citing your sources."
    (Ellie, 26:56)
    "Absolutely, but right up front... preservation of metadata."
    (Joad, 26:58)
• Readers applied skepticism, factoring in delays and provenance, and openly debated authenticity.

7. The End of the Networked Era: Rise of Mass Media

[28:25 – 32:51]

• Nineteenth century: new paper (wood pulp), steam-powered presses, commercialization, nationalization of news.
• Shift from collaborative, distributed, pan-European sharing to centralized, mass-produced, and often nationally-focused newspapers.
  • "We see the kind of decline of this spontaneous network...and the rise of commercial ways of communicating the news."
    (Joad, 29:37)
  • "The history of news becomes the history of newspapers, and the history of newspapers becomes the history of nations."
    (Joad, 31:03)
• Earlier networks fostered both local and European senses of identity through the act of sharing and discussing news.
  • "The sharing of news of Europe afforded people a sense that they were European...a shared community."
    (Joad, 31:37)

8. Parallels and Lessons for Today

[32:51 – 36:31]

• Early modern news networks were decentralized, diverse, and shaped by participatory exchange.
• Echoes found in the early days of social media, before algorithmic “bubbles.”
  • "The news paragraph of early modern Europe existed as a kind of network...not organized through a specific design, but through collaborative activity of the agents in between."
    (Joad, 34:25)
• Key lessons: the value of transparent sourcing (metadata), and communally constructed meaning over time—a patience for updates and incomplete stories rather than immediate, polished takes.
  • "News is an ongoing unfolding process...Combined with the responsibility in preserving the origins and the source...something that we could learn from the early modern period."
    (Joad, 36:04)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "News is presented as noisy...the buzz of news...in Dutch, German, French, Italian, Spanish and English."
  – Joad, 06:54

• "They're not what we think of as investigators...they gather and relay news in a really kind of neutral fashion."
  – Joad, 09:33

• "A horse will do this for between about 16 and 25 kilometers, and then they get tired and their spleen begins to overheat."
  – Joad, 18:04 (an evocative image of logistical challenges)

• "Absolutely, but right up front...preservation of metadata."
  – Joad, 26:58 (on citing sources)

• "The interest in time and space and communication geographies and that responsibility in preserving the metadata in the paragraph of news...is something that we could learn from the early modern period."
  – Joad, 36:04

Suggested Timestamps for Important Segments

• 02:20 – First mention of regular news expectations and the emergence of networks
• 07:34 – The critical roles of merchants and ambassadors in spreading news
• 10:37 – Introduction and significance of the avviso (newsletter format)
• 12:35 – Development of postal relays and their impact on the speed of news
• 17:04 – The physical speed limitations of news (horse, relay stations)
• 19:27 – Real travel times and examples (London to Paris, etc.)
• 22:35 – The mechanics of translation and its impacts on fidelity/trust
• 25:41 – Early modern practices of metadata and source citation
• 28:37 – The end of collaborative networks and the rise of mass media
• 33:06 – Parallels and lessons from early modern news for the digital age

Episode Takeaways

• News in early modern Europe was surprisingly interconnected, with regular updates and lively debate, facilitated by overlapping networks of merchants, ambassadors, and early newswriters—and underpinned by ingenious logistics and communal habits.
• Transparent communication and shared skepticism helped build trust; diversity and decentralization fostered robust cross-border dialogue—qualities with renewed relevance in the age of social media.
• The evolution from this vibrant, collaborative model to centralized, commercial mass media changed both the experience and the meaning of news.
• Early modern habits—citing sources, acknowledging uncertainty, and anticipating updates—offer valuable lessons for how we evaluate and consume information today.

Guest Book Mentioned:
The Great Exchange: Making the News in Early Modern Europe by Joad Raymond Wren

Host: Ellie Cawthorn
Produced by: The History Extra podcast / BBC History Magazine Team
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