Talk:Avisa Relation oder Zeitung

Morison's red herring
I can't escape the impression that Morrison had only seen facsimiles, and was trying to be too clever by half. The Dutch couranten are not folio sized at all, but a half-folio single-sheet, following the existing handbill format. On this basis we should presumably call them "news-sheets" or "newsbills" rather than "newspapers". The first real folio newspapers were the Italian weeklies printed from mid-century (but printed as continuous text, without columns). The first daily news serial was a quarto printed in Leipzig from 1650 - but by Morison's definition this "daily newsbook" was not a "daily newspaper"!

Heinz-Dietrich Fischer's 1972 functional definition (publicity, seriality, periodicity, actuality) still does it far better than any attempt to define newspapers by format. --Paularblaster 22:04, 1 November 2007 (UTC)