Coranto

Page from a coranto from 2 December 1620

Corantos or currantoes were early informational broadsheets, the precursors to modern newspapers. Beginning around the 14th century, a system developed[where?] in which a focal point gathered letters containing news and philosophical discussion, bundled them and redistributed them to various correspondents. The banking-house of Fugger (prominent from the late-15th century) became particularly known for its organized system of collecting and routing such letters, whose contents often leaked to outsiders. Regular, printed corantos emerged in 1609 in Europe. These "forerunners of modern newsletters" comprised "single-page collections of news items from foreign journals. They were circulated by the Dutch early in the 17th century", with "English and French translations [...] published in Amsterdam". Early corantos leveraged off the

"extension of the system of 'posts' whereby the imperial couriers were permitted to carry letters for individuals. The beginnings of that extension of the system cannot be documented before the middle of the sixteenth century, and occur first in Austria and Germany. From which it followed that the earliest dated, and numbered, publication of news [occurred] in Central and West Europe."

By the early-17th century the "vernacular term 'coranto' or 'corranto' had already been in use on the Continent for at least two generations, and the word 'corrantier' was the professional designation for a news-writer. 'Coranto' was the usual description applied about this time to any sort of printed news found in England." Each coranto edition might run to five hundred or one thousand copies.

This method of disseminating news continued until the 18th century.

The English-language term "newspaper" first appeared in 1667; prior to that, a variety of terms characterised this genre, including "paper", "newsbook", "pamphlet", "broadsheet", and "coranto".

References

  1. ↑ Hughes, Jane Elizabeth; MacDonald, Scott B. (2002). International Banking: Text and Cases. Addison-Wesley series in finance. Addison Wesley. p. 16. ISBN 9780201635355. Retrieved 28 June 2026. One of the most prominent German banking families in the late Middle Ages was the Fuggers, often referred to as the bankers to the Hapsburgs. In the late fifteenth century, the Fuggers emerged as a powerful merchant family in the city of Augsburg.
  2. ↑ Smith, Anthony (2003). "Newspapers". In Mokyr, Joel (ed.). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History. Vol. 5. Oxford University Press. p. 75. ISBN 9780195105070. Retrieved 29 March 2026. The Fugger family, German bankers, issued regular newsletters in the fifteenth century and are generally recognized as the initiators of news dissemination in the West.
  3. ↑ newsletter - Retrieved from Britannica.com on 28 June 2026.
  4. ↑ Morison, Stanley (2009) [1954]. "The origins of the newspaper". In McKitterick, David John (ed.). Selected Essays on the History of Letter-forms in Manuscript and Print. Vol. 2 (reprint ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 332. ISBN 9780521184953. Retrieved 19 July 2026.
  5. ↑ Morison, Stanley (2009) [1954]. "The origins of the newspaper". In McKitterick, David John (ed.). Selected Essays on the History of Letter-forms in Manuscript and Print. Vol. 2 (reprint ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 333. ISBN 9780521184953. Retrieved 2 August 2026.
  6. ↑ Smith, Anthony (2003). "Newspapers: Historical Overview". In Mokyr, Joel (ed.). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History. Vol. 5. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 75. ISBN 9780195105070. Retrieved 19 July 2026. A single coranto might enjoy an edition of five hundred copies or perhaps one thousand.
  7. ↑ as "News Papers" - "newspaper". Oxford English Dictionary (online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)