Permalink : http://hdl.handle.net/2115/53603

The year 1609 marks the emergence of the newspaper in Europe with the publication of Relation in Strasbourg and Aviso in Wolfenbüttel. The expansion of the periodical information paper brought enormous ideological change to the European society in the age of the Enlightenment, laying the foundation for the social and political upheavals of the modern era. In Switzerland with Zurich as its cultural centre, newspapers began to be published 1621 at first on a weekly basis, and then became daily publications. This dramatically affected the flow of information within society, and made ideas and facts more permanent and easily accessible in the public domain in Switzerland. In Zurich, one of the representative newspapers was the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, which was founded in 1780 and continues to be in circulation until this day. This newspaper is one of only about 40 papers in the world today to still be in circulation after a tradition of more than 200 years of publication and is counted as a quality paper for intellectuals in spite of its small circulation numbers. In this paper, focus will be placed on discussing the history of Swiss and German newspapers as, to date, little research has been conducted on the historical development of these newspapers, especially in comparison to their English counterparts. Such a discussion is vital to better understand the impact of such media on society in Europe and could lead to the possibility of future comparative research on the influence of different information flows in media history in European countries.