59 Fun Facts About Media

In which German city did Gutenberg print his 42-line Bible in the 1450s?

Gutenberg printed the 42-line Bible at Mainz, his home city on the Rhine; about 180 copies were finished around 1455 using his oil-based ink and hand-cast metal type.

The Relation, recognised as the world's first newspaper, began printing in 1605 in which city?

Johann Carolus, a Strasbourg bookbinder turned printer, gathered news from postmen and traders for the Relation; some historians call its book-like format a 'newsbook' rather than a newspaper.

Benjamin Day's New York Sun, launched in 1833, was the first successful newspaper of what kind?

A penny paper, the Sun cost one cent, a sixth of its six-cent rivals; newsboys hawked it on the street and advertising, not subscriptions, paid its way.

The term 'yellow journalism' grew out of an 1890s circulation war between which two New York publishers?

Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst fought over the Yellow Kid, a comic strip Hearst lured away from Pulitzer's World in 1896; historians now doubt their papers actually caused the Spanish-American War.

Which university administers the Pulitzer Prizes, established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer?

Columbia University in New York administers the prizes, which Pulitzer's will endowed along with the university's journalism school; the Pulitzer board announces winners each spring.

Which newspaper carries the motto 'All the News That's Fit to Print' and is nicknamed 'the Gray Lady'?

Founded in 1851, it has won more Pulitzers than any other publication and was the paper that first printed the Pentagon Papers.

Which Japanese daily held the Guinness record for the world's largest circulation, over 10 million copies?

The Yomiuri Shimbun, founded in Tokyo in 1874, was certified by Guinness in 2002 with a combined morning-and-evening circulation above 14 million; it also owns the Yomiuri Giants baseball team.

What did Paul Julius Reuter use in 1850 to carry stock prices between Aachen and Brussels?

Homing pigeons bridged the gap in the telegraph line between Aachen and Brussels, beating the train by hours; Reuter moved to London in 1851, and the Morning Advertiser became his first newspaper subscriber in 1858.

Five New York papers founded the Associated Press in 1846 to share the cost of covering which war?

News of The Mexican-American War arrived by pony express and boat, so five New York dailies pooled the cost in 1846 to form the Associated Press, a cooperative that publishes the AP Stylebook.

Which single Morse letter did Marconi receive as the first transatlantic radio signal in December 1901?

The letter S, three dots in Morse, was sent from Poldhu in Cornwall to Signal Hill, Newfoundland, about 2,200 miles away; Marconi shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics for wireless telegraphy.

What did Pittsburgh's KDKA report in its famous first broadcast on 2 November 1920?

Presidential election returns were read out as they came in: listeners heard Harding beat Cox before the newspapers could print it. Westinghouse owned the station, which grew out of an engineer's amateur transmitter.

How is the BBC principally funded?

A licence fee on households with a television, set by the government, pays for most BBC services; the corporation carries no advertising on its UK channels.

Franklin D. Roosevelt's radio addresses to the nation between 1933 and 1944 are known by what name?

Fireside chats was the name CBS executive Harry Butcher gave the talks; the first, eight days into the presidency on 12 March 1933, explained the banking crisis to some 60 million listeners.

Orson Welles's 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast landed its Martians in Grover's Mill, in which US state?

Grover's Mill, New Jersey, a hamlet near Princeton, was the landing site; the legend of nationwide panic was largely manufactured by newspapers eager to discredit radio, and a ratings survey found only about 2 percent listening.

Which Scottish inventor first publicly demonstrated a working television in London in 1926?

John Logie Baird used a mechanical system with a spinning Nipkow disc; he went on to manage the first transatlantic television transmission and the first colour pictures in 1928, and sold thermal undersocks on the side.

What was the first image Philo Farnsworth transmitted on his electronic television in 1927?

A straight line, scratched on a glass slide, was the first picture sent on 7 September 1927 in his San Francisco lab; Farnsworth had sketched the idea at 14 while ploughing an Idaho field in parallel rows.

The first TV commercial, aired in New York on 1 July 1941, was for which product?

Bulova watches paid about nine dollars for a spot showing a clock over a map of the United States on WNBT before a Brooklyn Dodgers game; the station had received its commercial licence that day.

Which 1953 event, watched by 27 million in Britain, was the first of its kind televised in full?

The coronation of Elizabeth II on 2 June 1953 was the first shown live in full; Churchill's cabinet wanted the cameras kept out of Westminster Abbey and the young Queen overruled them.

Which candidate did TV viewers think won the first televised US presidential debate in 1960?

John F. Kennedy looked tanned and rested beside Nixon, who had refused make-up, sweated under the lights and wore a grey suit that blended into the set; about 70 million watched on 26 September 1960.

Which CBS anchor, "the most trusted man in America", signed off with "And that's the way it is"?

Walter Cronkite anchored the CBS Evening News from 1962 to 1981, broke the news of Kennedy's death on air, and his 1968 verdict that Vietnam was a stalemate shook the White House.

Which CBS broadcaster took on Senator McCarthy on See It Now in 1954, signing off 'Good night, and good luck'?

Edward R. Murrow had made his name with wartime radio reports from the Blitz that opened 'This is London'; after the 9 March 1954 broadcast, viewer letters ran about 15 to 1 in his favour.

Which Ted Turner network, launched 1 June 1980, was the first 24-hour news channel?

CNN went on air from Atlanta on 1 June 1980 with anchors David Walker and Lois Hart; its round-the-clock coverage of the 1991 Gulf War from Baghdad made it a global brand.

What was the first clip played on MTV when it launched at 12:01 a.m. on 1 August 1981?

Video Killed the Radio Star by the Buggles opened MTV, a pointed choice for a music-video channel; the song reached only number 40 in the US despite topping charts in 16 countries.

In the Nielsen television ratings, one rating point represents what?

One percent of TV households in the measured market equals one rating point, so a 10 rating means a tenth of homes with sets were tuned in; Nielsen measures hardest in the February, May, July and November sweeps.

Time magazine's first 'Man of the Year', in 1927, was which aviator?

Charles Lindbergh was chosen after his solo Atlantic flight, partly because editors regretted not putting him on the cover after it; the title became Person of the Year in 1999.

Which magazine, first published in 1888, is recognisable by the yellow border on its cover?

National Geographic first printed photographs in 1905, with a spread of Lhasa, and ran early colour Autochromes in the 1910s; the yellow border has framed its cover since 1910.

What was unusual about the physical format of Reader's Digest?

Its pages were half the normal size of a magazine, a pocket 'digest' format for condensed articles from other titles; it lost the US circulation crown to Better Homes and Gardens in 2009.

Which Canadian thinker coined the phrases 'the medium is the message' and 'global village'?

Marshall McLuhan argued in Understanding Media (1964) that a medium reshapes society regardless of its content, using the electric light bulb, which carries no content at all, as his example.

In which year was the FCC's Fairness Doctrine, in force since 1949, scrapped?

The FCC voted to abolish the doctrine in August 1987 after Ronald Reagan vetoed a bill from Congress writing it into law; its disappearance is often blamed for the rise of one-sided talk radio.

Which two Washington Post reporters broke the Watergate scandal, aided by 'Deep Throat'?

Woodward and Bernstein, then junior Post reporters, followed the June 1972 break-in to the White House; Deep Throat kept his secret for 33 years before revealing himself in 2005 as Mark Felt, the FBI's associate director.

Which British daily, founded in Manchester in 1821, moved its editorial base to London in 1964?

The Guardian began in 1821 as the Manchester Guardian, dropped the city from its name in 1959 and moved its editorial base to London in 1964; the Scott Trust has owned it since 1936.

Which website founded by Julian Assange released the 'Collateral Murder' video and US diplomatic cables in 2010?

WikiLeaks put out the Collateral Murder helicopter footage in April 2010 and some 250,000 State Department cables that November; PayPal, Visa and Mastercard then blocked donations to it, which it said cut its income by 95 percent.

World Press Freedom Day, marking the 1991 Windhoek Declaration, falls on which date?

3 May is the anniversary of the 1991 Windhoek Declaration by African journalists; the UN General Assembly proclaimed the day in 1993, and UNESCO marks it with the Guillermo Cano prize, named for a murdered Colombian editor.

Reporters Without Borders, publisher of the World Press Freedom Index, was founded in 1985 in which country?

Robert Ménard and colleagues founded it in Montpellier, France, in 1985, and it later moved its headquarters to Paris; the index grades countries from 'good' to 'very serious'.

Tim Berners-Lee published the first website in 1990 while working at which European lab?

At CERN near Geneva he wrote HTTP, HTML, the first server and a browser called WorldWideWeb on a NeXT machine; Mosaic's inline images in 1993 turned the web into a mass medium.

The first web banner ad, put online by HotWired on 27 October 1994, was paid for by which company?

AT&T's banner read 'Have you ever clicked your mouse right HERE? You will', and about 44 percent of those who saw it clicked through, a rate hundreds of times higher than later banners achieved.

Wikipedia's name is a blend of 'encyclopedia' and what?

Wiki, a Hawaiian word for quick, came via Ward Cunningham's WikiWikiWeb software of 1995; Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger launched the site as a feeder for the more formal Nupedia, which folded in 2003.

'Podcast', coined by Ben Hammersley in a 2004 Guardian article, blends 'broadcast' and what?

iPod plus broadcast: Hammersley floated 'podcasting' in a February 2004 Guardian piece about audio blogging, and Apple did not add podcast support to iTunes until June 2005, more than a year later.

Netflix, founded in 1997 as a DVD-by-mail business, launched its streaming service in which year?

Streaming began in January 2007 with about 1,000 titles against 70,000 on disc, included free with a DVD subscription; House of Cards, released in full in 2013, set the binge-release pattern.

Google bought YouTube in November 2006 for roughly how much?

$1.65 billion in Google stock bought a site just 21 months old, founded by three former PayPal employees; by 2017 viewers were watching more than a billion hours of YouTube a day.

Which London Sunday paper, founded in 1843, closed in 2011 after a phone-hacking scandal?

News of the World printed its last edition on 10 July 2011, after 168 years, when Rupert Murdoch's News International shut it over revelations that its journalists had hacked voicemails.

Which Pulitzer Prize category is the only one that comes with a gold medal?

Public Service winners receive the Joseph Pulitzer Gold Medal, awarded to the news organisation rather than to named journalists; juries put up three finalists per category and the Pulitzer board of editors and academics picks the winners.

Which weekly magazine, founded by Harold Ross in 1925, features the dandy Eustace Tilley?

The New Yorker first appeared on 21 February 1925 under Harold Ross; Eustace Tilley, the top-hatted dandy Rea Irvin drew for that first cover, returns on the anniversary issue most years.

Which broadcaster's purpose is summarised, in words attributed to its founding chief, as 'inform, educate, entertain'?

BBC founding director-general John Reith set out the mission to inform, educate and entertain in the 1920s; public broadcasters around the world, including PBS, have borrowed the formula.

Which 1969 Supreme Court case unanimously upheld the Fairness Doctrine on grounds of spectrum scarcity?

Red Lion Broadcasting v. FCC, decided unanimously in June 1969, held that because broadcast frequencies are scarce the government may require balanced coverage; that scarcity logic is why broadcasters face rules newspapers and websites do not.

Al Jazeera Arabic was launched on 1 November 1996 by the government of which country?

Qatar's emir, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, bankrolled the channel with a loan of about $137 million and staffed it largely with journalists from a British-backed Arabic satellite service that had just closed.

The Financial Times is famously printed on newsprint of which distinctive colour?

Salmon pink paper has marked out the Financial Times since 1893, when the young paper used it to stand out from its rival the Financial News; Sheffield's Green 'Un sports paper is likewise named for its paper colour.

When it was established in 1922, the BBC's initials stood for the British Broadcasting what?

The British Broadcasting Company, a consortium of wireless manufacturers, began broadcasting in November 1922; it became the Crown-chartered Corporation on 1 January 1927 on the recommendation of the Crawford Committee.

Under what title was The Times of London first published on 1 January 1785?

The Daily Universal Register was John Walter's name for the paper, launched to show off his logographic printing method; it became The Times on 1 January 1788.

What was the Radio Times, launched by the BBC in 1923, the first example of?

A broadcast listings magazine was needed because newspapers refused to print the broadcaster's schedules; the Radio Times appeared on 28 September 1923, and its 1988 Christmas issue sold over 11 million copies.

In which year did the commercial ITV network first give the BBC competition in television?

ITV began on 22 September 1955 with a London-only service from Associated-Rediffusion; the radio monopoly lasted much longer, until independent local radio arrived with LBC in October 1973.

In which year did Al Jazeera English launch as the network's English-language channel?

Al Jazeera English went on air on 15 November 2006 from Doha, London, Washington and Kuala Lumpur; demand for an English service had surged after 2001, when the network was the only one broadcasting from Kabul.

What motto did the BBC adopt on its coat of arms when it became a corporation in 1927?

Nation Shall Speak Peace Unto Nation was coined by governor Montague Rendall and placed on the coat of arms granted in 1927; Reith's aim was to broadcast the best in every department of human knowledge.

Which Paris agency, founded in 1835 and the world's oldest news service, was the forerunner of AFP?

Havas, set up by Charles-Louis Havas in 1835, trained both Reuter and Wolff; the Vichy regime turned its news branch into the Office français d'information in 1940, and AFP emerged at the Liberation in 1944.

The block-printed Kaiyuan Za Bao, among the earliest newspapers, dates from which Chinese dynasty?

Tang court bulletins of the Kaiyuan era (713-741) carried government news to officials; in the West, the Amsterdam Courante of 1618 was the first newspaper printed in folio size.

In which city did 23-year-old student Paul Nipkow patent his image-scanning spinning disk in 1884?

He never built a working model, but John Logie Baird revived the forgotten patent for his mechanical television in 1923.

WRGB, a pioneering television station launched in 1928, broadcast from a GE works in which city?

Schenectady, New York, was home to GE's research works, where the experimental station began in January 1928 as WGY Television; it took the call sign WRGB in 1942 in honour of GE engineer Walter R. G. Baker.

Where did Philo Farnsworth give the first public demonstration of all-electronic television in 1934?

The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia hosted the ten-day demonstration in August 1934, with a camera on the roof showing visitors live pictures; a year earlier RCA had introduced Zworykin's Iconoscope camera tube.

Which online magazine did Microsoft launch in 1996 with Michael Kinsley as founding editor?

Slate launched on 24 June 1996 under founding editor Michael Kinsley, a former New Republic editor lured to Microsoft's Redmond campus; The Washington Post bought it from Microsoft in 2004.