The first Dutch newspaper, Courante uyt Italien,…

The first Dutch newspaper, Courante uyt Italien, Duytslandt, is published in June 1618 in Amsterdam.

A regular weekly publication, it can be called the first broadsheet paper, because it is issued in folio-size.

Before this, news periodicals had been pamphlets in quarto-size. (The paper carries no imprint of the printer or the publisher, but based on similar papers published later, it was probably printed by Joris Veseler and published and edited by Caspar van Hilten. The exact date of the publication is not known, but the dates of the news items suggest that it was probably printed between June 14 and 18, 1618.)

The first issue presented news from four different sources, including Venice and Prague. (English typographer, designer and historian of printing Stanley Morison and some other authors regard the Courante as the world’s first proper newspaper. In their view, the earlier news periodicals, such as the German Relation: aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien and the Avisa Relation oder Zeitung, were not newspapers but pamphlets or newsbooksThey argue that the Courante was the first to express the typographic conventions that have been associated with newspapers ever since.)