History of Journalism

Based on a socio-historical derivation of exogenous factors and a system-theoretical derivation of endogenous factors, the article presents four phases of the history of journalism (Birkner, 2012) from the beginning of the newspaper as the first mass medium to the beginning of the twentieth century and describes them as four phases of the economization of the media (Birkner, 2011). The twentieth century is then labeled the “century of journalism” (Birkner, 2010), but its possible end (Weischenberg, 2010) in the twenty-first century is also discussed.