Pamphlets, Newspapers, and the Birth of the Magazine — Ada Palmer

Ada Palmer opens by describing pamphlets as cheap, ephemeral printed media that took only two to four days to produce. These short, hand-stitched publications were sold in bulk around towns and to traveling news writers, covering topics ranging from siege reports to royal wedding fashion. She highlights their often sensationalist nature with an example title involving murder, seduction, and cannibalism, noting that pamphlets ranged from outright nonsense to real news, with most being a combination of both.

Palmer then explains the physical properties of early paper, noting that the characteristic blue-gray color of cheap paper covers came from the material itself — paper made from beaten rags that, when unbleached, took on the average color of human clothing. She then transitions to discussing The Gentleman's Magazine, a publication that arose in response to a key problem with the early newspaper era: newspapers frequently contradicted each other, leaving readers uncertain about the truth. The Gentleman's Magazine addressed this by publishing weekly roundups that compiled what various newspapers said about the same events, analyzed contradictions, and assessed which accounts were accurate. Palmer credits it as the first magazine and the origin of the word 'magazine' in this media context.

The talk concludes with a brief examination of historical writing materials. Palmer notes that papyrus, while cheap, is brittle and better suited to scrolls than folded formats because the folded edge cracks easily. She then shows attendees a 17th-century letter written in indecipherable handwriting on cheap parchment, explaining how one can identify which side of the animal skin was the outside versus the inside. She also presents an example of higher-quality parchment and notes that scribes would write around holes in parchment sheets rather than discard them, reflecting how valuable these materials were.