De openbaarheid van een pre-moderne stad. Amsterdam en zijn pers voor 1870

The Public Exposure of a Pre-Modern City. Amsterdam and its press before 1870

Unlike what has been suggested in certain newspaper articles, local news has hardly been covered in local newspapers in the Netherlands in the eighteenth century. It was only in the first half of the nineteenth century that some slight changes came about in that respect. In his article Remieg Aerts states that till 1870, when it came to the broadcasting of urban news, oral communication was far more important than the local newspapers in a spatially and socially cramped city like Amsterdam. The Amsterdamsche Courant, a semi official organ of the city council, and the Algemeen Handelsblad hardly played a role in the discussions as to how the city was to be designed and equipped, nor about the cultural life within the capital, and the social relations between the amstellodamians. Small papers like the Waarachtige physiologie van Amsterdam gave more attention to the urban community and the journalists of the medium even socialized with its members - especially with those belonging to the middle and upper classes of society. Yet, due to its shivareean character and its informal style, this medium must be considered to have been more exemplary for the pre-modern urban press than it was for a (substantially) newer approach of the relationship between news media and the capital.