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Recent contributions to knowledge about early journalism developed in different parts of Europe-Italy, France, England, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain ... -have made it possible to trace a fairly precise map for the historical origin of this phenomenon. However, the scope of work carried out with a view to developing frameworks of interpretation to explain the reasons for this appearance is not as far-reaching. This paper reviews the recurring theoretical models found to date in the specific bibliography and proposes a new framework of interpretation, capable of encompassing the complexity and pan-European nature of early journalism in history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper distinguishes between laissez-faire and interventionist models used to justify and implement cultural diversity initiatives in the news media. The laissez-faire model is characteristic of U.S. journalism. However, due to the convergence of media systems and the widespread adoption of diversity management, the laissez-faire model may also become the prevalent model throughout other Western democracies, in Europe and elsewhere. The paper argues that the problem with the laissez-faire approach to cultural diversity in the media is that it relies on commercial instead of normative justifications. As a result, cultural diversity is mostly reduced to an ornament. Equated with accuracy and treated as a business asset, diversity serves, rather than challenges, the existing media system. By failing to open sufficient spaces for alternative social voices, business-driven media policies do not respond to the democratic needs of a multicultural society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author of this article illustrates the transmission of news from England to the newspapers of the Habsburg Netherlands over the 40-year period 1620-1660, and the types of news so conveyed. Such news of politics, war, diplomacy, religion, trade, justice, and prodigies, came not only directly from England but also through news centers on the Continent, indicating the flexibility of the communications networks. Newspapers, in the sense of printed news periodicals available to the general public, made their appearance throughout Western Europe in the first half of the seventeenth century.