History of the written press in FranceThe written press has by far the longest history among the media still active in today's France. The first weekly, La Gazette, was published in 1631, while the first national daily, Le Journal de Paris, was created in 1777. As was the case throughout Europe, the readership of French newspapers in the 18th and for a Much of the 19th century was limited to the elites of society (Sassoon, 2006: 194-9). Despite some brief surges in the number of newspaper titles after the revolutions of 1789 and 1848, it was not until the last quarter of the 19th century that the press experienced an unprecedented period of growth during which it achieved the status of press mass media in terms of information to an audience of remarkable size. From the 18th century, France had developed a literary opinion press in Paris as well as a less interpretative and more informative regional press. The two notably crossed paths in history when the Parisian press produced newspapers with a large circulation in the 19th century but ...