The evolution of the newspaper’s forms. Karl d’Ester and the beginnings of the German newspaper science

Abstract

Abstract Karl d’Ester, one of the German communication theory’s founding fathers, introduced the «newspaper’s tree» model in 1928. With this model, he intended to guide the reader through the true understanding of the world of information by structuring the history of the press in four classes. In addition, he ran a study of contemporary newspaper and established the four categories of ‘news’, ‘function’, ‘form’ and ‘universality’ as the analytical key points. Th e aim of this paper is to set out d’Ester thinking, drawing attention to those elements that are fully applicable in nowadays, in times of great changes in the media landscape. To our knowledge this is the fi rst study in the subject in our academic community.