The World Association of Newspapers has accepted evidence produced by one of the world’s leading printing museums that 2005 marks the 400th anniversary of the birth of the first newspaper in print.
Scholars have generally put the date at 1609, the year of the first preserved editions, but the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, Germany, which houses the world’s first printing press, has told WAN that the ‘birth certificate’ of the newspaper, ‘Relation’, was unearthed in the town archives of Strasbourg.

Award-winning photographer Cate Gillon has been on a three-week photographic trip to India using the £2,000 prize money she won as Diageo Young Photographer of the Year at the Picture Editors’ Awards last year.
Twenty-four-year-old Cate, who works for the Edinburgh Evening News, took the opportunity to shoot a series of “colourful, imaginative pictures”.

The Eastern Daily Press Business Guide 2005 has been launched at Norwich City’s Carrow Road football ground at an event attended by 180 leading local business figures.
Editor Peter Franzen welcomed the guest and the Royal Bank of Scotland’s chief economist Jeremy Peat was the keynote speaker.

The Southern Daily Echo has been praised by the Government for leading the way in the campaign against thieves who target the elderly in their own homes.
Home Office minister Hazel Blears described the paper’s On Your Guard initiative as “welcome” – on the day she launched a national campaign to protect pensioners against bogus callers.

York Evening Press chief reporter Mike Laycock watched as a fictional version of himself stood up on stage to give an impassioned plea to save the city’s Terry’s chocolate factory.
He has a real-life role in the paper’s campaign to prevent the factory being run down, and pupils at the Manor School put on a play to show the factory’s history – and Mike’s impromptu speech at a union conference where the changes were discussed.