Editing French Revolution (section)

=== Newspapers ===
[[File:L'Ami du peuple 1.jpg|thumb|left|upright=0.8|A copy of ''L'Ami du peuple'' stained with the blood of Marat]]

Newspapers and pamphlets played a central role in stimulating and defining the Revolution. Prior to 1789, there have been a small number of heavily censored newspapers that needed a royal licence to operate, but the Estates General created an enormous demand for news, and over 130 newspapers appeared by the end of the year. Among the most significant were Marat's ''[[L'Ami du peuple]]'' and [[Elysée Loustallot]]'s ''{{Interlanguage link|Revolutions de Paris|fr}}''.<ref>{{Cite web |date=24 January 2014 |title=Illustrations from Révolutions de Paris |url=https://history.dartmouth.edu/research/student-research/illustrations-revolutions-de-paris |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210129211310/https://history.dartmouth.edu/research/student-research/illustrations-revolutions-de-paris |archive-date=29 January 2021 |access-date=25 January 2021 |website=Department of History |language=en}}</ref> Over the next decade, more than 2,000 newspapers were founded, 500 in Paris alone. Most lasted only a matter of weeks but they became the main communication medium, combined with the very large pamphlet literature.{{Sfn|Chisick|1993|pp=149–166}}

Newspapers were read aloud in taverns and clubs and circulated hand to hand. There was a widespread assumption that writing was a vocation, not a business, and the role of the press was the advancement of civic republicanism.{{Sfn|Chapman|2005|pp= 7–12}} By 1793 the radicals were most active but initially the royalists flooded the country with their publication the "{{Interlanguage link|L'Ami du Roi|fr}}" (Friends of the King) until they were suppressed.{{Sfn|Chisick|1988|pp=623–645}}