W W W. D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA NA . C O M
47
M
ONTANA'S LARGEST CITY HAS A NEWSPAPER
CALLED THE BILLINGS GAZETTE. e tabloid
shares a name with others across the U.S.: Boston Ga-
zette, Delaware Gazette, Estes Park Trail-Gazette, and others. What
sets the Gazettes apart from the Heralds, Journals, and Tribunes?
A fascinating etymological history, that's what. e original ga-
zettes were first published in Venice in the mid-1500s. Distributed
monthly, Venetian gazettes were informal news and gossip sheets
that could be purchased or read for a fee. e coin exchanged for
the news sheet was called a gazetta, one possible word origin of
gazette. Another theory has gazette as the diminutive form of the
Italian word gazza, "magpie," a bird that tattles and chatters, like
the gossip sheets of 16th century Venice.
Similar publications soon made their appearance in England
and France. London's gazettes disseminated reports of lurid
crimes, news of explorations and discoveries, social gossip and
commercial advertisements. e Oxford Gazette, founded in 1665,
abandoned trivialities. Considered England's first true newspaper,
the Oxford Gazette was a government publication announcing of-
ficial appointments, bankruptcies, and public notices.
America's first gazette was founded in Massachusetts in 1719. e
Boston Gazette, published weekly, became the most popular platform
for relaying opposition to the British Crown during the time of revo-
lutionary America. Montana's Billings Gazette was first published in
1885 on a single sheet of paper, and today claims to be geographically
one of the most widely distributed papers in the nation.
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