Fugger News Service

chained_bear commented on the word Fugger News Service

"Fugger craved market-sensitive information so much that he created a system to get it first. ... A news service, the world's first. He set up a network of couriers who raced to Augsburg with market information, political updates and the latest gossip--anything that would give him an edge. A postal service had been running between Augsburg and Venice since the fourteenth century. A similar network linked Augsburg with Innsbruck and other imperial cities. But the networks, staffed by city-appointed 'post boys,' were too incomplete and slow for Fugger. He wanted a system tailored just for him. In the years ahead, he learned about important deaths and battle outcomes before Maximilian, the electors and his competitors. ... The letters became ore sophisticated under Fugger's heirs. Although content continued to come from Fugger's agents, they eventually looked more like newspapers than anything else. Fugger's letters preceded the Notizie Scritte of Venice, the first newspaper, by half a century.... He had staggering courier bills but he happily paid."

--Greg Steinmetz, The Richest Man Who Ever Lived: The Life and Times of Jacob Fugger (NY and London: Simon & Schuster, 2015), 34

February 6, 2017