The
Courante was a single
folio sheet. This means it was a full sheet folded once to form 4 pages and then cut open at the fold. The first issues were printed on just one side of the sheet. It also does not have a serial number, a date or a publisher's imprint. These features are now considered essential to newspapers. The imprint appeared in 1619. The date and serial number as well as the practice of printing on both sides of the sheet started in 1620. The first issue presented news from four sources, including
Venice,
Cologne and
Prague. This corresponds with the name of the newspaper, which in English means "Current events from Italy, Germany, etc". The main text runs in two
columns. The columns are separated with a
gutter and a line running in it. There are no empty lines within the body text. The body of the text is printed in Dutch
black-letter, except for the numbers.
Roman type is used for datelines which also act as headlines for the news items. The text is
fully justified and the beginnings of paragraphs are identified with
indents approximately the size of the
line-height. The only surviving copy of the first issue is in Sweden's
Kungliga Biblioteket in
Stockholm. Later issues from 1628 to 1664 can be found at the
Koninklijke Bibliotheek in
The Hague. The
Courante appeared until about 1672 and was then merged with the
Ordinarisse Middel-Weeckse Courant and the
Ordinaris Dingsdaegse Courant into the
Amsterdam Courant, which eventually merged with
De Telegraaf in 1903. ==Influence==