How often do journalists think about the Roman Empire?

Hello and welcome to good story. I’m so glad you’re here. There are now more than seventy of you receiving this issue! We could fill a whole yellow bus packed with people who care about how true stories can change the world, and that picture fills me with joy.

I hear a lot of talk about the future of journalism right now. Traffic keeps crumbling, presidents and billionaires are defunding media outlets, and generative AI is already changing how we produce and consume information. Even relatives have started asking me: are there still going to be journalists in the age of AI? Which is another way of asking: are you still going to have a job next year?

So it makes sense that a lot of us, media workers and anyone who has a stake in the future of democracy, are panicking right now. If I think about it for too long, I panic too. The demand for adaptation is coming at us faster than we might be prepared for. But we will adapt. We always have. For this, we might have to get back to the basics. This is why today, we’re not going to look forward. We’re going to look back. I want to slow down to understand where journalism comes from so we can figure out where we might go next. So, in the next few issues, I’m going to explore the origins of journalism. And I’ll try to answer one question: if you distil it to its most fundamental features, what is journalism?

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How often do journalists think about the Roman Empire?

This is where I write from: I was eleven years old when I decided I wanted to be a journalist. I went to journalism school, I read the memoirs of reporters I admired, and I’ve been working in this space full-time since I was 16. And yet, I realise I don’t know who committed the first act of journalism.

The answer differs depending on who you ask, how you define journalism and who gets to write history. And each version of the answer reveals something important about where we are today.

If you ask your basic intro to journalism class, it all starts in Rome around the year 59 B.C.E. A commander named Julius Caesar rules the empire. One day, he comes up with a shiny new idea: every day, important information will be carved on a slab of white stone and displayed in the middle of the town square in Rome. He hires scribes to record government proceedings, gets this new piece of street furniture installed in the Forum, where all the government buildings are set, and voilà. Every day, scribes chisel decrees from the Senate, legal rulings, military victories, births and deaths of people who are considered important, gladiator games and even some astrology! If you’re a dude in charge, say a senator or a military officer, you might walk by on your way to the office, read what’s new, and use it to make decisions.

That stone wall is called the Acta Diurna, which literally means “the daily acts,” and it’s considered by many to be the first recorded example of something that resembles journalism. The reason for this is that it shares a few qualities we’d still associate with today’s newspaper: it makes timely and relevant information publicly available on a regular basis.

But is this all journalism does? The Acta ticks off the timeliness and regularity boxes. But we don’t know of any practice of verification or fact-checking by the scribes. There is no independence of the press since the news is decided by the government in what is pretty much a dictatorship. Which also means the information serves power; not the people. The public boards make information visible, and technically available, but that does not mean everyone can access it. The overwhelming majority of the people in Rome – women, commoners, slaves – can’t read. Sometimes, town criers paid by the state walk around the city and exclaim the information aloud. People talk and the facts travel.

Here is where the resemblance stops: for a media practice to be trusted, it needs to be accountable. The Acta Diurna was written by scribes appointed by Caesar who stayed anonymous. So no one could ask questions or, say, tweet at a reporter who made a mistake. And Caesar was a pretty ruthless dictator. Even though he created the daily acts, officially, to increase government transparency, there’s a big difference between transparency and accountability. The performance of transparency can be useful for controlling the narrative and spreading stories that serve the state far and wide.

What strikes me is that what many consider to be the first instance of “journalism” came from people in power, to serve power. And yet, the sections sound oddly similar to the verticals of a news website today: politics, crime and justice, wars, obituaries, events, even some celebrity news.

This begs the question: who is the news for? One of the very first instances of “journalism” we can point to was a tool of power, not a check on it. To the people of Rome, it looked like the news, it sounded like the news. But it wasn’t journalism as we understand it today. It wasn’t accountable, independent, or in service of the public. It was the state speaking to itself while performing transparency.

Looking back at the Acta Diurna reminds me that journalism – and I mean good journalism – is not inevitable. It’s a choice. It’s the choice to serve communities rather than the status quo; to verify rather than just announce; to take the risk of being accountable rather than hiding behind a stone wall.

This is the official story. And my gut tells me that the drive to seek and share information goes back even further. I think it’s a human instinct: just like we need food, water, and connection, we need knowledge to navigate the world. Long before the Roman Empire, people relied on shared information to survive – to know where to find food, when to seek shelter, or how to avoid danger. And that knowledge often came from someone who had been there before and passed it on.

So next month, we’ll move beyond the Roman Empire and explore other early forms of news-sharing, beyond states and power players and centered around people and communities. From town criers to griots, we’ll look at oral traditions and communal knowledge practices. We’ll explore one crucial ingredient they had that most media lacks today, and that might just be the key to building journalism that helps us not only understand the world, but act on it.

Ps: this is the hilarious online trend that inspired today’s headline.

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​One good story: each month, I’ll bring you one – yes, just one! – carefully selected story recommendation. Something that challenged me, stayed with me, or reminded me why storytelling matters.

This month’s good story is, in fact, a great publication. When I think about the kind of stories we need to build more just futures, I immediately think of YES! Magazine. I first discovered it through the murmurations column of adrienne maree brown, a long-time political and intellectual crush of mine. YES managed to combine rigorous, fact-checked reporting through a solutions journalism lens, moral clarity on themes such as racial justice and body politics, and writing that encourages deep hope and connection even through the hard times. Unfortunately, they just sunsetted after 30 years, but their approach is evergeen, and an inspiration in times of change. “We wanted to encourage readers’ active engagement in change by exploring realistic possibilities for a more beautiful world and by encouraging readers to take practical steps toward transformation,” founding editor Sarah van Gelder wrote, and that feels like a great mission statement for storytellers.

One question for you: How do you protect yourself from the overwhelm of news? Does it work?

Who am I?

Hi! I’m Anna Pujol-Mazzini – after working as an international correspondent for ten years, I founded good story to investigate the current state of our journalistic and non-fiction practices and how we can put them in service of the revolution.

When I’m not writing this newsletter, I help teams around the world produce longform stories through podcast production, fact-checking, public speaking and 1-1 consultations on trauma-informed reporting.

If you're working on something and want to collaborate – reply to this email and say hi! I'd love to hear what you're building. Or book a 15-minute call and tell me all about your project.