Mediating the Old New Media: Ben Jonson's News

Abstract:This essay considers Ben Jonson's The Staple of Newsas a reflection on the notion of media and mediation. The newstrade provides the play's satiric subject, but it is my contention that commercial news also provides Jonson the opportunity to explore ideas about competitive media and the kinds of work they do to structure and mediate communication. I argue that the interdependence of old and new media, both in performance and print, provoked consumers and producers alike to experiment with new modes of media use and understanding, modes that revisit Jonson's familiar oppositions of poetry and news within a logic of communication.