NEWSLETTERS: 400 YEARS OLD ... AND STILL GOING STRONG!

With the explosive growth of electronic messaging, how is it that newsletters are more popular than ever? Because they work ... they are still the best way to offer special information to a defined audience.

Newsletters have been reaching targeted readers since 1585 when the first newsletter appeared. In 1631 The Continuation of Our Weekly News from Forraine Parts was distributed regularly in England. The first American newsletter, the Boston News-Letter, started in 1704, and evolved into America's first newspaper. Newsletters flourished throughout the 1700s, but faded in the 1800s as newspapers prospered.

By the early 1900s, business and industry needed specialized information, so newsletters again became popular. In 1904, Babson's Report, the first investment advisory newsletter, appeared. In 1923 the Kiplinger Letter began publication, and continues today.

Corporate newsletters developed rapidly in the 1930s, beginning in 1934 with the telephone industry's Telecommunications Reports. Other business newsletters followed, specializing in everything from farming to fashion. In 1964 the first newsletter about newsletters, Newsletter on Newsletters, appeared.

In the mid '80s the workplace began to change rapidly. Personal computers revolutionized work as telecommuting, job sharing, flex hours, and e-mail became part of our vocabulary. The arrival of desktop publishing created a boom in newsletters. Over one million newsletters were published in the U.S. in 1999, and they'll continue to inform and influence readers just as they have for the last four hundred years.