Habermas and the Transformation of the Public Sphere: you will need to include this in your essay, as it provides a framework for *why we have newspapers, what is the point and purpose of them – the idea of a democratic society enabled by news, information, ideas and debate.
The notion of the “public sphere” began evolving during the Renaissance in Western Europe. In The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Habermas showed how modern European salons, cafés, and literary groups contain the resources for democratizing the public sphere,