Gazzette de France(1641) had been considered the first newspaper of France. However, according to Charles R. Eisendrath , Professor , Department of Communication, University of Michigan , France , says in an article "The press mirrored the slow growth common elsewhere from the 1631 founding of Theophraste Renaudot's La Gazette, France's first newspaper, until the Revolution of 1789."

That period of prolonged social upheaval provided ideal growing conditions for fertile editorial and publishing concepts. Journals of information such as Le Moniteur Universel and Journal des Debats appeared along with the first great precursors of the opinion press, which was to dominate European journalism for 150 years: Jean-Paul? Marat's l' Ami du Peuple, Jacques - Rene Hebert's Pere Duchene, Nicolas Bonneville's Tribun. Le Moniteur illustrated the frequent fate of newspapers caught in political crossfires by being converted under Napoleon into a personal propaganda sheet after its competitors were suppressed.