One of the earliest newspapers in Paris, France, was created in the 1750s by a woman named Madame Doublet. Madame Doublet had an interesting and effective technique for gathering news: each morning, she sent one of her servants to gather all the gossip from other servants who worked in wealthy households. According to Smithsonian magazine, Madame Doublet’s servant may have been “the first reporter in the history of French journalism.”

After making the rounds of all the fashionable neighborhoods, the servant would return to Madame Doublet’s and write two reports for her: one containing confirmed information, one containing unconfirmed gossip. Copies of these reports were a hot commodity in the French salons of those days. They may have been the prototype of all tabloid journalism today. (1…