Against a common anachronistic bias in historical readings of XVIIIth news and periodicals, this article tries to build an "horizon of expectation" (Hans-Robert Jauss) of well-informed readers of the Lisbon gazette (Gazeta de Lisboa, published between 1715 and 1760). As a case study, I analyse the way the gazette refrained from speaking of the diplomatic conflicts in which Portugal was then involved. Under a surface of apparent silence, though, manuscript journals and periodicals show us to which extent reading of the printed newspaper is more complex than we may expect. In the second part of the article, I try to describe the relationship between printed and handwritten news as a coherent system of communication, based on political, social and technical differences. I argue that, more than of opposition, we should speak of complementary roles of these two media.
Lisbon Gazette; Portugal; print and scribal culture; XVIIIth Century