1620
English corantos in Amsterdam
The British Library notes that English-language newspapers, or corantos, were being published in Amsterdam from at least December 1620. The form grew out of a European trade in current reports and foreign news.
The name behind the publication
Coranto™
An old word for current news.
Coranto takes its name from the early news sheets that helped establish the rhythm of the newspaper: reports from different places, gathered into something a reader could use to understand what was happening now.
1620
A historical reference. Not our founding date.
24.09.1621
The surviving London Corante
On 24 September 1621, London printer Nathaniel Butter published Corante, or, newes from Italy, Germany, Hungarie, Spaine and France. The British Library describes it, with important qualifications, as the first British newspaper.
Now
The idea, rebuilt for a different age
Modern Coranto is not a continuation of that seventeenth-century publication. The connection is conceptual: current reporting from many places, made useful as one maintained record rather than a pile of disconnected headlines.
Why we chose it
Because the name already points toward what news is for.
The earliest corantos were concerned with current affairs beyond the reader's immediate horizon. They gathered reports arriving from different cities and countries and gave people a way to see a wider situation at once.
That is recognisable in Coranto's purpose today. The technology is different, the editorial standards are different, and the reporting is original to this publication — but the reader still needs the same basic thing: a reliable account of what is going on, what changed, and why it matters.
That is also why our line is Follow events, not headlines. A headline is a moment. An event continues. Coranto keeps the maintained story together as the facts change.
Four centuries later, the job is still current news.
Coranto's promise is not antiquity. It is to make the present easier to understand.