What’s the connection between newspapers and magpies?
Well, apparently the first newspapers published in Venice and were known as gazeta de la novità and cost one gazeta (Venetian) or gazzetta (Italian), a small coin which had a picture of a magpie on it. A magpie is gazza in Italian and the name of the coin is a diminutive form of that name. Another possibility is that the newspaper was named after the magpie, a bird renowned for chattering.
The word gazette was first used in English in 1665 for a newspaper published in Oxford [source].
