Re: white paper - let's try again.
The origin of the term is British, specifically British government. The
bureaus, over time, accepted a hierarchy of papers organized by the color of
the cover, so that a White Paper became synonymous with high-level analyses
of topics important to the Foreign Office, Colonial Office, Exchequer,
Defense, etc. Politicians, diplomats, bureau Secretaries, and (finally)
journalists used the term with ease. It became a part of the lexicon.
Without doing the research to confirm it, but relying solely on my own memory, I think the first use in the US--at least the first use that the public at large would have encountered--was a television program put together by NBC News back in the 1960s that examined in some detail a major public policy issue. NBC used this label for a number of such programs, and I don't recall what the first of them was (although I'm thinking it was Hunger in America).
In that first program, the narrator made of point of explaining what a white paper was in British usage and why they had adopted the term to describe this serious journalistic endeavor.
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RE: white paper - let's try again.: From: whitedh
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