Baltimore

Newspaper Origins

The colonial Maryland General Assembly created the Port of Baltimore in 1706. Due to its sheltered harbor and the relatively easy routes inland, it became an important port for the colonies. After New York City, it was the second city in the colonies to reach a population of 100,000. Baltimore became the second leading port of entry for immigrants during the early 1800s. Until 1860 it was the second largest city in population, only then being surpassed by Philadelphia.

In such a fast-growing city, broadsheets to supply news of Britain and other colonies appeared before the American Revolution, published and posted by local printers on an irregular basis. The best known of these were the competing Baltimore Advertiser and Maryland Journal, both printed during 1773. Following independence, several short-lived weekly newspapers were founded: the Palladium of Freedom (1787), the Baltimore Evening Post (1792–93), the Baltimore Daily Gazette (1794–95), and the Baltimore Town and Fell's Point Gazette (1796–98). In 1798, the Baltimore Intelligencer, the first successful newspaper in the city, arose from the collapse of the Gazette; under a variety of names, it would be published continuously until 1964 when, as the Baltimore American, it would merge with the Baltimore News-Post and become the Hearst-owned Baltimore News-American, which folded in May 1986. Its demise left the Baltimore Sun as the city's sole broad circulation daily newspaper.

Founded by Arunah S. Abell, a journeyman printer from Rhode Island, the Baltimore Sun first appeared in May 1837. It consisted of four tabloid-size pages and sold for a penny, in marked contrast to the six-cent daily newspapers then in fashion. The lead story in that first issue dealt with recent actions by the Baltimore City Council, which none of the other half-dozen papers published in the city bothered to report. Over the next few years, Abell created a prototype of the inexpensive, community-focused, impersonal, institutional paper [Page 152]that today dominates American journalism. The Sun was the national leader in innovative news-gathering methods and community journalism through the Civil War. The company was a pioneer in the use of the telegraph (the first line running from Washington to Baltimore brought “News from the Hill” daily), high-speed presses, and underwater cables to maintain contact with overseas bureaus. The Sun was the first to use railroads to distribute papers to outlying communities, and among the first to conduct reader service surveys.

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