Party Press

The “Party Press era” refers to a period of time (1783–1833) when news editors in the United States received patronage from political parties, usually in the form of government printing contracts. An editor who had limited financial resources would readily endorse a party's candidates and champion its principles. In turn he received support for his six-cent paper. This gave the editor, who served as printer, writer, and business manager, a sense of prestige and power in society, and patronage was critical to the paper's longterm economic stability. For example, during Thomas Jefferson's administration, Samuel Harrison Smith, editor of the National Intelligencer in Washington, D.C., received from the State Department each year thousands of dollars, a considerable sum at the time.

Generally, the era in the United States is considered to have begun in 1783 with the end of the Revolution and ended in 1833 with the rise of the penny press. Still, 80% of the press remained partisan at the outbreak of the Civil War, according to the 1860 census. The Party Press era coincided with extensive growth in the American press. In 1783, the newly independent nation had only 35 newspapers, but by 1833 it had 1,200. The non-advertising content of the Party Press era was primarily political news and interpretation, including abuse hurled at opponents. Most editors prominently displayed the names of a party's ticket for weeks. Editors also printed speeches of major national and state political leaders as well as significant government documents.

The concept of having a press that represented a variety of political points of view came directly out of the civil liberties philosophy of James Madison, among others, as stated in the First Amendment, which guarantees no interference from Congress regarding freedom of the press. Implicitly, not having an official government newspaper was parallel to the idea of not having a single state religion. In the first decade of the Party Press, newspapers had to survive the Sedition Act of President John Adams, who made criticism of the federal government illegal. Several Republican editors were prosecuted under that law, but his successor and political opponent, Jefferson, let the renewable law expire. Jefferson believed written criticism of the government did not necessarily lead to revolution and that the press could serve as a check on the abuse of power. Based on the impact of Thomas Paine's pamphlets during the Revolution, politicians in this era believed editors' words had a significant effect on public opinion.

The Party Press coincided with the first two party systems in the United States. First came the contest between the Republicans and Federalists, followed by the battle between Democrats and Whigs. Editors, many of them politicians themselves, lined up on each [Page 539]side of these political divides and interpreted events of the day within the ideology of a particular party.

Politicians frequently owned newspapers, and editors sometimes became politicians. Alexander Hamilton printed the pro-Federalist Gazette of the United States. Decades later, Henry J. Raymond served in the New York legislature before founding the Times, and Tribune editor Horace Greeley would run for president after the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln owned a newspaper, a German-language organ that supported the Republicans. No politician in the first 75 years of the nation's history took advantage of partisan editors better than Andrew Jackson, who bestowed federal jobs on at least 40 journalists when he became president.

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