Newspapers

No major American city has either succeeded or survived without a newspaper, and until 1982, no mainstream, nonreligious, daily American newspaper had prospered long term without the support of a city. In the 18th and 19th centuries, government printing laws and postal regulations favored the development of local rather than national newspapers in the United States. As cities grew beyond walking distance, newspapers provided an otherwise unobtainable perspective to readers. As populations increased, newspapers provided survival instructions for new residents, especially foreign immigrants, and engendered a sense of community. In the face of 20th-century electronic competition, many urban newspapers evolved to become monopolistic public utilities, much like water, gas, and electric services. In the 21st century, newspapers remain an integral element of the American urban environment, influencing their cities as they are influenced by the private and public sectors and residents.

Boston was the cradle of American journalism. Only one issue of Publick Occurrences (1690) appeared in the city before it was suppressed by local authorities, but it was superceded by several weekly papers, including the Boston News-Letter (1704), the Boston Gazette (1719), and the New England Courant (1721). The latter was edited by James Franklin, older brother of Ben, who foreshadowed the proactive role of urban newspapers by criticizing Boston's theocratic government. James Franklin was jailed and Ben briefly operated the paper before he became editor of the Pennsylvania Gazette, Philadelphia's second newspaper, in 1729. The city's first weekly had appeared in 1719. New York's first newspaper, the Gazette (1725), predated the better known New York Weekly Journal (1733). Its rebellious editor, John Peter Zenger, survived an attempt by the royal governor to convict him of seditious libel the following year, helping to intensify resentment against royal rule. Other early newspapers include the Maryland Gazette (1727), South-Carolina Gazette (1732), Williamsburg Virginia Gazette (1736), and Georgia Gazette (1763). Most literate Americans had access to a newspaper by 1750.

A few national newspapers, including the Gazette of the United States and the National Intelligencer, appeared in the early 19th century, but the egalitarian philosophy of James Madison advocated government encouragement of knowledge on the local level and influenced legislation allowing newspapers to be mailed for free or at reduced cost. Even the tiniest city could afford to circulate its newspaper to a wider audience. Speculators and promoters “puffed” their perspective settlements in newspapers. The first daily, the Pennsylvania Evening Post (1783), appeared in Philadelphia, followed by the Pennsylvania Packet. The first newspaper outside of the original 13 colonies, the Pittsburgh Gazette (1786), has remained in print into the 21st century as the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Cincinnati's Centinel of the Northwest Territory (1793) was one of nearly two dozen western newspapers by 1800. The first Spanish-language newspaper in the U.S., El Misisipí (1808), appeared in New Orleans. Newspapers followed development spawned by the Erie Canal in Buffalo (1811), Cleveland (1819), Detroit (1809), and Milwaukee (1836). Chicago's first newspaper, the weekly Democrat (1833), appeared years after the competing St. Louis Gazette (1808).

As the first large American city, New York served as a model for other cities, and its newspapers served as models as well. The New York Evening Post (1801), founded by Alexander Hamilton as a political organ, was edited by William Cullen Bryant for nearly 50 years, beginning in 1829. Growing numbers of literate middle-class readers made possible a mass circulation newspaper called the penny press. Beginning with Benjamin H. Day's New York Sun (1833), circulation began to eclipse political and commercial content as the driving force behind city newspapers. The Sun's circulation tripled in 1835 when Richard Adams Locke wrote several articles alleging to depict life on the moon. His “moon hoax” was the technological equivalent in print of Orson Welles's 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast and late-20th-century Internet urban legends. The Sun was joined by James Gordon Bennett's New York Herald (1835), Horace Greeley's New York Tribune (1841), and Henry J. Raymond's New York Times (1851). The latter's articles exposing the Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall in the early 1870s were the first detailed exposé of municipal corruption. [Page 547]Priced at a penny, such papers were sold by the individual copy on the streets by growing numbers of newsboys instead of relying for their income on expensive subscriptions, and total U.S. circulation surpassed 1,000,000 around 1850. The Philadelphia Public Ledger (1836) and the Baltimore Sun (1837) were early imitators, and the four largest American cities had penny papers by 1840. The telegraph turned city newspapers from the practice of exchanges, reprinting articles clipped from dated out-of-town papers, into instantaneous and therefore more timely purveyors of news. The antecedent of the Associated Press news service began in New York in 1848, 4 years after the first telegraphic message was published in the Baltimore Patriot.

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