Boston News-Letter – October 1 to 8, 1716
On the morning of April 24, 1704, in a small wooden building on Newbury Street in Boston, Bartholomew Green made history. Green, from one of the first families of printing in Colonial America, printed the Boston News-Letter, the first successful American newspaper. The Boston News-Letter was first published and edited by John Campbell, Boston postmaster ...
Boston News-Letter – May 18 to 25, 1719
News from England took as long as eight weeks to reach Boston by ship “and a few more weeks or months made little difference, to Campbell’s mind, so long as important events were recorded in due order. In short, Campbell thought of news as recent history,” according to American Journalism ( Mott, 1949). Unfortunately, Campbell ...
American Weekly Mercury – August 11 to 18, 1737
The Boston News-Letter remained the only newspaper in the colonies for 15 years until another Boston newspaper, the Boston Gazette, began publishing in December 1719. Coincidentally, one day after the Boston Gazette first published, Andrew Bradford, song of one of America’s famous first printers William Bradford, began publishing American Weekly Mercury in Philadelphia. The American ...
New-York Weekly Journal – June 10, 1734
Arguably the most significant and dramatic event of all American journalism history surrounded the owner of the New-York Weekly Journal, John Peter Zenger. After publishing a reader’s letter that was critical of New York Governor William Cosby, Zenger was arrested for seditious libel. “Zenger continued to oversee publication of the New-York Weekly Journal, his editor’s ...
Pennsylvania Gazette – December 6, 1745
In the 1740s, about a dozen newspapers were being published in the colonies with Boston, Philadelphia and New York having more than one. Annapolis (Maryland), Charleston (South Carolina) and Williamsburg (Virginia) each had one. The Pennsylvania Gazette, published by Benjamin Franklin, is considered one of the finest specimens of colonial newspapers. Benjamin Franklin began publishing ...
Maryland Gazette – March 17, 1747
In the 1740s, newspaper circulations still averaged only a few hundred subscribers. The Maryland Gazette was originally established in September 1727 and published by William Parks until 1734. The title was revived on January 17, 1745, by Jonas Green, the great-great-great grandson of Bartholomew Green, who printed the Boston News-Letter. The March 17, 1747, issue ...
Pennsylvania Gazette – November 3, 1748
In 1748, at age 42, Benjamin Franklin retired from printing the Pennsylvania Gazette and turned over the business to his foreman, David Hall. “The detailed partnership deal Franklin drew up would leave him rich enough by most people’s standards: it provided him with half of the shop’s profits for the next eighteen years (through 1766), ...
New York Gazette – April 7, 1755
By the 1750s, improvements in the post service helped stimulate newspaper subscriptions and, for the first time, some newspapers realized circulations north of one thousand. Unfortunately, not all subscribers paid. According to Isaacson’s biography of Benjamin Franklin, James Parker, the printer of the New York Gazette, reported in 1759 that at least a quarter of ...
