Stories from Drayton

The Great American Newspaper

    In 1826, there were perhaps 40 newspapers in the nascent United States, nearly all of them written for and by special interests. They were publications with names that proclaimed their subjects and their readers: the Shipping News, the Farmer as well as those dedicated to one political party or another. Newspapers published as commercial enterprises for general consumption were still in the future.

    The year 1826 was a watershed for the young republic. Two of the giants of the Revolution died that year, their deaths coming within hours of each other and both on July 4, the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died that day, each taking comfort in his final hours from the knowledge that the other still lived. Their deaths ended the nation’s last ties to the revolutionary generation. James Monroe had been the last president among the revolutionaries to serve his country in that office. John Quincy Adams, who was in the presidential chair that year, had watched the battle of Bunker Hill but he was only seven years old at the time. He was, nevertheless, a transitional figure, having traveled to Europe with his father when the John Adams had been in ambassadorial posts. When he left office in 1829, the United States moved immediately into the next phase of its nationhood.

    Andrew Jackson was the first president to have been born on the frontier and brought a new egalitarianism to Washington. High office in the United States was no longer something to be handed back and forth among the great revolutionary families and their friends and political cohorts. Jackson threw government wide open and ushered in a new era of expanding democracy.

    At the same time in the major cities on the eastern seaboard, a new phenomenon was occurring.  On a street corner in New York City in 1833, a newsboy was hawking the New York Sun for a penny per issue. This was a revolution in itself. Until then, newspapers had represented one special interest or another, were published weekly, were sold by subscription only, and were expensive costing six cents per issue. The Sun, soon to be followed by a dozen different titles in cities up and down the east coast, was none of these. It was published daily (five days each week), written for everyone, and sold for a penny.

    The newspapers Americans have come to depend on for news of their home town, the world, their favorite sports team, the fashion houses of Paris, the daily ups and downs of the stock market, as well as the funnies that made them laugh and lampooned the nation’s politicians, and much more; the newspapers that brought news from the front in the nation’s wars from the Civil War to Vietnam, that exposed the My Lai massacre and the Pentagon papers and Abu Grahib were born in that yeasty expansion of democracy that would create the middle class and, in turn, be molded by it.

    For 150 years, the newspapers descended from the penny press have been a vital and necessary force in the American democracy, shaping it and being shaped by it. It was the early editors of the penny press who invented journalism as we know it. They were in business to make money and realized that to gain the maximum number of readers they had to present the news of the day impartially, relating the facts and descriptions of events as objectively as human foibles allow. These principles of journalism have been the currency in every American newsroom ever since and have not only served democracy well but allowed newspapers to retain loyal readership in the face of new media such as radio and television. Now new forces threaten to end the institution of the printed press.

    What those forces may be is a subject for another day. Without question America’s newspapers are under threat of disappearing but, more alarmingly, journalism is under threat. This web site is devoted to the idea that what ever format may be in which Americans consume their news in the future, journalism must be preserved. That is why you will always be able to tell news from commentary, opinion or analysis on this site and you will always know the names of the writers whose work is posted here and what skills, talent, training and experience they bring to the work.