Rosenfeld 1

From Pennies to Power: The Transformation of the Newspaper Publishing Motives in Colonial America

Arno Rosenfeld

Rosenfeld 2 Newspapers have been a mainstay of American culture for nearly three-hundred years, much longer than the nation itself has existed. The printed word as a means of conveying information began in the colonies in the mid-1600s, and blossomed into something resembling newspapers as we know them today, at the turn of the 18th century. The motivation of early publishers to print newspapers was originally monetary. They saw a newspaper as a way of supplementing their meager income. However, as the years went by, early American newspapers flourished as publishers realized the nominal monetary gainderived from advertisements and subscriptionswas supplemented by the influence they gained in their community by controlling the most authoritative source of information. The first printing press came to America in 1638, and resided in what is now Cambridge, Massachusetts. The press was overseen by the president of the newly founded Harvard College. The press printed almanacs, sermons, psalms, law-books, and eventually even a bible written in a local native language (Mott 6). Its important to note that, carefully supervised by college authorities, the press primarily printed works which already existed in the cannon of colonial acceptability. This kept the government authorities away, and ensured a peaceful existence for the Cambridge press. At this time, the printing press was greatly feared by those in power all across the world. The inherent nature of the press, that it allows a message to be easily, and affordably, spread to the masses, led people in power to attempt to curb its power whenever they could. The press was treated by authoritative regimes much in the same way as the internet is today. Given that relative to the internet, a printing press is an easy operation to shut down, and that popular democracy did not yet exist, censorship was the norm. Those who challenged the government with the printed word, faced severe retribution.

Rosenfeld 3 By the end of the 17th century, censorshipthrough libel laws and the strict requirement of licenses to operate presseswas the norm in England. Its perhaps then no surprise that an Englishman of some authority, Governor of Virginia, Sir William Berkeley, wrote in 1671:

But I thank God, we have not free schools nor printing; and I hope we shall not have these hundred years. For learning has brought obedience and heresy and sects into the world; and printing has divulged them and libels against the government. God keep us from both.

In light of comments like Berkeleys it is certainly no surprise that the early printers began publishing in New England, rather than in the south (Georgia was without a press until 1762) (Boorstin 325). Learning was more encouraged in the northern colonies and as a result literacy was higher, and printing was reasonably tolerated, albeit under strict government supervision (Mott 7). The government eventually permitted a press to be set up in seaport town of Boston, by now a growing commercial center. The press faced censorship by the General Court, though as Frank Luther Mott notes in his American Journalism: A History 1690-1960, On the whole, the colonies fared well with respect to printing. The pioneer villages of Boston and Philadelphia both could boast presses before any were permitted in such English cities as Liverpool and Birmingham. While presses began multiplying in those cities, as well as New York and others, it wasnt until 1670s papers began being distributed in the colonies, and even those were imported English papers (Mott 8). The reason for the lack of native newspapers was primarily the danger involved in the publication of such a thing. Newspapers at the time

Rosenfeld 4 generally consisted of reports from overseas, in the form of reprinting stories from other papers, or printing correspondence presented to the publisher or editor (almost always the same person) by a community member, as well as brief summaries of local affairs. However, another element newspapers were also expected to contain essays. Essays would be written by local citizens, usually anonymously, and slipped under the door to a print shop at night by local citizens. Sometimes they would be written by someone involved with newspaper (this became the norm in the later part of the century), like Benjamin Franklin wrote essays for his brothers New-England Courrant under a penname. The essays, and any other content that bore any hint of analysis or criticism of those in power, subjected the newspaper publisher to serious retribution on the part of the authorities, already on the watch for rogue presses. The first man to attempt publishing a regular newspaper was Benjamin Harris. Harris had run a paper back in London, but got on the wrong said of the government and was forced to find refuge in Boston. By the time Harris arrived in the city, there were already a plethora of printers, and he thought to set himself apart, and carve out a niche to make an income, by bringing an English style newspaper to America (Rutland 4). Harris published Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick on September 25, 1690. He naively labeled it Numb. 1; it was shut down four days later. The explanation given by the Massachusetts government was that the paper contained Reflections of a very high nature This goes to show the very different circumstances under which colonial printers were operating. Another example of this is The Elizabeths Licensing Act of 1570 in England, intended to limit press freedom, had the express purpose of stopping the Presse from publishing anything that might discover the Corruption of Church or State. Of course

Rosenfeld 5 those are both things that today we view as a central purpose of the free press, and even countries in which freedom of the press is restricted, such an honest proclamation would be rare. Given these circumstances, Robert A. Rutlands comment in his book Newsmongers, that [E]arly printers had no sense of missionary zeal. They were merely businessmen serves as an impressive testament to their determination. Given all the adversity they faced, printers were still willing to turn out newspapers. That raises the question, if printers faced such pressures from the government, what did they stand to gain from publishing a newspaper? In order to understand this, one must first understand the position of printers in colonial society. In order to make a living, they were dependent on people coming to them to print documents. Short of that, they had to produce their own content. Printers would sell books, run coffeehouses, and even serve as wholesalers for other printers to buy their ink and other printing supplies (Rutland 4). But printing was still what they did best. What was a printer to do if he wanted to make money? English bibles, though popular, were not a way to make money, since high quality and inexpensive bibles were already available in large quantity from England (Boorstin). And literature, was treated with general disregard in the colonies. As Mott writes, These English pioneers in America, like all frontiersmen, had to live rudely and frugally. They had few luxuries and, since the frontier is by its very nature always under-supplied with labor, they had no leisure for the cultivation of aesthetic and purely intellectual values. Almanacs were very popular, and nearly every printer either sold his own almanac, or sold a popular one. They contained practical information, from how to fertilize a field, to

Rosenfeld 6 how to fix a shoe. However, new editions were not published frequently. That, coupled with the market saturation of almanacs, meant that the almanac alone could not support a printer. Even Benjamin Franklins famous Poor Richards Almanac made up less than 40% of his revenue, with his Pennsylvania Gazette making up 60%. The market for newspapers lay with the merchant class. Their livelihoods depended on staying informed of local and foreign news, since the news impacted imports and exports. Back in Europe, the merchants were the ones who originally secularized, and in some ways subsidizes the printing press (Rutland 7). Once the merchant class in the colonies grew large enough, seaports started sprouting newspapers to serve their needs. The original newspapers were turned out by printers trying to keep their presses pressing, and capitalize as much as they could on the needs of the merchants. In the end though, while merchants and shippers found an outlet to advertise their products, colonial newspaper publishers suffered financially, and often were able to continue printing only under a heavy burden of debt. This debt often resulted from subscribers and advertisers not paying their dues. Thomas Fleet, publisher of the Boston Evening Post, published in his paper, a notice common in colonial newspapers (Rutland 9):

The Subscribers for this Paper, (especially those at a Distance) who are shamefully in Arrear for it, would do well (methinks) to remember those Apostolical Injunctions, Rom. Xiii. 7,8. Render therefore to all their dues; and Owe no man any thing. It is wonderful to observer, that while we hear so much about a great Revival of Religion in the Land; there is yet so little Regard had to Justice and Common Honesty!

Rosenfeld 7 For most, there was little money to be had in the business, the courts censors were constantly hounding the printer who dare stray from acceptable norms, and on top of that, printers had to ensure they were producing a paper that people even wanted to read. While there was little competition early on, even printers in the early 1700s had to concern themselves with printing timely stories, something they often failed at, surviving based solely on the virtue that there was no competition (John Campbell produced so lifeless and irrelevant a paper for the citizenry of Boston that had it not started early, lasted long, and begun the most disreputable form of American advertising, it would not even be remembered today, writes Eric Burns in his book Infamous Scribblers). There must have been something deeper driving the individuals behind the colonial newspapers. In later years, as the country inched toward revolution, and unrest grew in the colonies, newspapers were spurred on by ideology, and viewed as a chance to spread anger toward the government; in short, they became tools of propaganda. However, in the 1720s1740s, while propaganda did occur, most printers were more interested in squeezing by, than aggressively taking on authority (Rutland 10). What drove printers to create newspapers was the ability to influence the community. As Rutland writes, For all his skirting the edge of poverty the colonial printer of a newspaper was a man to be reckoned with. Given the relative newness of the newspaper, not just in the colonies, but in the world as a whole, the authorities did not know just how to deal with them. If a newspaper printed only seemingly benign announcements about local affairs, censorship proved tricky. The threat of these newspapers was that they transcended their role as a business tool for merchants, and encouraged civic engagement, threatening the impunity with which the colonial

Rosenfeld 8 governments operated. It wasnt that the newspapers, which for the most part didnt even employ journalists as we think of today, were uncovering scandals. They were simply reporting to the masses, information that while not strictly private, had previously been the knowledge of a select few. The egalitarian quality of the newspaper was so unsettling to the government that they oscillated between cracking down on the publications, and brining the publisher into their oligarchy. This was an appealing, albeit stressful, station for a man who would otherwise be a lowly tradesman on the totem pole of colonial society. Even if they did not always turn a steady profit, the continuous record kept by newspapersof taxes being levied, roads being built, monopolies being grantedopened the government up to be criticized in ways formerly unheard of. In the quasi-democratic colonies, where some portion of the population was able to vote for some portion of their rulers, the government was unable to crush the press outright. After all, the citizenry wanted to know what their elected officials were doing, and they certainly wouldnt support completely abolishing the press. On the other side of the equation, government officials figured if the genie was out of the bottle, and the press was to remain, they should use it to their advantage. While the printers influence helped them achieve power, it was far from absolute power, and when they went too far in their zealous criticism of the governments, they often faced consequences. So was the case of John Peter Zenger, a German immigrant and printer living in New York. He was induced by enemies of Governor William Cosby in 1732 to begin printing the New-York Weekly Journal, with the goal of using it to criticize the governor (Rutland 28). Zenger was quickly jailed on the charge of libel. During his trial, despite the judges insistence that the only issue to be decided was whether or not he

Rosenfeld 9 had written the libelous statements at hand. His lawyer argued that while he had indeed written the statements, they were true, and thus not libelous. Truth did not actually, under the laws of the time, make something not libelous. But the jury, hand-picked to be friendly to the Crown, acquitted Zenger (Rutland 29). While Zengers case shocked the legal world in colonial America, he continued to go relatively unknown among printers at the time. But despite his lack of contemporary influence, his case shows that printers were, perhaps only for the cause of personal expediency, but nonetheless, standing up for freedom of the press (Rutland 30). More importantly, society was backing them. The notion that early printers, who for the most part ventured into the newspaper business in order to keep their print-shops alive, were suddenly at the forefront of the freespeech movement in the colonies should not be surprising. While they may have gone into the business for the money, and stayed for the power, colonial printers came to realize that their power was concentrated in their transmission of information that had previously been inaccessible to their readers. Thus they had a strong vested interest in creating and preserving a right to freely print that information. This change in mindset, from businessman to policy-influencer was exponential. While the earliest printers harbored familiar complaints against the government, such as taxes being too high, the press quickly came to be seen as an outlet for those with stronger feelingsrevolutionary feelingsto voice themselves. The turning point of where the colonial press became home to revolutionaries is not clear-cut. As early as the 1720s there was opposition to the ruling class in the pages of newspapers, with Samuel Adams in Boston railing against small pox inoculation being proscribed by the government. But through all of this, and even up through the Revolutionary War, most newspapers were

Rosenfeld 10 conservative, preferring to appease the censors than risk being shut down. Furthermore, the printers who were purely businessmen saw little advantage in taking on authority. Indeed Benjamin Edes, who was foremost in the patriot-printer ranks during the 1770s, said that he lost 75% of his customers after the British were defeated. The cause of liberty is not always the channel of preferment or pecuniary reward, wrote Edes.

Bibliography

Boorstin, Daniel J. The Americans: The Colonial Experience. New York: Vintage Books, Random House, 1956. 317-35. Print.

Rosenfeld 11 Burns, Eric. Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism. New York: PublicAffairs, Perseus Book Group, 2006. 1997. Print. "Colonial Newspapers and Magazines." The Cambridge History of English Language and American Literature. n.d. N. pag. Web. 2011. Coughlin, William P. "A Birthday Recalled For a Forgotten Patriot; Isaiah Thomas, Sire of Our Printed Word." Boston Globe 19 Jan. 1986, third ed.: Metro. Proquest. Web. 2011. Mott, Frank L. American Journalism: A History 1690-1960. 3rd ed. New York: Macmillan, 1962. 3-109. Print. Negri, Gloria. "First Colonial Newspaper Now on Exhibit in Boston." Boston Globe (pre1997 Fulltext): 31. U.S. National Newspapers. Sep 26 1990. Web. Rutland, Robert A. Newsmongers. New York: The Dial Press, 1973. 3-54. Print.