The Art of Democracy - Jim Cullen

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century. As discussed in Chapter 1, newspapers got off to an uncertain start in the colonies, and it was not until the eighteenth century that the industry had securely established itself in the cities. The Stamp Act of 1765, which required all printed documents to use a stamped paper that carried a special tax, hit newspapers especially hard, and their publishers played an important role in galvanizing opposition to British rule. There were thirty-seven papers in the colonies at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War in 1775, twenty of which survived paper shortages, difficulties in gathering information, and British occupation. One of these, the Pennsylvania Evening Post (published in Philadelphia), became the first daily.4

      By the turn of the nineteenth century, U.S. newspapers had a primarily mercantile readership. In addition to carrying domestic politics and news from abroad, they featured shipping schedules and paid announcements by wholesalers seeking to sell imported goods to retailers. Indeed, their very names—Boston’s Daily Mercantile Advertiser, Baltimore’s Daily Commercial Advertiser, Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Packet—suggest their economic (and often maritime) orientation. These papers were generally sold in yearly subscriptions, and individual copies were relatively expensive.

      By the early nineteenth century, however, the political functions of the press were becoming increasingly important, as politics itself became a kind of bruising competitive sport. The schism between Federalists and Democratic-Republicans in the 1790s was an unexpected and unpleasant development for a governing elite that professed antipathy toward sectarianism. As a result, many of their disputes were not played out directly but by proxy in the press. “Should the infidel Jefferson be elected to the Presidency, the seal of death is that moment set on our holy religion, our churches will be prostrated, and some famous prostitute, under the title of Goddess of Reason, will preside in the Sanctuaries now devoted to the Most High,” claimed one Federalist organ during the campaign of 1800, using rhetoric that was typical of the time.5 Jeffersonians, it should be added, gave as good as they got.

      The growing scale of newspaper publishing, and the new prominence given editorial matter, led to the rise of an important new figure in U.S. politics and culture: the editor. Previously, newspapers had been small operations run by printers. Now, however, there was a new premium on political and entrepreneurial savvy. Party operatives with access to capital became central to the evolving direction of journalism, and parties became key funding sources and exerted tight control over editorial direction.6

      The founding of the New York Evening Post by Alexander Hamilton in 1801 illustrates these patterns. The pre-eminent member of the Federalist opposition after the election of his arch-rival Jefferson, Hamilton raised $10,000 from some wealthy patrons, and established the Post as a counterweight to the Jeffersonian American Citizen. Hamilton did not actually edit the Post himself, but he was essentially the paper’s editorial director, using it to advance the Federalist political program (and writing articles under a pseudonym) until his death in a duel with Aaron Burr in 1804. Ironically, Hamilton’s hand-picked editor later turned the editorship over to William Cullen Bryant, who became a Jacksonian Democrat committed to overturning Hamilton’s political and economic legacy (embodied most concretely by the Bank of the United States). Still more ironic was the Post’s later incarnation as a working-class tabloid that sought to sell papers with tart headlines. By the end of the twentieth century, it had become the longest running continuous daily newspaper in the United States, but has also moved a long way from Hamilton’s original vision.7

      The Post’s success anticipated an important newspaper tradition that emerged in full flower during Jackson’s presidency: the mass-based daily catering to a working-class readership. Many of the strategies that mark contemporary tabloids—human interest stories, a fascination with crime and sex, the use of vernacular language, and a declared indifference to respectable opinion—can be traced back to the penny dailies of the 1830s. These newspapers were among the most important forms of popular culture in the nineteenth century, and a key influence on (and distributor of) such forms as dime novels, which will be discussed below.

      The first successful example of this kind of journalism was the New York Sun, a daily founded by printer-turned-editor Benjamin Day. “The object of this paper is to lay before the public, at a price within the means of every one, ALL THE NEWS OF THE DAY, and at the same time afford an advantageous medium for advertising,” he proclaimed in his inaugural issue of September 3, 1833. To achieve this end, the Sun sold for one cent—one sixth the price of the mercantile or political papers sold by subscription. Moreover, Day followed the British practice of selling copies at a discount to boys who in turn sold them on the street. This greatly enhanced the paper’s circulation, which reached 2,000 by November 1834, 5,000 by early 1835, and 15,000 by the middle of that year.8

      The Sun sold in such quantities because it defined “the news of the day” in terms that made sense to an ever growing laboring class of immigrants and rural migrants, for whom international trade and even partisan politics were largely irrelevant. Certainly, the paper catered to advertisers, much to the chagrin of readers who learned the hard way about the dangers of buying fraudulent products from the array of merchants who saw opportunities in a market that was just beginning to emerge. Still, a paper could not sell advertising unless it attracted readers, and Day did so with a mix of human interest stories, police reporting, and exposés of churches, courts, banks, and government.

      Contemporary accounts make it clear that the Sun—as well as the Philadelphia Public Ledger (1836), the Boston Daily Times (1836), the Baltimore Sun (1837), and a wave of other papers that sprang up along the Eastern seaboard—created a vast new readership. As with so much else in popular culture in this period, the center of the newspaper world was New York. Surveying the scene, the Ledger described an environment that clearly excited the writer in its novelty:

      In the cities of New York and Brooklyn, containing a population of 300,000, the daily circulation of the penny papers is not less than 70,000. This is nearly sufficient to place a newspaper in the hand of every man in the two cities, and even every boy old enough to read. These papers are to be found in every street, lane, and alley; in every hotel, tavern, counting-house, shop, etc. Almost every porter and dray-man, while not engaged in his occupation, may be seen with a paper in his hands.9

      The Sun’s success was soon matched, and then eclipsed, by the New York Herald, founded by James Gordon Bennett in 1835. The Herald borrowed many of the Suns techniques, but took them a step further, as when Bennett made the trial of a young clerk for the murder of a prostitute—two people of no social standing—into a gripping national saga. The paper was also particularly aggressive in attacking church leaders, as well as its own rivals. Bennett’s decision to raise the price of the Herald to two cents in its second year turned out to be a savvy investment, for it allowed him to expand and to experiment with new techniques, ranging from buying a fleet of boats to meet news-bearing vessels from Europe to developing his business reporting to the point where it was competitive with the mercantile papers.10

      Indeed, the Herald’s success was so great that it inspired attacks from the elite press, which in 1840 declared a “moral war” that was joined by papers in Boston, Philadelphia, and even England. Sinking to the level they supposedly deplored, these papers excoriated the Herald and its editors for “reckless depravity.” and “moral leprosy” Barely concealed beneath their fear of an encroaching rival was a growing concern over the direction of American journalism.11

      Meanwhile, the expansion of penny newspapers along the Eastern seaboard—and their steady penetration westward—was greatly facilitated by technological developments. The first penny papers were printed on hand-operated presses, but mechanically powered steam and cylinder machines soon allowed for a tremendous growth in productive potential. Moreover, the relationship between newspaper culture and technology was a reciprocal one: new technologies created new markets, and new markets spurred the development of more efficient presses, paper manufacturing, and distribution methods.12

      Probably the most important technological

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