Penny press

Penny press newspapers were cheap, tabloid-style papers produced in the middle of the 19th century.

The first penny press paper

In 1833, Benjamin Day, publisher of the New York Sun, discovered that if he published sensationalist* stories, he could greatly expand the paper's circulation by appealing to the common working-class reader. Advertisers were then willing to pay more for ad space, permitting Day to drop the price per daily paper from five cents to just one. Day's "penny press" is often identified as the first time that reading material was truly affordable to common people, and the Sun is credited as being the first penny press newspaper.

"Sensationalist" here uses the older meaning of the term, referring to an emphasis on common interest, rather than aristocratic, events written as "news," not as essays. In a nutshell, the old meaning of "sensationalist" equals the earliest concept of "news."

The Penny Press thus practically invented the modern idea of "news" - before this time, local news like crime, local politics, natural disasters and working class struggle never made it into the paper. The Penny Press advented the rush for scoops: Great competion between newspapers as to who could get the story first. This does not mean that papers weren't still well edited and factual. The New York Herald was known as the best-edited newspaper in America.

Technological factors

It took more than just Day's business sense and populism to produce the penny press. In the preceding half century, the printing press underwent several important technological innovations, in keeping with the industrial revolution of the time. By the time Day established the Sun, the printing press frame was converted from wood to steel, the press was steam powered, and the printing surface was a cylindrical cast of the letter punches. More innovations would follow shortly after, including the switch from printing on discrete pieces of paper to printing on continuous rolls.

Political factors

Political and demographic changes were also significant. Much of the success of the newspaper in the early United States owes itself to the attitude of the founding fathers toward the press. Many of them saw the free press as one of the most essential elements in maintaining the liberty and equality of citizens. Thomas Jefferson said he considered the free press even more important than the government itself: "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." It was because of this attitude that freedom of the press gains mention in the First Amendment to the Constitution, and though early politicians, including Jefferson, occasionally made attempts to rein in the press, newspapers flourished in the new nation.

However, the penny press was originally apolitical both in content and in attitude. As Michael Schudson describes in Discovering the News, the Sun once replaced their congressional news section with this statement: "The proceedings of Congress thus far, would not interest our readers." The major socio-political changes brought on by the development of the penny press were themselves helped by the penny press' focus on working-class people and their interests. Thus an apolitical attitude was, ironically, a political factor influencing the advancement of the penny press.

Demographic factors

Soon after Benjamin Day's New York Sun began selling papers for a penny, James Gordon Bennett started the New York Herald in 1835, and Horace Greeley started the New York Tribune in 1841. Three daily penny press papers in one city were possible because of the large population of New York City and surrounding cities, due to the recent urbanization in industrialized New England. By the 1830s the general population had become both sufficiently localized and sufficiently literate that a penny press newspaper could have a weekly circulation of 50,000. For comparison, the influential Spectator of a little over a century earlier had a maximum circulation per issue of about 4,000.

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