I.

Introduction

Newspaper, publication usually issued on a daily or weekly basis, the main function of which is to report news. Many newspapers also furnish special information to readers, such as weather reports, television schedules, and listings of stock prices. They provide commentary on politics, economics, and arts and culture, and sometimes include entertainment features, such as comics and crossword puzzles. In nearly all cases and in varying degrees, newspapers depend on commercial advertising for their income.

Newspaper publishers estimate that nearly six out of ten adults in the United States and Canada read a newspaper every day, and seven out of ten read a paper each weekend. By the time they see a newspaper, most people have already learned about breaking news stories on television or radio. Readers rely on newspapers to provide detailed background information and analysis, which television and radio newscasts rarely offer. Newspapers not only inform readers that an event happened but also help readers understand what led up to the event and how it will affect the world around them.

The staff of a large newspaper works under the constant pressure of deadlines to bring news to readers as quickly as human energy and technological devices permit. Reporters, photographers, artists, and editors compile articles and graphics—sometimes in just a few hours. Page designers assemble articles, photos, illustrations, advertisements, and eye-catching headlines into page layouts, then rush their work to the printer. Printing technicians may work through the night operating printing presses that can churn out more than 60,000 copies per hour.

Newspapers trace their roots to handwritten news sheets posted daily in the public marketplaces of ancient Rome. The first printed newspapers appeared in China during the Tang dynasty (ad 618-907). These newspapers were printed from carved wood blocks. Precursors to modern papers first appeared in Venice, Italy, in the middle of the 14th century. Newspapers as known today, complete with advertising and a mixture of political, economic, and social news and commentary, emerged in Britain in the mid-18th century.

II.

Kinds of Newspapers

Most newspapers are printed on grainy, lightweight paper, called newsprint, which comes in one of two sizes. Broadsheet newspaper pages measure 33 cm by 55 cm (13 in by 21.5 in). The pages of tabloid newspapers measure about 25 cm by 37 cm (10 in by 14.5 in). The term tabloid is sometimes used to refer to newspapers that carry stories about celebrities, crime, or scandal under sensationalized headlines. However, any kind of newspaper can be printed on tabloid-sized pages.

Newspapers publish with varying frequency. Some come out every day or even twice a day. Other newspapers print once a week, once a month, four times a year, or even less often. Newspapers also differ in focus. General-circulation newspapers print news of interest to a broad audience, while special-interest papers target a more specific audience.

A.

Daily Newspapers

Daily newspapers print at least one edition every weekday. Morning editions, printed in the predawn hours, cover newsworthy events of the previous day. Evening editions are printed in the afternoon and include information about events that happened earlier that day. Most dailies also offer a larger weekend edition. In Canada, weekend editions generally come out on Saturdays. In the United States, Sunday editions are typical.

Stories featured in dailies generally cover a wide range of issues that appeal to an audience in a specific geographic region, such as a particular metropolitan area. Daily general-circulation newspapers average about 65 pages during the week and more than 200 pages in the weekend edition. Commercial advertising takes up about two-thirds of both weekday and weekend editions, and news and features fill the remaining third.

Most daily newspapers divide their content into separately folded sections. Newspapers typically have sections for local news, sports, arts and entertainment, business, and classified advertising. The newspapers’ front page features eye-catching headlines and photographs that pique readers’ interests and direct them to stories featured in the inner sections. The first page of each section follows the same general model to entice readers to explore that section’s contents.

In the United States in 2000, about 1,500 daily newspapers printed a total of 56 million copies, and on average, each copy was read by at least 2 people. Canada, which has just over one-tenth of the American population, had about one-tenth the number of daily papers. In 2001, 105 Canadian daily newspapers printed a total of more than 5 million copies each day.

The newspaper with the largest circulation in the United States is USA Today, with a national circulation of about 2.3 million. Other newspapers with large circulation are the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. The Toronto Star is Canada’s most widely read daily newspaper, followed by the national Globe and Mail.

Many large daily newspapers publish regional editions that cater to the population of a smaller geographical area. For example, each weekday the Wall Street Journal publishes five different editions—three national regional editions, an edition in Europe, and an edition in Asia. Dailies in large metropolitan areas may publish a city edition as well as suburban editions to circulate among readers who live outside the city. Dailies in large urban areas also may publish two or more city editions, each delivering news and advertisements directed at different neighborhoods or boroughs.

Most North American daily newspapers print one edition a day and circulate fewer than 100,000 copies. In 2000 about 100 newspapers sold more than 100,000 copies per day in the United States, and 10 Canadian papers had daily sales of 100,000 copies or more. Some papers, especially those in small towns or rural areas, circulate only a few thousand copies per day.

B.

Weekly Newspapers

Weekly newspapers publish once a week. General-circulation weekly papers often contain news of interest to people in a smaller area than that of a daily paper, an area such as a small city, town, or neighborhood. They feature less national or international news, focusing instead on local happenings. High school sporting events, traffic accidents, and actions by local government frequently make front-page news in weekly papers.

Many large metropolitan areas also have weekly papers. In urban settings, weekly papers often provide more detailed analysis of local news and politics than daily papers do. They may contain in-depth commentary on the local arts scene and include comprehensive schedules for music and theater productions.

Almost 7,600 weekly newspapers circulated in the United States in 2000, each selling an average of more than 9,000 copies every week. Canada had about 1,100 weeklies, a number that included many community papers, which publish twice a week.

C.

Special-Interest Papers

Special-interest newspapers concentrate on news of interest to a particular group. An ethnic community, for example, may have a newspaper that informs readers of news and events in that community. Many special-interest newspapers are printed in a language other than English. Corporations or divisions of corporations often publish their own newspapers, as do unions and trade organizations, such as those for woodworkers, airline pilots, and people in the fashion industry. Other special-interest papers feature news about a specific topic, such as rock music or sports.

Special-interest papers may come out daily, weekly, monthly, or even less frequently. Daily special-interest newspapers cover daily events from the perspective of members in that group. The Wall Street Journal, for example, contains detailed financial news that appeals to members of the business community. Ethnic communities in urban areas may have a daily special-interest paper that examines local, national, and international news in terms of how it affects their population. Large universities often have daily papers. Arts newspapers, such as newspapers devoted to theater or music, often come out weekly. They include critiques of art exhibits, performances, new music albums, and recently published books. They typically also publish schedules of upcoming events, such as concerts and poetry readings.

III.

How a Newspaper Is Produced

Most newspapers follow roughly the same procedure when putting together an edition of the paper. First, news editors assign newsworthy events to reporters. The reporters research the events and write their own stories on computers. Copy editors edit the stories and write headlines for them. The stories go back to the news editor, who checks over the stories and headlines. Meanwhile, photographers shoot pictures to accompany the stories, and graphic artists create any charts and diagrams that that will accompany the stories in the paper.

Advertising professionals raise money for operational costs by selling the space in the newspaper to advertisers. Artists, working with computer representations of pages on which space has been blocked out for advertising, determine placement of articles, photographs, and illustrations. They send the finished computer layouts to the newspaper’s printing facilities, where printing technicians use state-of-the art equipment to convert electronic files into finished newspapers. People in the newspaper’s circulation department ensure that the freshly printed newspapers arrive at newsstands, doorsteps, and newspaper dispensing machines as quickly as possible.

A.

Creating Articles and Features

News stories, illustrations, and features are the responsibility of the paper’s news staff. The news staff of a major daily paper usually includes reporters, editors, photographers, and artists. Most newspapers supplement the work of their news staff with content provided by news organizations called wire services.

A.1.

Reporters

Reporters gather information about newsworthy events and write stories that describe them. Some reporters routinely monitor particular areas of the news, such as happenings at city hall, the police department, or in court. General-assignment reporters cover a wide variety of news events. Investigative reporters search out and expose corruption in government, business, labor, education, and other sectors of society. Many reporters cover only daily events—meetings of a city council, press conferences, fires, and accidents—while others work for weeks to develop in-depth articles.

A few of the world’s largest newspapers also have offices in their country’s capital that cover news about their nation’s leader, the government, and national organizations. They may station reporters in large cities around the country and foreign correspondents in important world capitals. Other reporters travel to key world events, such as the Olympic Games and regions of political unrest, where they spend extended periods reporting on events as they occur. These correspondents send stories to their home offices via facsimile or the Internet, or dictate stories over the telephone. Using these speedy methods ensures that news will appear in the hometown newspaper as soon as the events happen.

A.2.

Wire Services

In addition to receiving reports from their own staffs, newspapers also subscribe to wire services, such as the Associated Press (AP) or Reuters (see Reuters Holdings PLC). Wire services distribute up-to-the-minute news stories and pictures to subscribing newspapers. Newspapers may also run stories and features provided by newspaper syndicates. Like wire services, newspaper syndicates offer their content to other newspapers for a fee. For example, the New York Times Company and the Washington Post Company, among others, sell their news reports and features to papers in the United States and abroad.

A.3.

Editors

Different types of editors contribute different aspects to news stories. An editor-in-chief (sometimes called an executive editor) directs the news staff and assumes ultimate responsibility for the newspaper’s news content. Managing editors handle the day-to-day operations of the news staff. News editors work closely with reporters to identify which events merit coverage in the paper and to determine the length of the stories. Most major dailies have several different news editors. For example, the newspaper may have different news editors for local, national, and international news, sports, business, and arts.

Copy editors check over reporters’ stories to ensure that they are understandable and free of errors. They may request more information from the reporter if parts of the story are unclear or cut back stories that are too long. The copy editors also write a short, catchy headline for the story. Headlines attract readers and summarize the story’s contents.

Page editors determine where stories will appear in the paper. They usually place stories covering particularly important or interesting events on the front page and usually relegate stories of interest to fewer people to the paper’s inner pages. Using specialized computer software, page editors finalize the placement of stories, headlines, and features on each page of the paper.

Editorial page and opinion editors write editorials. Unlike news stories, which strive to present the facts in an unbiased manner, newspaper editorials and comments reflect the opinions of the paper’s editorial team, publisher, or owner. Large papers have several editorial writers. They may also select additional writers to provide a balance of political and social views. The columns of many of the best-known editorial writers are syndicated to hundreds of newspapers around the country. The editorial pages also include a selection of letters from readers. Readers write letters to the editor to express their own opinions about newsworthy events or about the way stories were covered in previous editions of the newspaper.

A.4.

Graphic Artists and Photographers

A team of artists and photographers creates images to bring news stories to life. An art director works closely with newspaper editors to identify illustrations and photographs that will help readers conceptualize information contained in news stories. Graphic artists create any charts, maps, or diagrams that are needed. Staff photographers take pictures of local people and events featured in the news. When newspapers carry stories about events that happen in other cities, they may hire freelance photographers stationed in that city or pay a fee to use photographs from a wire service.

Artists that specialize in page layout and design also work on newspapers. An artist, or team of artists, works with page editors to arrange news stories, headlines, photographs, illustrations, and advertisements into pages. Page editors and designers strive to make newspaper pages both visually appealing and easy to understand.

B.

Business Operations

The business division of the newspaper raises the money required to produce the paper and oversees printing and distribution. Advertising accounts for approximately 65 percent of American newspaper revenues, and income from circulation provides the remaining 35 percent. In Canada, advertising revenues cover up to 70 percent of an average newspaper’s operating budget. The biggest expense in the publication of large papers is newsprint, which amounts to about one-third of the total budget. Other major expenses include computers and machinery, salaries and benefits for newspaper employees, office space, equipment and supplies, utilities, and advertising.

B.1.

Advertising

Advertisers spend more of their money advertising in newspapers than in any other medium. Newspapers offer two different types of advertisements: display ads and classified ads. Display ads share page space with news and features. They generally feature illustrations, photographs, or catchy phrases in large print to attract the attention of readers. Teams of specialists sell newspaper display ads to local and national businesses. Advertisers pay based on how much space their ad requires on the page. They can purchase full-page display ads, which fill an entire page of the newspaper, or fractions of pages. The price of an advertisement depends on the size of the newspaper’s circulation. A full-page display ad in the Wall Street Journal, for example, cost nearly $168,000 in 2001. Newspapers with smaller circulations charge less for display ad space because companies assume that fewer people will see their advertisements. A full-page display ad in a weekday edition of the Seattle Times, which had a circulation of about 226,000 in 2001, cost up to $24,000.

Classified advertisements are small notices with a variety of offerings, such as apartment rentals, job opportunities, and personal property for sale. Classified ads also include personal ads—short messages from individual people or groups. Personal ads may be directed at a single reader or at multiple readers. Unlike display ads, which appear in-line with news stories and features, classified ads appear in their own section, the classifieds. Many newspapers, especially small weeklies and special-interest papers, offer their readers some types of classified advertising free. Large newspapers charge by the word, line, or inch for classified advertising, and as with display ads, prices depend on circulation. In 2002 the national edition of the Wall Street Journal charged $588 for one inch of a column in their residential real estate classified section. The Seattle Times charged about $183 for the same amount of space for residential real estate classified advertising in their weekday edition.

B.2.

Printing

After the page designer determines the final page layout on the computer, the pages are ready to be printed. Most newspapers use a printing technique called offset lithography, a method capable of producing more than 60,000 copies of a 65-page paper per hour (see Printing Techniques: Lithography).

The page editor sends electronic copies of the pages to a printing technician, who uses a special computer to create film negatives for each page. The technician transfers the page images to plastic or aluminum plates using a camera that shines ultra-violet light through the negative onto the plate. The light penetrates the clear parts of the negative, exposing only the printing portions of the plate. The technician then attaches the plate to one of the cylinders of a large printing press.

When in operation, a printing press rotates continuously, first coating the plate with water, which adheres to the nonprinting areas of the plate, then smearing the plate with ink that sticks only to the nonwatered portions of the plate. The cylinders rewater and reink the plate as they spin, pulling a long roll of newsprint, called a web, through the press as they do. When the plates roll over the newsprint, they transfer quick-drying ink to its surface. A typical modern newspaper printing press prints both sides of a newsprint web several pages wide. It also incorporates automatic cutters and folders and may include an inserting machine that arranges sections one inside the other.

Papers with multiple editions, such as the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, send computerized pages to two or more printing presses at a time, often in different geographical regions. These decentralized printing facilities enable newspapers to distribute copies to cities across the continent, and in some cases the world, at more or less the same time.

B.3.

Distribution

The circulation department supervises the distribution of the newspaper. Most newspapers offer home delivery. Trucks carry freshly printed papers to regional distribution centers. Newspaper carriers pick up bundles of newspapers from the distribution center, then deliver them to the homes of paying subscribers along a predetermined route. In other cases, distribution trucks deliver bundles of newspapers directly to the carriers. Carriers are paid based on the number of papers they deliver. In some areas, especially small cities and rural areas, mostly middle and high school students deliver papers, often on foot or via bicycle. In large cities, paper carriers are usually adults, who travel their routes by car so they can deliver more papers per day.

Trucks deliver newspapers to newsstands and newspaper dispensing machines located in areas where people congregate, such as airports, bus stations, and train stations. Newsstands and newspaper dispensing machines also dot the street corners of medium- and large-sized cities. Many retail outlets, such as grocery stores and coffee shops, also offer newspapers for sale. The big, catchy headlines on a newspaper’s front page serve to catch the attention of passersby in these and other public venues.

Circulation managers try to increase the number of people who buy the paper because newspapers depend on selling copies of the paper for more than 30 percent of their revenue. They may sponsor special promotional prices for subscription or give away copies of the paper to attract new readers.

IV.

Origins of Newspapers

Before the invention of printing machines, people spread news by word of mouth, written letters, or public notices. As more people learned to read and write, news reports gained added reliability. Ancient Rome had a particularly sophisticated system for circulating written news. Its publishing practices centered on acta diurna (daily events), handwritten news sheets posted by the government in the public marketplace from the year 59 bc to at least ad 222. Acta diurna announced news of politics, trials, scandals, military campaigns, and executions. In China, early government-produced news sheets, called tipao, circulated among court officials during the Han dynasty (202 bc-ad 220). At some point during the Tang dynasty (618-907), the Chinese used carved wooden blocks to print tipao, making them the first printed newspapers in history.

A printing press that employed movable type was developed in Europe in 1450, and European officials soon began using it to publish news (see Printing). Short pamphlets, called news books, informed the public of royal weddings, victorious battles, or other newsworthy events. News ballads recounted news events in verse form. News books and news ballads were circulated sporadically in Europe and the American colonies, usually when officials wanted to inform the public of important events.

V.

The First Newspapers

Newspapers published under the same name on a regular schedule first appeared in Venice, Italy, in the 16th century. Handwritten newspapers called avisi, or gazettes, appeared weekly as early as 1566. They reported news brought to Venice by traders, such as accounts of wars and politics in other parts of Italy and Europe. Venetian gazettes established a style of journalism that most early printed newspapers followed—short sets of news items written under the name of the city they came from and the date on which they were sent. The oldest surviving copies of European newspapers are of two weeklies published in German in 1609—one in Strassburg (now Strasbourg, France) by Johann Carolus, the other in Wolfenbüttel, Germany, by Lucas Schulte.

Newspapers spread rapidly throughout Europe. One-page weeklies appeared in Basel, Switzerland, by 1610; in Frankfurt, Germany, and Vienna, Austria, by 1615; in Hamburg, Germany, by 1616; in Berlin, Germany, by 1617; and in Amsterdam, Netherlands, by 1618. The first newspaper printed in England appeared in 1621, and France produced a newspaper in 1631. However, printers in Amsterdam, a center of trade and of political and religious tolerance in the early 17th century, exported weeklies in French and in English as early as 1620. The first continuously published English newspaper was the Weekly News, published from 1622 to 1641. Italy's first printed weekly appeared by 1639, and Spain had one by 1641.

Early English newspapers were generally printed in one of two formats: in the style of the Dutch papers or in the style of the early German weeklies. Dutch-style papers compressed news stories onto four or fewer pages, while news in German-style weeklies covered up to 24 pages. English publishers first used the Dutch style but switched to the German style by 1622.

English newspapers were among the first in the world to use headlines to attract readers and woodcuts to illustrate stories. English newspapers also set new business standards. They hired women as reporters, printed advertisements as a source of revenue, and paid newsboys, or more commonly, newsgirls, to sell papers in the streets.

The fledgling English press faced censorship throughout much of the 17th century. Early newspapers called diurnals—the predecessors of today’s dailies—featured news from all over Europe and occasionally America or Asia. However, government officials discouraged reporting on local matters. In addition, the government tightly regulated print shops. In England, as in most other European countries, the government required printers to have licenses to print the news. Printers could lose their licenses if they published anything offensive to authorities.

The first major change in this arrangement came in the years before the outbreak of the English Civil War (1642-1648). As Parliament, under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell, struggled with King Charles I, national news assumed a new importance. Newspapers, liberated by the breakdown in the king's authority, began to feel free enough to discuss domestic politics. The first English newspaper to attempt to report on national news was the Heads of Several Proceedings in This Present Parliament, a weekly that appeared in 1641. The public’s appetite for domestic news grew steadily, and soon a number of papers covered national politics and other previously censored topics. In 1644 writer John Milton articulated the ideal of freedom of the press with great eloquence in his essay Areopagitica. However, when Oliver Cromwell consolidated his power after Charles I was beheaded in 1649, he cracked down on the press. He allowed only a few authorized newspapers to be printed.

After the monarchy was restored under King Charles II in 1660, the government gradually ended licensing provisions and other restrictions. The English press published in an atmosphere of considerable freedom—as long as it did not criticize the government. During the upheaval of the Glorious Revolution in 1688 (when Parliament deposed King James II in favor of William of Orange), the English press burst free of nearly all government restrictions. The law that required printers to obtain licenses lapsed in 1695. Belief in the right of the press to question and criticize government eventually took hold in England and migrated to its American colonies.

VI.

The Newspaper in the United States

The first newspaper published in the American colonies, Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick, launched in 1690 in Boston, Massachusetts. The colonial government suppressed its publication after just one issue. Fourteen years passed before another newspaper was published in the colonies.

A.

Colonial Papers

The Boston News-Letter, established in 1704 by John Campbell, became the first regularly published colonial newspaper. The paper contained financial and foreign news from English newspapers and recorded local births, deaths, and social events. It rarely challenged colonial authority because the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony retained the right to censor any of its contents.

The New-England Courant, first printed in 1721 by James Franklin, introduced coverage of political debate in its first issue. The paper presented the controversy surrounding smallpox inoculations, which were used for the first time in Boston that year to fight an epidemic. Cotton Mather, a prominent Congregational minister and scholar, supported inoculation; Franklin did not.

The next year, the Courant took on the colonial government, accusing it of failing to do enough to protect the area from pirates. This crusade landed Franklin in jail. Later a court decreed that Franklin be forbidden to print or publish the Courant. To evade this order, Franklin appointed his younger brother Benjamin, then his apprentice, the paper's official publisher. Benjamin Franklin made the most of this opportunity, publishing humorous social commentary under the pen name Silence Dogwood along with reports on political events. He continued to learn the trades of printer and publisher, and in 1729 he took control of the Pennsylvania Gazette in Philadelphia.

The first New York City newspaper, the Gazette, was founded by William Bradford in 1725. Several others followed, including the New York Weekly Journal, edited by the German-American printer John Peter Zenger. When Zenger published criticism of the British colonial governor of New York and his administration, he was arrested on charges of seditious libel. Zenger was tried and found not guilty. The trial of John Peter Zenger created an important precedent for the establishment of a free press in America.

B.

Revolutionary Period

In 1750, 12 newspapers were being published in the American colonies, which then had a total population of about 1 million. By 1775 the population had increased to 2.5 million, and the number of newspapers had jumped to 48. Most of these papers were published weekly, contained only four pages, and typically had a circulation of fewer than 400 copies. The papers printed more essays than news. The essays emphasized the importance of individual freedom, anticipating the American Revolution (1775-1783).

The major limitation on press freedom in Britain in the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century was the stamp tax. This tax had the effect of raising the price of newspapers to the point where few people could afford to buy them. By making newspapers more expensive, the stamp tax reduced the number of newspaper readers. In this way the British government limited the power of the press by limiting its circulation.

The Stamp Act, passed by the British Parliament in 1765, would have placed a similar tax on American newspapers. This legislation required that American paper products, including newspapers, bear a British government stamp as proof of tax payment. Many Americans rebelled against the act, which was to take effect on November 1, 1765. As that day approached, newspapers such as the Pennsylvania Journal ceased publication, announcing that they were 'EXPIRING: In Hopes of a Resurrection to Life Again.' Then, cautiously, the newspapers began appearing again, without the stamp. The Stamp Act proved unenforceable and was soon repealed, but it had the unintended effect of uniting many editors and publishers in support of independence from Britain.

During successive waves of colonial protest against the British, newspapers published woodcut prints of divided snakes representing the weakness of the colonies if they remained divided, and woodcuts of coffins (designed by American patriot Paul Revere) representing the victims of the Boston Massacre. Colonial papers also published revolutionist essays by American patriots John Dickinson and Thomas Paine. Papers further demonstrated their revolutionary zeal by publicizing the names of people who weakened prospects for independence, such as those who continued to import British goods in spite of organized boycotts.

In 1773 colonists gathered in the house of a newspaper editor, Benjamin Edes of the Boston Gazette, to organize the Boston Tea Party—a protest against Parliament’s decision to tax tea imported to the colonies. Among the other leading newspapers in the struggle against British policies were the Massachusetts Spy, published by Isaiah Thomas, and John Holt's New York Journal. Two women, Sarah and Mary Katherine Goddard, published the Providence Gazette, another anti-British voice during these years. American patriot Samuel Adams, who often edited the Boston Gazette, organized the Committees of Correspondence, groups of colonists who garnered public support for independence. In 1776 the front pages of colonial papers carried the Declaration of Independence, an official validation of the fight for independence that had embroiled colonists and British soldiers for more than a year.

During the Revolutionary War, newspapers reported military developments to an increasing number of readers. Business generated by the war brought advertising revenue to the papers. While most newspapers were staunchly proindependence, not all the colonial papers espoused anti-British sentiments. James Rivington's New York Gazetteer gave voice to both the Tory, or pro-British, and the patriot side in the ongoing conflict in what Rivington called his 'Ever Open and Uninfluenced Press.' Despite their professed allegiance to the principle of a free press, the Sons of Liberty—a society of influential American patriots—were infuriated by Rivington's paper. He responded by taking more openly Tory positions. After the Revolution, the New York Gazetteer ceased operation, leaving a largely uniform press in the newly independent colonies.

The new press, however, soon found itself deeply divided after the war—first, concerning the ratification of the Articles of Confederation and, later, when the Constitution of the United States was adopted. The conservative Federalists directly opposed the Anti-Federalists, or Democratic-Republicans, who advocated the rights of states over a central, national leadership. One issue, however, united the newspapers of the country: All supported the First Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech, religion, the right of assembly, and the right to petition Congress. The First Amendment has endured many challenges since its inception, but it remains the cornerstone of the free press in the United States.

The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 called into question the freedom of the press. The Sedition Act provided that a person could be fined or imprisoned for publishing false or malicious statements about the president or Congress. The Federalists, who supported the law, used it to imprison editors who opposed their policies. However, the Federalists did not invoke the same law against editors who attacked Democratic-Republican policies, such as those of Thomas Jefferson. Reaction against this repressive law helped Jefferson win the presidency in 1800 before it expired in 1801.

C.

Penny Press

The Pennsylvania Evening Post and Daily Advertiser, the first daily newspaper in the United States, began publication in 1783 in Philadelphia. By 1800, 20 daily papers were in operation. The number continued to increase in the first three decades of the 19th century as the Industrial Revolution spread and spawned a new working class in the nation's growing cities. Until the 1830s newspapers focused almost entirely on business and political news. Benjamin Henry Day changed this approach in 1833, when he published the first edition of the New York Sun. Day filled his paper with reports of local crime and violence, human-interest stories, and entertainment pieces and sold it for one penny. This event marked the creation of the penny press, which dominated American journalism throughout the rest of the 19th century.

The penny press owes much of its success to the invention of the cylinder press, which printed newspapers quickly and cheaply (see Printing: Printing Presses). The cylinder press was first used in the United States in 1825. Six years later New York industrialist Richard M. Hoe improved the cylinder press by adding a second cylinder, and in 1846 he patented the first rotary press, which employed several cylinders. By 1835 Day was using steam engines, first used in 1814 to drive the presses at the Times in London, to print his rapidly growing Sun. Steam-driven rotary presses made it possible to push newspaper sales much higher. The old style printing press could print perhaps 125 newspapers in an hour. By 1851 the Sun's presses printed 18,000 copies in an hour. The New York Herald, the New York Tribune, and the New York Times soon followed the Sun’s model. The penny press quickly spread to other Eastern cities and across the country as the nation expanded westward.

D.

Newspapers in the 19th Century

The invention of the telegraph by Samuel Morse in 1837 dramatically improved the speed and reliability of news reporting. Newspapers became the major customers of the telegraph companies. The high cost of telegraph transmissions led to the formation of telegraph wire services, which distributed stories to many different papers. The Associated Press, now one of the world’s leading wire services, was founded as a cooperative venture by New York newspapers in 1848. The telegraph enabled newspapers to fill their pages with news that happened the previous day in cities located hundreds, then thousands, of miles away. With the successful completion of a transatlantic cable in 1866, American newspapers could print news from Europe with similar speed.

The rise of the wire services also tended to reduce the emphasis on personal opinion in news stories. In addition, as editors and reporters embraced the ideals of science and realism in the late 19th century, they began treating facts with a new respect. After Adolph Simon Ochs acquired the New York Times in 1896, it became one of the world's foremost newspapers. Its reputation was based more on the thoroughness of its reporting than on its editorials or positions on issues.

As newspapers competed with one another to increase circulation, publishers sought new methods to attract readers. Publishers Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst began using drawings and comic strips to enliven their newspapers. They also transformed their papers with coverage of scandalous events and sensational stories. These tactics proved successful immediately, and a number of other papers followed suit. Journalists and writers labeled papers that relied on sensational stories or comic strips to attract readers yellow journalism, after the popular Hearst comic strip The Yellow Kid.

Other changes also encouraged newspaper growth at the end of the 19th century. The development of the first Linotype machine in the mid-1880s sped up typesetting by making possible the automatic casting of entire lines of type (see Typesetting Equipment). The regular use of photographs in newspapers, which began in 1897, also broadened readership. Improvements to the rotary press drove newspaper circulation in large cities into the hundreds of thousands. By 1900 daily newspapers in the United States numbered 2,326. Most large cities had several papers each, and many smaller cities had at least two newspapers.

E.

Alternative Papers

Even in cities where a number of different papers were in circulation, many people felt newspapers did not represent their interests or points of view. One solution for communities of immigrants who spoke English as a second language was to publish newspapers in their native language. From 1794 to 1798, French speakers in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, published the French-language newspaper Courrier Français. Early Spanish-language newspapers appeared in New Orleans in 1808 and in Texas in 1813. Beginning in 1828 members of the Cherokee Nation in northern Georgia published the first Native American newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, in both Cherokee and English. The Jewish Daily Forward, printed in Yiddish, first appeared in New York in 1897; by 1923 local editions were printed in 11 other cities. Waves of immigration to American cities in the first decades of the 20th century increased demand for foreign-language papers. According to one survey, the United States had 160 foreign-language dailies in 1914 and a total of 1,323 foreign-language papers in 1917.

African Americans and their abolitionist supporters also sought alternatives to mainstream newspapers. In 1827 John B. Russwurm and Reverend Samuel Cornish produced the first newspaper published by African Americans in the United States, Freedom's Journal. 'We wish to plead our own cause,' they wrote, 'too long have others spoken for us' (see African American History: Free Black Population). Ten years later, Cornish became editor of the New York newspaper Colored American. The abolitionist crusader William Lloyd Garrison founded the Liberator in 1831 with the expressed purpose of producing a public backlash against slavery. The great African American writer and activist Frederick Douglass started the North Star in 1847 to attack slavery. This publication later became Frederick Douglass’ Weekly and was followed by Douglass’ Monthly, which originated as a supplement to the Weekly.

Women’s rights activists also formed alternative papers to champion their cause. American reformer Amelia Jenks Bloomer published the Lily from 1849 to 1859. Women’s rights activists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony published the Revolution from 1868 to 1871.

Socialist newspapers also boomed for a time in the United States, reaching a total circulation of 2 million in 1913. Many of these papers ceased publication during World War I (1914-1918), when freedom of the press was severely curtailed. Many alternative publishers were tried under the provisions of the Espionage Act of 1917 and amendments passed in 1918, which prohibited printed attacks on the U.S. government.

F.

Concentration of Ownership

The number of newspapers published in the United States declined in the first half of the 20th century. In many cases, stiff competition from other papers in the same city led newspapers to merge with the competing papers. For example, New York City once had 20 daily newspapers, but by 1940 it had only 8. Also in 1940, 25 American cities with more than 100,000 residents had only 1 daily newspaper.

Ownership of many of the newspapers that survived shifted from local citizens to national chains. American newspaper publishers Edward Wyllis Scripps and Milton Alexander McRae assembled the first large newspaper chain, the Scripps-McRae League of Newspapers, in 1894. Three years later they developed the Scripps-McRae Press Agency (now United Press International) to supply their chain with articles. Scripps also established the first newspaper syndicate, the Newspaper Enterprise Association, to provide his papers with comics and feature articles. By 1914 the Scripps-McRae League published 23 newspapers.

William Randolph Hearst assembled an even larger news media empire. Hearst owned 6 newspapers in 1904. He steadily acquired more newspapers and related businesses, and by 1922 he owned 20 daily papers, 11 weeklies, 2 wire services, 6 magazines, and a newsreel company. Many people viewed the trend towards chains and consolidation with concern. Fewer newspaper publishers meant fewer editorial perspectives, a problem that magnified exponentially when newspaper publishers also controlled the content of other publications in the same region.

G.

Competition from Radio and Television

The rise of radio and television broadcasting posed new competitive threats to newspapers. Radio began offering the American public another source of news and entertainment as early as 1920. By 1929, 10 million American households had radios. Despite early efforts by newspaper publishers to prevent radio stations from using news and stories distributed by the Associated Press, radio made significant gains as a news medium. Radio reached the height of its influence during World War II (1939-1945), when it carried war news from the battlefronts directly to the homes of millions of listeners.

The arrival of television after World War II ended nearly two centuries of news reporting dominated by newspapers. In 1940 one newspaper circulated in the United States for every two adults. Fifty years later, far fewer Americans relied on newspapers as their primary news source. Cable and television network news reporting had largely supplanted newspapers in this capacity. In one survey, only 9 percent of Americans said they kept up with news of the Persian Gulf War (1990-1991) primarily through newspapers.

Television and radio stations had an advantage over newspapers—they could broadcast breaking news stories minutes after they occurred. American newspapers struggled to maintain their place in the world of news reporting. Realizing that most of their readers had already heard breaking news stories on television, they began covering more news in greater detail than did television and radio news. Newspaper articles provided historical context for current events and in-depth analysis from two or more perspectives.

H.

Government-Press Conflict

In the 1960s Americans were divided over the wisdom of the Vietnam War (1959-1975). During this period, unquestioned loyalty to the American cause fell under criticism. The concept of press freedom expanded to assume an almost adversarial relationship between press and government. This relationship climaxed in 1971, when the New York Times published the Pentagon Papers. This publication gave Americans a look behind the scenes at government planning and policies that led to the U.S. role in the Vietnam War. When the government tried to prevent publication of this material, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the right of the newspaper to print it.

Publication of the Pentagon Papers heightened interest in investigative reporting. No longer content to report only what the government said it was doing, newspaper reporters sought to report with authority what the government actually did. Reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, then working at the Washington Post, showed the world how powerful investigative reporting could be when they reported the details of the Watergate scandal to the American public in 1973. Their story revealed a pattern of corruption in the administration of President Richard M. Nixon. These revelations sparked a series of events, including a grand jury investigation of the burglary and wiretapping of the Democratic Party’s national campaign headquarters, that culminated with the resignation of President Nixon in 1974.

VII.

The Newspaper in Canada

The French colonial government in Canada did not permit printing presses to be established during its roughly 100-year tenure. France formally ceded its Canadian territory to Britain in the French and Indian War (1754-1763). Canada’s newspaper history dates to the early years of British colonialism in the mid- to late 18th century.

A.

British Colonial Period

As the British gained control of the territories in Canada, a few American newspaper printers moved north to set up shop in Canada. John Bushell, a printer originally from Boston, introduced the first Canadian newspaper, the Halifax Gazette, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on March 23, 1752. Two printers from Philadelphia established the first bilingual newspaper, Québec Gazette (now the weekly Québec Telegraph-Chronicle), in Québec City, Québec, in 1764. Several other papers followed, and by the end of the 18th century residents of eastern Canada had several newspapers to choose from.

The earliest Canadian newspapers depended on the government for revenue. As did early newspapers in Britain, colonial papers consisted primarily of foreign news and government announcements. They took care not to publish material that might offend public officials for fear of losing financial backing.

However, settlers from Britain and the United States brought changes to population demographics in Canada in the early 19th century. Canadian newspapers grew at a rapid pace to meet the demands of a rapidly emerging merchant class. Independent-minded editors began turning to commercial advertisements as a revenue source rather than to the government. This select group of newspapers grew less dependent on government approval of their publishing practices.

B.

Confederation Debates

Many Canadian newspapers in the 19th century remained allied with political parties. The most debated issue of this period was that of confederation—that is, the creation of a single dominion (a locally autonomous state within the British Empire) uniting the British colonies in North America (see Confederation of Canada). Canadian statesman and journalist George Brown launched the Toronto Globe (now the Globe and Mail) in 1844 as a tool for propagating his political views. Brown founded the Globe as a voice of the Reform Party (also called the Liberal Party), which advocated changing Canada’s status to that of a dominion of Britain. The Globe began with a weekly circulation of 300 and by 1853 had a daily circulation of 6,000. Several other politicians followed Brown’s lead, and by the end of the 19th century, newspapers across Canada espoused the political ideology of one political party or another. Most large cities supported two newspapers—one liberal and one conservative.

C.

20th Century

Newspapers across Canada remained strongly political into the 20th century. But while partisanship remained, fewer papers relied solely on the government or political parties for financing. Publishers turned increasingly to advertising as a revenue source, and by the close of the first decade of the 20th century, large city daily papers covered as much as 80 percent of their operating budgets with advertising revenue.

In 1873 there were 47 daily newspapers in Canada; by 1913 that number had increased to 113. Canadian newspaper publishers benefited from rising literacy rates. To attract new readers, Canadian newspapers emphasized local news and short human-interest stories. Sales grew even higher as Canada’s railway network expanded, enabling publishers to distribute newspapers across previously impractical distances.

After 1915, however, the number of daily newspapers in Canada dropped steadily. Competition for readers and advertising dollars was fierce, and many newspapers struggled to make ends meet. Publishers of failing newspapers merged operations with successful newspapers in their towns, a phenomenon that accelerated markedly as the century progressed. By 1950 the four largest publishing conglomerates controlled almost 40 percent of the newspapers circulated in Canada.

In Canada, as in the United States, the introduction of radio in the 1920s, then television in the 1950s, derailed newspapers from the dominant position in the news media. Newspapers responded by increasing analysis and historical background of the events that they covered. Many also decreased their coverage of national and international news and expanded their local news sections. Surveys show that Canadians prefer television for international and national news, but most rely on newspapers for coverage of local events. Circulation of small community newspapers grew substantially in the late 20th century. In 1971, 3.8 million Canadians read a community newspaper each week. In 1999, that number topped 10.6 million.

VIII.

The Global Press

In modern times, newspapers that share a similar structure and function are published all over the world. This global press traces its origin to British papers of the 18th century. Though threatened by censorship in the years preceding, during, and following the world wars, the global press maintained the tradition of freedom of the press first established in London.

A.

The British Model

The first recognizably modern papers—depending on advertising and newspaper sales for revenue and providing a mixture of political, economic, and social news and commentary—emerged in Britain in the mid-18th century. As the first country to undergo the Industrial Revolution, Britain was uniquely able to provide the complex system of distribution networks, large urban markets, and advertisers necessary to make newspapers profitable enterprises.

By the mid-19th century, newspapers based on the British model circulated in many large cities around the globe. Most of these papers were the products of an expanding British Empire. The Toronto Globe launched in Canada in 1844, for example, and the Melbourne Age started up in Australia in 1854. The British also exerted their newspaper influence on the Indian subcontinent. The first local-language newspaper, the Urdu Akhbar, was first printed in 1836 in what is now Pakistan. The British Empire in India sparked a range of English-language newspapers by the latter half of the century, including the Times of India in Bombay, the Statesman in Calcutta (now Kolkata), and the Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore. The British model also spread to Latin America in the early 19th century. El Mercurio began circulation in Valparaiso, Chile, in 1827, and Peru’s El Comercio printed its first edition in 1839.

During the 19th century, the British model became far more than the technical process of printing, financing, and distributing newspapers; it evolved into a political presence. The Times of London set the standard for a global press. It defined the principle of freedom of the press—the right to criticize the government and to campaign vigorously for its own political views.

The spread of literacy and primary education promised a larger audience. In addition, the commercial success of the Times and its profits, essential to the maintenance of editorial independence, inspired competitors to seek even larger profits. In an effort to attract a broader audience, competitors of the Times featured brief stories written in a simple style, illustrations, and more coverage of sports and local affairs. They also moved interesting news stories to the front page of the paper. Most 20th-century general-circulation newspapers adopted these modifications.

B.

Freedom of the Press Following World War I

After World War I ended in 1918, many governments sought to control or crush independent newspapers. As Italy fell under the Fascist rule of Benito Mussolini, Milan’s Corriere della Sera (Evening Courier) decried the dictator’s actions and policies. The paper launched a prolonged investigation of the murder of Socialist politician Giacomo Matteoti by Fascist thugs and eventually placed blame for the killing firmly on Mussolini himself. The paper’s offices were firebombed, and newsstands that sold the paper were attacked. Advertisers received warnings of official retaliation if they advertised in Corriere rather than in Mussolini’s newspaper Il Popolo d’Itlalia (The People of Italy). In 1925 Mussolini forced Corriere’s publisher to resign. The paper fell under the authority of Mussolini’s new press bureau, and like all the other Italian newspapers of the time, tamely adhered to the bureau’s restrictions on press freedom.

In Germany, Adolf Hitler, who assumed power in 1933, appointed Paul Joseph Goebbels as minister of propaganda and national enlightenment. In this capacity, Goebbels tightly controlled the dissemination of all news. The Nazi Party seized control of the once-independent Wolff news agency, renaming it the German Information Agency. Goebbels also ensured that the Nazi Party newspapers, Völkischer Beobachter (the People’s Observer) and Der Angriff (the Attack), and the virulently anti-Semitic journal Der Sturmer (the Stormer), received newsprint allocations and official advertising.

The new model of the press as a tool of ideology and government, in direct contrast to the independent tradition established by the Times of London, was perfected by Vladimir Lenin in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) following the Russian Revolution of 1917. As the first leader of the USSR, Lenin argued that Soviet newspapers should be tools for social control, and he strictly controlled the information they published.

C.

Post-World War II

After World War II, the victorious Allies established several major papers in the occupied countries of Europe and Asia. To greater and lesser degrees, these papers became mouthpieces for opposing sides in the Cold War, the 40-year period of hostility between the United States and the USSR that followed World War II.

In Paris, after the Allies drove the Germans out in 1944, the new liberation government of General Charles de Gaulle established Le Monde (the World) as France’s primary newspaper. The French government supported the paper with generous subsidies of newsprint and advertising. The ambiguity of the paper’s role–the fact that it promised freedom from government control but also was the government-sponsored journal of France—raised serious issues about press independence.

In Italy, members of the British and American armies reestablished Corriere della Sera after the fall of Mussolini in 1943. The first editor of the new Corriere supported British interests in Italy to such an extent that he took his early news columns verbatim from the foreign broadcasts of the British Broadcasting Corporation.

In the aftermath of World War II, official news agencies—such as TASS in the USSR and the German News Service in East Germany—strictly controlled news material throughout the Communist world. The Soviet Army censored newspapers in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Rumania, and Bulgaria. Communist governments in these countries tolerated the publication of several small, alternative papers, so long as they echoed the views of the Communist party.

After the Communist armies under Mao Zedong won the Chinese civil war in 1949, the Communists imposed Soviet-style control over the press. In October 1949 all newspapers in China were required to register with the national information ministry, which shut down most of the papers. The few newspapers that survived this process did so with new editors appointed by the Communist Party. Their editorial policies came under the authority of the party's department of propaganda. Xinhua, the official news agency, provided their news. The one paper to survive the Communist victory with its name and independence intact was the Tianjin daily Ta Kung Pao, which specialized in financial news. Along with the party journal Renmin Ribao (People's Daily), it was one of the few publications licensed for sale outside China.

D.

Newspapers in Postcolonial Governments

Even in countries not directly affected by World War II, newspapers endured challenges to their independence. After India gained its independence from Britain in 1947, the Indian government adopted restrictive press controls. The Objectionable Matters Press Law of 1951 forbade the publication of defamatory content. The Indian government used its own heavy advertising budget as a way to punish or reward particular papers for the way they portrayed government issues. The Price and Page Law of 1957 regulated the size and price of newspapers and the proportion of allowable advertising. While that law’s defenders advocated it as a way to help small and regional papers compete with major dailies, the law had the effect of keeping the Indian press financially weak and vulnerable to official pressures.

Newspapers in other developing nations also endured pressure from newly independent governments. These regimes urged the press to play a patriotic role in nation building by assuming a less critical view of the government. Such pressure was intense in Indonesia under the leadership of President Sukarno, who governed from 1945 to 1968. In 1957 the Indonesian government suspended 30 newspapers and arrested a dozen editors.

In South Korea, the government forbade newspapers to criticize President Syngman Rhee at any time during his regime, which lasted from 1948 to1960. The South Korean press faced stricter and more repressive government controls after Rhee was ousted in 1960. Press control finally relaxed when democratic reforms were adopted under President Kim Young Sam, who led the country from 1993 to 1998. In Pakistan, Article 8 of the nation’s constitution guaranteed freedom of the press, but the penal code contained several clauses under which newspapers were repeatedly punished for offenses against the government.

In South Africa the 1963 Publications Act permitted the government to censor any newspaper that did not agree to a self-policing and self-censoring code of conduct. The Rand Daily Mail chose to publish frequent criticisms of the Nationalist government and its policy of apartheid. As a result, the paper faced government harassment, fines, the confiscation of its journalists’ passports, and advertising boycotts.

E.

Breakdown of Communism in Eastern Europe

A dramatic expansion of press freedoms came in the 1980s in the country least expected to produce them, the USSR. For most of the Soviet regime’s 70-year existence, the government and the Communist Party rigidly controlled the Soviet press. At times, however, the press challenged the limits of Communist Party power. Under the brutal dictatorship of Joseph Stalin, which lasted from the late 1920s to 1953, many journalists were executed or sent to labor camps in Siberia. In the early 1960s Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev relaxed some controls, and the Communist Party’s daily, Pravda (Truth), published a defense of exiled novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, as well as an attack on censorship.

During the 1980s, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev began a policy of glasnost (openness), which included increased freedom for the press to probe Soviet history and particularly Stalin's crimes. Glasnost allowed the Soviet press to criticize and discuss foreign policy and to publicize social problems such as crime, alcoholism, and poverty. The Soviet press had not enjoyed such freedom since before the Russian Revolution of 1917. The press exposed the underworld of organized crime. It informed the public of governmental policy changes initiated under Gorbachev. Western politicians and journalists were invited to write commentaries in Soviet papers. These and other freedoms created a new awareness among Soviet people, setting the stage for the political reforms that ultimately resulted in the breakdown of the USSR in 1991 and the ensuing collapse of Communist governments in Eastern Europe.

IX.

The Newspaper Industry Today

The newspaper industry today continues the trends of consolidation and concentration of ownership first established in the 19th century. But a late-20th-century phenomena, the Internet, promises to revolutionize the newspaper industry worldwide.

A.

Consolidation

The number of newspapers in circulation continues the steady decline that began at the turn of 20th century. Most U.S. and Canadian cities today have only one newspaper publisher. In Canada, only 6 cities are served by two or more separately owned newspapers. In more than 170 American cities, a single publisher produces both a morning and an evening paper. Fewer than 30 U.S. cities have competing papers with different ownership.

Many people believe that the lack of competition compromises the integrity of news coverage in those cities. Without immediate competitive threats to keep them in check, papers may be less likely to present alternate views of public issues or may present the views of the publisher or owner not as opinion, but as fact. In some areas, competition for advertising with radio, television, and magazines may encourage newspapers to present all points of view. Many newspaper publishers, however, own radio and television stations, often in the same city where their papers are published.

B.

Newspaper Chains

The tendency toward newspaper chains—ownership of a number of newspapers by a single company—which began with Hearst and Scripps in the United States in the late 1800s, has also increased worldwide. In Canada about two-thirds of the total circulation is owned by five large corporations, four of which operated internationally. The largest newspaper chain is Gannett Co., which owned 94 newspapers with a circulation totaling about 8 million worldwide in 2002.

C.

The Internet

The rapid and widespread expansion of the Internet has enabled millions of people to read a variety of daily newspapers online, usually free of charge. This trend, along with the rise of 24-hour cable television news networks, has caused subscription and circulation rates to decline. The percentage of Americans getting news from the Internet grew rapidly during the late 1990s. In 2002 some two-thirds of adult Americans were getting the news online. Roughly one fourth of all Americans get news from the Internet on an average day.

Today almost all of the world’s major newspapers have online versions. Most medium- to large-sized daily newspapers in the United States and Canada also publish on the Internet. These developments have led some media experts to predict that the printed newspaper will give way to fully electronic information services in the early decades of the 21st century. But whatever its medium—electronic or print—the newspaper will likely remain an important feature in modern society.