National Era (1870), was conducted in Washington by Frederick
Douglass and his sons.
New York.—The New York Gazette (which started in New York City on the 16th of October 1725) was followed by the Weekly Journal (No. 1, 5th November 1733), still memorable for the prosecution for sedition which it entailed on its printer, John Peter Zenger, and for the masterly defence of the accused by Andrew Hamilton. “The trial of Zenger,” said Gouverneur Morris, “was the germ of American freedom.” Gaines’s New York Mercury was published from 1752 to 1783. James Rivington (1724–1802) in 1773 published the New York Gazetteer as a loyalist sheet, but his press was destroyed in 1775 and he went to England; in 1777 he returned and published Rivington’s New York Loyal Gazette (semi-weekly), renamed first the Royal Gazette and then Rivington’s New York Gazette and Universal Advertiser, which came to an end in 1783. The semi-weekly Independent Journal was one of the papers of New York City in which, between October 27th, 1787, and April 2nd, 1788, the Federalist essays were published; in 1788 it became part of the New York Gazette, and then in 1840 was consolidated with the Journal of Commerce. The first daily newspaper published in the city or state of New York was the New York Journal and Register, commenced in 1788. In 1802 the Morning Chronicle, edited by Peter Irving (1771–1838), a brother of Washington Irving, was established as Aaron Burr’s organ; in 1805 it was merged in the Poughkeepsie Journal. Another political paper was the Minerva (1793), under Noah Webster, which had a semi-weekly edition, the Herald. These in 1797 became the Commercial Advertiser and New York Spectator respectively. The former (surviving as the Globe and Commercial Advertiser) was edited in 1820–1844 by W. L. Stone and in 1867 by Thurlow Weed.
In 1810 the aggregate number of papers published within the state was 66, of which 14 belonged to New York City. Ten years later the city press included 8 daily journals, with an aggregate daily circulation of 10,800 copies. No one paper circulated more than 2000, and but two—the Evening Post (1801) and the Commercial Advertiser (1797)—attained that number.
The New York Evening Post was at first strongly Federalist and practically an organ of Alexander Hamilton, who with John Jay assisted in founding it. Its first editor was William Coleman (1766–1829). In the years immediately following 1819 John Rodman Drake contributed to the Post the “Croaker” pieces, in which FitzGreene Halleck joined. William Cullen Bryant began to write for the Post in 1826, and became its editor-in-chief in 1828. John Bigelow, Parke Godwin, Carl Schurz, Horace White, E. L. Godkin, editor from 1881 to 1901, and Henry Villard, are the important names in its history. Rollo Ogden became editor in 1903. Closely connected with the Post is the weekly Nation, long edited by E. L. Godkin (q.v.). The Post was strongly Federalist until the War of 1812; it opposed the Hartford Convention; until 1860 it was consistently Democratic; it supported Lincoln in 1860 and in 1864 and Grant in 1868; in later years it was an advocate of free trade and of civil service reform. There were earlier Evening Posts in 1746–1747 and in 1794.
The cheap (two-cent) press of America (the previous price having usually been six cents) began in New York in the shape of the Morning Post (1st January 1833), which only lasted a few weeks; the real pioneer was the Daily Sun (No. 1, 23rd September 1833), written, edited, set up, and worked off by Benjamin Henry Day, a journeyman printer. It sold at one cent till the Civil War, when it charged two cents, the price remaining at that figure. The New York Sun was acquired in 1868 by Charles Anderson Dana (q.v.), who made it a powerful organ, and under his successor William M. Laffan (1848–1909) it remained one of the great dailies.
The New York Herald followed in May 1835, founded and edited by James Gordon Bennett (q.v.), and his efforts and those of his son gave it an enormous commercial success.
The New York Tribune was established in 1841 by Horace Greeley (q.v.), who remained its editor and one of its proprietors until his death, shortly after his defeat for the presidency in 1872. He was succeeded as editor and proprietor by Whitelaw Reid (b. 1837), who had joined the staff in 1868 and afterwards became U.S. Ambassador in London. Directed by two such men the Tribune became a powerful organ.
The New York Times, which was to rank with the Tribune and Sun among the best modern American daily papers, was established by Henry J. Raymond (q.v.) in September 1851; and, though absent at times in the discharge of his duties as lieut.-governor of New York and member of Congress, he continued its editor and chief proprietor until his death in June 1869. At the end of the century, under the control of Mr Adolph S. Ochs (b. 1858), it was prominent in American journalism for the excellence of its news service and literary character.
The New York World was founded in 1860 as a highly moral and religious sheet, which immediately failed and had to be reorganized. In 1861 the Morning Courier and the Enquirer were merged into it. In 1864 it and the Journal of Commerce were suppressed for several days by the Federal authorities because each had been tricked into publishing a forged presidential proclamation of a draft and of a general fast day. In 1869 it became the sole property of Manton Marble (b. 1834), who retired from its editorship in 1875; in 1876 it was sold to a syndicate and came under the control of Jay Gould; in 1883 it was purchased by Joseph Pulitzer (b. 1847), and its modern activity began; It worked hard for Grover Cleveland, especially in his first campaign, and opposed W. J. Bryan and his policies.
The journals owned by W. R. Hearst (b. 1863) all over America represent perhaps more conspicuously than any others the popular developments which at the end of the 19th century were associated with the nickname of the “Yellow Press.” His papers in New York in 1910 were the American (originally Journal; morning, except Sunday); the Evening Journal, the American and Journal (Sunday) and Das Morgen Journal. Starting in the ’nineties as proprietor of the San Francisco Examiner, Mr Hearst had a large fortune to enable him to carry out his ideas of a thoroughgoing democratic journalism, appealing particularly to the less literate masses and supplying all sorts of sensational news. The class prejudice often underlying the policy of his papers was bitterly criticized and resented by sober American opinion, but their passionate appeal to the masses, combined with their audacious and lively presentation of news, gave Mr Hearst nevertheless a position of considerable power; and no secret was made of his ambition to reach the highest political positions, both in New York itself and in the Republic. Dangerous as his social influence was considered by important sections of the community, and unsuccessful as he remained up to 1910 in obtaining municipal office or presidential nomination, it remained the fact that, in the type of journalism so indefatigably conducted under him, he represented a serious force in American social and political life, and his journalistic methods were a remarkable outcome of the conditions of a modern free press in a democratic country, where a large public exists for the consumption of the sort of newspaper fare which he was ready to provide.
The New York Press (1887) is a morning Republican paper of the strictest party type.
An important commercial paper of long standing in New York is the Journal of Commerce and Commercial Bulletin, founded in 1827 as the Journal of Commerce by Arthur Tappan (1786–1865) and his brother Lewis Tappan (1788–1873), and in 1893 consolidated with the Commercial Bulletin (1865). The Journal of Commerce in 1829–1830 was the first American paper to send out news schooners which intercepted packet ships which brought news especially of the French Revolution of 1830. Arthur Tappan, who was one of the founders of Oberlin College, established in 1833 the Emancipator, an abolitionist paper, of which in 1833–1837 Elizur Wright (1804–1885), and in 1837–1840 Joshua Leavitt (1794–1873), were editors. Leavitt took the paper to Boston. It was the weekly organ of the American Anti-Slavery Society.
The New York Evening Mail (1833), for a time the Mail
