Penny press
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Penny press newspapers were cheap, tabloid-style newspapers mass-produced in the United States from the 1830s onwards. Mass production of inexpensive newspapers became possible following the shift from hand-crafted to steam-powered printing.[1] Famous for costing one cent (equivalent to $0.35 in 2023) while other newspapers cost around six cents, penny press papers were revolutionary in making the news accessible to middle class citizens for a reasonable price.
History
As the East Coast's middle and working classes grew, so did their desire for news. Penny papers emerged as a cheap source of news with coverage of crime, tragedy, adventure, and gossip. The penny papers represented the crudest form of journalism because of the sensational gossip that was reported.[2]
The penny press was most noted for its price – only one cent per paper – while other contemporary newspapers were priced around six cents per issue. The exceptionally low price popularized the newspaper in America and extended the influence of the newspaper media to the poorer classes. The penny press made the news and journalism more important and also caused newspapers to begin to pay more attention to the public they served. Editors realized that the information that interested the upper class did not necessarily interest the penny-paying public. These new newspaper readers enjoyed the information about police and criminal cases. The main revenue for the penny press was advertising while other newspapers relied heavily on high-priced subscriptions to finance their activities.[3]
The idea of a penny paper was not new in the 1830s. By 1826, many editors were experimenting with sports news, gossip, and cheap press.[4]
Most newspapers in the early nineteenth century cost six cents and were distributed through subscriptions. On July 24, 1830, the first penny press newspaper came to the market: Lynde M. Walter's Boston Transcript. Unlike most later penny papers, Walter's Transcript maintained what was considered good taste, featuring coverage of literature and the theater. This paper sold for four dollars a year.[4]
The penny paper's largest inspiration came from Charles Knight's The Penny Magazine (1832–1845). The main purpose of this magazine was to educate and improve England's poor, but it was also very popular with Americans. It became a very successful magazine as it attained a circulation of more than 20,000 within a year.[4]
Frederic Hudson, one of the first to write about the history of American journalism, believed the rise of the penny press to be a key factor in the development of the modern newspaper. Hudson considered newspapers to be dull during the 1840s.[4]
The penny press arrived in New York on January 1, 1833, when Horatio David Shepard teamed up with Horace Greeley and Francis W. Story and issued the Morning Post. Although both Greeley and Story went on to fame and fortune in the New York press world, the concept of bringing out a penny paper belonged exclusively to Shepard. He made a habit of taking daily walks through the teeming streets of the Bowery, where he observed merchants selling small items for a penny apiece. Other papers of the time were selling for six cents which allowed for a wider spread of people to read the Penny Press so they could afford it. He also took note of the fact that sales were brisk.[5]
The success of the penny papers was not automatic; selling the new concept of the newspaper to this new audience involved some persuasion. Consumers did not want to buy a new newspaper every day, and it was a challenge to convince them of the benefits of doing so. Most newspapers at the time did not have any sort of timeliness, so buying a newspaper daily seemed pointless to readers. But, eventually, people became interested in reading the latest news which the penny papers strove to provide.[6]
Copying the idea of the northern newspapers, in 1837, Francis Lumsden and
Quite possibly the most famous penny press paper was started in 1851 by two men:
We shall be Conservative, in all cases where we think Conservatism essential to the public good;—and we shall be Radical in everything which may seem to us to require radical treatment and radical reform. We do not believe that everything in Society is either exactly right or exactly wrong;—what is good we desire to preserve and improve;—what is evil, to exterminate, or reform.
New York Daily Times, 1st issue, 1851
Political factors
Political and demographic changes were also significant. Much of the success of the newspaper in the early United States owed itself to the attitude of the Founding Fathers toward the press. Many of them saw a free press as one of the most essential elements in maintaining the liberty and social equality of citizens. Thomas Jefferson said he considered a free press as 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 any moment to prefer the latter." It was because of his attitude that freedom of the press gained 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
The founders of the penny press popularized both low prices for newspapers and newspaper economics based on sales instead of political party backing. Benjamin Day created The Sun without any political party backing. This was rare because this was an era where political parties sponsored newspapers. On the other hand, Horace Greeley used his newspaper, the New-York Tribune, as a platform for Whig politics.[15]
Approach to reporting
In the early 1800s, newspapers were largely for the elite and took two forms – mercantile sheets that were intended for the business community and contained ship schedules, wholesale product prices, advertisements and some stale foreign news, and political newspapers that were controlled by political parties or their editors as a means of sharing their views with elite stakeholders. Journalists reported the party line and editorialized in favor of party positions.[16][page needed] The emergence of the penny press greatly influenced communication technologies by covering news outside those of government interests. The first penny paper, the Sun, was founded in New York in September 1833. After that time, newspapers became nonpartisan since they were not supported by political parties.[17][page needed] Penny papers hired reporters and correspondents to seek out and write the news, while at the same time, started to sound more journalistic than editorial. Reporters were assigned to beats and were involved in the conduct of local interaction.[18] The penny press contributed to changes in newspaper content and structure. New journalism practices resulted in the development of concepts such as news reporting, emphasizing the importance of timeliness, and appealing to wider audiences.[19] These newspapers, though not completely uninfluenced by political parties and their views, were self-funded and not party-funded. This allowed them to shift allegiance on political issues that the papers dealt with quite easily, which also aided in their success and acceptance by the general public.
Since these newspapers were not politically funded, the core interests of the journalists themselves were obviously quite different from competing newspaper agencies that had heavy political influence. The largest portion of demand was from immigrants, traditional middle-class citizens, and nascent literate classes; journalists kept articles concise and engaging with real-life topics readers could relate to, and did so with less sophisticated vocabulary so readers would not require higher education to understand the articles.[citation needed] The penny press formula is the combination of sensational news with mass market appeal, large-scale industrial production, and economies of scale used in combination with neutrality and objectivity to create a paper that gets its point across without taking sides.[20] Also, journalist-incorporated advertisements treated readers as consumers instead of another market for demand,[18] in an effort to establish a relationship between paper and reader that was less about work and the economy and more about relaxation and reading for pleasure and relaxation.