America's first newspaper was Publick Occurrences, published in Boston in 1690 but it was shut down after one issue due to criticism from the colonial government. In the early 1800s, technological innovations like the steam-powered printing press and penny papers made newspapers more efficient, cheaper to produce, and able to reach a wider audience. Major newspapers in the late 1800s like the New York Herald and New York Tribune helped revolutionize the industry and establish standards for reporting like baseball box scores. The growth of newspapers in the 1900s was led by publishers like Pulitzer and Hearst, though the internet has challenged print newspapers, with some converting fully online.

1. HISTORY OF
AMERCIAN NEWSPAPER

2. If I had to choose
between government
without newspapers,
and newspapers
without government,
I wouldn't hesitate to
choose the latter
THOMAS JEFFERSON

3. America's first newspaper,
Publick Occurrences, is
published in Boston,
Massachusetts. The paper
suspends publication after
one issue after drawing
criticism from the colonial
government.
FIRST AMERICAN NEWSPAPER
25 Sep 1690

4. Jonas Booth invents a steam
driven printing press, soon
making the mechanical process
of printing newspapers much
more efficient and less costly.
1823

5. Benjamin Day issues the first
edition of the New York Sun,
America's first "penny press"
newspaper.
The cheap paper, sold for a
fraction of the cost of all earlier
newspapers, soon attracts a much
wider audience by catering to the
interests of New York City's
ordinary citizens
Sep 3, 1833

6. James Gordon Bennett issues the first
edition of the New York Herald, which
will soon grow in popularity to become
the country's most widely read
newspaper. Bennett will introduce a
number of innovations that will
revolutionize the American news
industry.
May 6, 1835

7. Apr 10, 1841
Horace Greeley issues the first edition of
the New York Tribune.
May 24, 1844
America's first telegraph line, stretching from
Washington, D.C. to Baltimore, officially opens for
business. The instant long-distance
communication offered for the first time by the
telegraph will make it possible for local
newspapers to offer timely coverage of far-off
events.
1846
The United States Congress votes to
award its printing contracts on a low-bid
basis. Previously, these lucrative contracts
have been distributed by the dominant
party in Congress to loyal partisan papers
as a form of patronage.

8. Robert Hoe invents a four-cylinder
rotary press. This press culminates
more than twenty years of
improvements to the rudimentary
cylinder presses developed in Europe.
Hoe's press is capable of printing
8000 pages per hour.
1847

9. The first baseball box score,
very similar to today's version,
appears in the New York
Clipper. Devised by Henry
Chadwick, the box score allows
newspapers across the country
to provide standardized and
succinct summaries of baseball
games to a growing national
audience.
1859

10. 1883
Joseph Pulitzer acquires the
New York World from Jay Gould
for $346,000.
1887
William Randolph Hearst is
named editor of the San
Francisco Examiner by his
father, George Hearst, the
paper's owner.

11. William Randolph Hearst
acquires the New York Morning
Journal. He will transform the
Morning Journal into a penny
paper, modeled after James
Gordon Bennett's New York
Herald, and rename it the New
York Journal in 1896.
1895

12. The New York Journal
publishes the first color
Sunday comic pages.
1897

13. 1904
William Randolph Hearst
launches the Boston American
and the Los Angeles Examiner.
He will eventually acquire or
establish papers in almost every
major American city. By 1930,
he will own a media empire
encompassing 28 newspapers
across the country.

14. 1988
The internet, originally built
as a project of the United
States military, is opened to
commercial users.

15. The Madison Capital-Times,
a venerable newspaper
founded in 1917, announces
that it will cease publication of
a print-version of its paper to
concentrate fully on the
development of its online
edition.
Feb 7, 2008

16. US NEWSPAPERS

17. US TABLOIDS