The Origins of a Free Press in Prerevolutionary ... - Web Publishing

152
mass media available. Communication theorists recognize the importance and
power of an individual who controls the flow of information by selecting what is
published in any mass medium. A censor or editor of the newspaper influences
public debate by selecting what is included in the public prints and what is omitted.
The printers in the eighteenth-century Chesapeake region functioned as the
editors—or gatekeepers—with some control or influence by government
authorities. In a society with only one or two media of mass communication, a
limited number of gatekeepers controlled the messages transmitted to large
numbers of people. Such gatekeepers had immense power, stemming from a great
deal of control over the flow of books and news information, and he—or she—was
an intellectual leader and center of communication for the entire colony. This was a
position with a great deal of inherent power for a woman to hold. 63
Almanacs were even more ubiquitous than newspapers in eighteenth-
century colonial America, and were important in spreading print culture to women.
As noted in the prior chapter on almanacs, women were valued as both readers and
contributors, especially when print competition arrived in Virginia in 1766. As both
a source of reading and writing, almanacs helped to introduce women to the world
of letters, thus drawing women as well as men into print culture and an expanding
realm of public discourse. 64
Women and the Civic Public
The pre-Revolutionary move to boycott British consumer products did
perhaps the most to nudge women into political public discourse. As T. H. Breen
noted, the Stamp Act crisis increased the range of political involvement:
“Everywhere the circle of politics was expanding.” It was women who had to give up
63 According to Folkerts, and Lacy, Media in your Life, 6, 28-29, endnote 4, page 475, the
term was originated by David Manning White, “The ‘Gatekeeper’: A Case Study in the Selection
of News,” Journalism Quarterly 27 (1950): 383-390.
64 See previous chapter.