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

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greater speeds. 59 By the time of the political crisis of the Stamp Act in 1765, the
Virginia newspaper was reporting what happened in Philadelphia, Boston, and
New York just two to four weeks earlier, without the news having first to travel
through England. 60 Shipping speeds from London did not change substantially,
and the Virginia Gazette was still running European stories more than four
months old. 61
The shift driven by postal changes was visible in the source of the stories.
Just a few decades earlier, there were very few articles from other colonies other
than close neighbors of Maryland and North Carolina. 62 The emphasis by the 1760s
shifted to local and inter-colonial news, away from England, which has serious
loyalty and political implications. Both the Virginia and Maryland gazettes
included more stories from the other British-American colonies, and fewer items
from Britain or Europe, although items on ministry matters and Parliamentary
debates on the colonies proved of great interest. Even the trivial items, which
once came from England, now were more likely to come from New England, the
middle colonies, or the West Indies. In 1768, for example, from St. John’s
(Antigua) came a story about the death of a “young Lady [who] was cut off in the
second year of her teens.” From Portsmouth, New Hampshire, a petition from the
inhabitants requested a town meeting. Lightning struck and demolished a house
59 Jerald E. Brown, "It Facilitated Correspondence: The Post, Postmasters, and Newspaper
Publishing in Colonial America," Retrospection: The New England Graduate Review in American
History and American Studies 2, no. 1 (1989): 1-15.
60 Virginia Gazette (Royle, July 6, 1764), 2. This recently recovered issue (from Rockefeller
Library, Colonial Williamsburg) had a story from Philadelphia datelined just 16 days earlier, but
none datelined from Europe. Ibid., (Nov. 4, 1763), 2, had a story from Philadelphia just two weeks
old, but European stories nearly 4 months old. Ibid., (Oct. 25, 1765), 1-2.
61 Middleton, Tobacco Coast, 7. Virginia Gazette (Royle, March 16, 1764), 1-2.
62 Virginia Gazette, Williamsburg, 1751-1766. Nord, Communities of Journalism, 50-52.
Regarding English model, see also Barker, Newspapers, Politics and English Society, 44, Clark, 3-5,
and Thomas, History of Printing, 2-164.