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

today’s papers, but they were much different. 3 While modern newspapers are laid
out so that the most important story is the most highly visible, and the content is
summarized in a line or two, eighteenth-century newspapers had no headlines and
no concept of a lead story. While modern readers may scan a newspaper, reading in
detail only items of interest, the colonial printers appear to have designed the
newspaper to be read completely, from top to bottom. 4 Newspapers followed the
form of books. The reader reads straight through, not skimming or skipping
stories. There was no modern concept of the “inverted pyramid,” where a news story
begins with the most timely and essential matter. Important news often appeared at
the end of the story, rather than at the beginning. No summary appeared at the top.
The stories began with a dateline: a city and a date that typically noted when the
news had arrived and from where rather than where it actually occurred. 5
Understanding the sources of news—where it came from, how information arrived,
how long it took to travel, and how it was ordered and structured on the pages—
helps make sense of the changes that took place, and what they mean. The Virginia
Gazette claimed to contain “the freshest Advices, Foreign and Domestick,” 6 but the
news was far from fresh. In the 1730s and 1740s, the stories focused on Europe
rather than local or colonial news, and the audience was elite.
3 See for example, Eric Burns, Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy
Beginnings of American Journalism (New York: Public Affairs, 2006), where he criticizes selection
of the lead story, 136 and 218, or J. A. Leo Lemay, “Robert Bolling and the Bailment of Colonel
Chiswell,” Early American Literature (1971) 6:106, where he refers to a letter printed on page one
of Purdie & Dixon’s Virginia Gazette of July 11, 1766, as if that placement indicated importance.
Other examples are too numerous to include. Some other historians do get it right.
4 Barker, Newspapers, Politics and English Society, 44, recognizes many differences in structure.
5 William F. Steirer, “Riding ‘Everyman’s Hobby Horse’: Journalists in Philadelphia, 1764-
1794,” in Newsletters to Newspapers, Bond and McLeod, eds., 263-269. For example, the Virginia
Gazette (Williamsburg: William Parks, Aug. 21, 1746), 2, has an item, “London, May 8. They
write from Hamburgh, that his Prussian majesty …” The story from Hamburg is datelined
London, as that indicates it was sent to Williamsburg via London.
6 Virginia Gazette (Williamsburg: Parks, Sept. 10, 1736), 1. (The oldest extant Virginia
Gazette.)
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