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

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more than two full pages of advertisements by the mid-century. These ads were
extremely important to the printers’ incomes, as actual sales of the Virginia Gazette
were only a small part of the printers overall revenue. Hunter’s extant accounts show
very little circulation income, but they also demonstrate that newspaper advertising
was one of his biggest profit centers. He charged as little as 3 shillings and as much
as 13 shillings to run an ad in one issue. 52 The Maryland Gazette carried similar ads
for similar prices, but while the Williamsburg paper rarely published notices from
Maryland, the Annapolis newspaper often carried advertisements for Northern
Virginia, indicating some circulation there. Ads for Fairfax County properties and
house sales in Alexandria were common: “To be rented or sold in Alexandria. An
Acre of Ground, or Half Acre, on the River Side, in the Middle of the said Town,
whereon stands a Dwelling-House.” George Washington and George William
Fairfax solicited for a builder for a new church in Truro Parish. 53 These
advertisements and the newspapers themselves are a visible indication of a
“consumer revolution” taking place in the Chesapeake colonies, as in all of the
British-American colonies. Newspapers were not only a commodity made available
for sale, but the advertisements also were an important driver of the increasing
market of consumption. As T. H. Breen theorized, newspaper marketing was an
important part of an emerging realm of the consumer-based economy, one that
prefaced later political discourse based on perceived threats to that consumption. 54
Extending Breen’s recognition of newspapers as an essential part of new marketing
techniques, these gazettes visibly display consumer growth. The marketing
52 Hunter, Printing Office Journal. See also Stiverson, “Colonial Retail Book Trade,” 145-147.
Bookbinding was the largest income source, and almanac sales were also important. Hunter’s
successor Joseph Royle, did not separate out advertising and newspaper sales in his account book.
53 Maryland Gazette (Feb. 23, 1754), 3. For other examples, see the notice on runaway
servants from Belhaven (Alexandria), VA in Maryland Gazette (Oct. 24, 1754), 4, other houses for
sale in Alexandria (Feb. 2, 1764, Oct. 2, 1764), and the church builder ads (May 17, 1764, and
Oct. 24, 1765), 4.
54 Breen, Marketplace of Revolution, especially 143 and 248.