Death of Newspapers - Colonial Edition

The first newspaper in the Colonies was Publick Occurrences, printing in Boston in 1690. Early American newspapers were inevitably weeklies because it took 16 hours to set in type four pages. The first “death of newspapers” in America was 1765 as a result of the Stamp Act, which levied a tax on every printed page. The second death of newspapers was the Sedition Act of 1798, a low point of the John Adams presidency, making it a federal crime to defame his administration. (whoa!) Thomas Jefferson once proposed newspapers should have four sections: Truths, Probabilities, Possibilities, and Lies. (Wouldn't it be great if someone did a paper like that now?) Objectivity in journalism is a creature of the 19th century. Prior to that (and apparently now) the whole point was to espouse a point of view.

Thanks again to The New Yorker for source material.