From the New York Gazette and General Advertiser of Wednesday, January 1, 1800.
For three centuries and a half following Gutenberg's invention of type little progress was made in the art of printing, and the production of a newspaper in this country in 1800 was accomplished with crude machinery and involved much slow and difficult hand labor. The printing was done on wooden presses of primitive pattern, the type was large and ill formed, the paper used was in many cases inferior to the lowest grade made at the present time, and the production of a large number of copies of any issue was out of the question. No attempt was made in this country to publish a daily paper until 1784, and in 1800 daily editions were issued only in four or five of the larger cities.
From the New York Gazette and General Advertiser of January 1, 1800.
The publications of that period were not newspapers in the sense in which the word is now used, because no particular effort was made to present an account of the happenings of the day. Notices of the arrival and departure of ships, time tables of mail coaches, and brief announcements of matters of political interest filled the limited space devoted to domestic news. Foreign news consisted entirely of matter reprinted from the English journals received by sailing vessels, and therefore weeks or months old when it appeared. The wooden presses used a hundred years ago were operated entirely by hand. After the type had been set it was placed in a frame or "form," with little or no regard to artistic arrangement of headlines or displayed matter. To print the edition, the "form" was placed on the bed of the press and ink spread over the type by the use of hand rollers. The white paper was then dampened with water, sheet by sheet, laid over the stationary "form," and the impression was made by pulling down the upper part of the press with a lever. This work was so slow that a circulation of three or four hundred copies of a daily newspaper would severely tax the capacity of the press room. The weekly publications were as a rule limited to about the same figures, because the entire mechanical part of production devolved upon one man, who was often owner and editor as well as printer. Some iron presses were imported from England in 1810, and in 1817 George Clymer, of Philadelphia, invented a lever press that was a marked improvement over the crude machines then in general use, reducing the manual labor required and increasing the speed with which printed papers could be turned out. The first power press used in this country was invented by Daniel Treadwell, of Boston, in 1822, and operated by the American Bible Society, the power being furnished by a team of mules. These presses were not adapted to newspaper work, and the first considerable advance in the mechanical part of the business was made in 1829 and 1830, when a Washington hand press was invented. Seventeen years later a cylinder power press was perfected by Richard M. Hoe, and the mechanical ability to produce periodicals was more than doubled; but during the time when American ingenuity developed the steam engine, the cotton gin, the sewing machine, and the electric telegraph, the progress made in the mechanism of newspaper making was comparatively insignificant. The process of stereotyping was introduced into this country from England in 1813, and a year later the New Testament was printed from plates, but the discovery was not utilized in the publication of newspapers until 1861.
In the first half of the century journalism did not at any time rank as a profession requiring special training, and capacity, and the returns of the counting room were so meager, the cost of material so high, and the appliances in the mechanical department so imperfect, that the publication of newspapers rose only by slow degrees to recognition as a business enterprise in which capital might seek investment with fair prospect of a satisfactory return. Modeled after English publications, the early American newspapers depended, for whatever of reputation or success they achieved, upon the fame and ability of the editor. The reporting of current events without comment was a secondary feature of the daily papers, and in the weekly publications it was not attempted. Before the days of railroads and prompt and reliable mail service, communication between men in public life and, in fact, all persons of education, was chiefly by letter. The custom grew into a fixed habit, and to a large extent influenced the character of the newspapers published prior to 1850. The editor addressed himself directly to his readers through long editorials upon topics in which he was interested, and his publication was in reality a mere instrument for the expression of opinions. Public men and politicians were encouraged to write letters for publication upon public questions, and a long communication from a man of national reputation was regarded by the editor as matter of far more value to his journal than any amount of news of the events of the day.
A Municipal Notice from the New York Gazette and General Advertiser of January 1, 1800.
The organization and development of political parties in the early part of the second quarter of the century resulted in a rapid increase in the number of newspapers throughout the country. Party leaders found that they could reach a greater number of citizens by means of published letters and speeches than by the primitive process of campaigning by easy stages from one State or county to another. From writing personal letters to friends in their districts, senators and representatives in Congress found that they could keep their constituents better informed of the progress of legislation and politics by means of signed statements in the press of their respective States. The party organ and the personal journal were the immediate natural results of this condition of public life and politics. Every secular journal supported some political party or organization without qualification, and there was little or no independence of the press. The editor found his subscribers among the members of his own party, and often looked to the organization or the candidate for financial support. Papers were established and editors hired by parties, factions, and individual leaders to advocate some particular plan of finance or tariff, or some general policy for the nation or State. During this stage of American journalism the influence of a paper depended largely upon the reputation, individuality, and force of character of the editor. He needed not to possess any particular qualification for the work, except a general knowledge of the affairs on which he was to write and a command of vigorous language to compel attention to his utterances. For many years the majority of the periodicals of the country, daily and weekly, were critical reviews of the events of the time, rather than mediums for the spread of general information. News of important happenings at home spread through all the States ahead of the circulation of the papers, and the people looked to the latter for review and comment upon events, rather than for detailed accounts of the occurrences. Foreign affairs, as reported in the English publications received in this country, took precedence in the classification of news in the journals of the first half of the century, and local events, often matters that were subsequently recognized as of great historical value, were briefly and too often imperfectly recorded. It is a matter to be regretted that in the days when American statesmen and orators were making history for the world, when the new republic, having passed beyond the stage of experiment, was advancing with prodigious strides toward glorious achievements in material development, the journals of the country kept but an imperfect and often inaccurate record of events that should have been reported in full.