The Penny Press Era
1820s
Average paper cost 6 cents a copy.
This price was more than a weeks salary for most workers, this made newspapers very unpopular.
Newspapers Become Mass Media
Founding of Associated Press
in 1848, six new york newspapers formed a cooperative arrangement and founded the Associated Press (AP), the first major news wire service. Wire services began as commercial organizations that relayed news stories and information around the country. The news wire companies enabled news to travel rapidly from coast to coast and set the stage for modern journalism.
The marketing of news as a product and the use of modern technology to dramatically cut costs gradually elevated newspapers from an entrepreneurial stage to a mass medium.
1830s
The industrial revolution innovated how paper was made
making the production of newspapers cheaper. Then with the invention of the steampress the production of newspapers became faster,producing as many as 4 newspapers per hour. These two innovations made the newspaper much cheaper.
Changing Economics
The penny papers were innovative. They were the first to cover crime, and readers openly embraced the reporting of local news and crime. Penny papers separated the daily news from political viewpoints, and moved their economic base from political parties to the market-to advertising revenue, classified ads, and street sales. The rise of ad sales and circulations accelerated the growth of the newspaper industry. Increasing the number of weekly and daily papers operated from 650 weekly and 65 daily to 1,140 weeklies and 140 dailies. The amount of readers in 1840 was more than 300,000 readers.
Benjamin Day and New York Sun
The New York Sun was founded by Benjamin Day in 1833.
The price for this paper was one penny and sold no subscriptions. This paper covered local events, scandals, and police reports. Within six months The sun generated a circulation of 8000, twice that of it's competitor.
Typical Content.
Day and the New York Sun Continued
These stories reveal journalism's ties to literary traditions, which today can be found in everyday feature stories that chronicle the lives of remarkable people or in crime news that detail the daily work of police and the misadventures of criminals.
The success of the sun began a trend of human intrest stories, news accounts that focus on the daily trials and triumphs of the human condition, often featuring ordinary individuals facing extraordinary challenges.