The Penny Press was the term used to describe the revolutionary business tactic of producing newspapers which sold for one cent. The Penny Press is generally considered to have started in 1833, when Benjamin Day founded The Sun, a New York City newspaper.
Day, who had been working in the printing business, started a newspaper as a way to salvage his business. He had nearly gone broke after losing much of his business during a local financial panic caused by the cholera epidemic of 1832.
Penny press newspapers were cheap, tabloid–style newspapers mass–produced in the United States from the 1830s onwards. Mass production of inexpensive newspapers became possible following the shift from hand–crafted to steam–powered printing.[1] Famous for costing one cent while other newspapers cost around 6 cents, penny press papers were revolutionary in making the news accessible to middle class citizens for a reasonable price.
Though Day merely saw it as a business strategy to salvage his business, his analysis touched upon a class divide in society. Newspapers that sold for six cents were simply beyond the reach of many readers.
Day reasoned that many working class people were literate, but were not newspaper customers simply because no one had published a newspaper targeted to them. By launching The Sun, Day was taking a gamble. But it proved successful.
 |
| The Sun by Benjamin Day |
ANOTHER INNOVATION– NEWSBOY
Besides making the newspaper very affordable, Day instituted another innovation, the newsboy. By hiring boys to hawk copies on street corners, The Sun was both affordable and readily available. People wouldn’t even have to step into a shop to buy it.
INFLUENCE OF THE SUN
The success of The Sun encouraged James Gordon Bennett, who had serious journalistic experience, to found The Herald, another newspaper priced at one cent. Bennett was quickly successful and before long he could charge two cents for a single copy of his paper.
Subsequent newspapers, including the New York Tribune of Horace Greeley and the New York Times of Henry J. Raymond, also began publication as penny papers. But by the time of the Civil War, the standard price of a New York City newspaper was two cents.
 |
| James Gordon Bennett |
REASON FOR PENNY PRESS’S SUCCESS
The heavy dependence on advertising as a major source of revenue was a main reason that the Penny Press was able to sell papers for a lower price than anyone else. Other papers relied heavily on subscriptions and daily sales.
Newspapers rely heavily on advertising as a main source of income and that is also a major reason that they are still being offered at relatively low prices today.
POLITICAL FACTORS
Political and demographic changes were also significant. Much of the success of the newspaper in the early United States owed itself to the attitude of the Founding Fathers toward the press. Many of them saw a free press as one of the most essential elements in maintaining the liberty and social equality of citizens. Thomas Jefferson said he considered a free press as even more important than the government itself: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate any moment to prefer the latter.” It was because of his attitude that freedom of the press gained mention in the First Amendment to the Constitution, and though early politicians, including Jefferson, occasionally made attempts to rein in the press, newspapers flourished in the new nation.
CHANGE IN ROLE OF JOURNALISTS
In the early 1800s, newspapers were largely for the elite and took two forms – mercantile sheets that were intended for the business community and contained ship schedules, wholesale product prices, advertisements and some stale foreign news, and political newspapers that were controlled by political parties or their editors as a means of sharing their views with elite stakeholders. Journalists reported the party line and editorialized in favour of party positions.[14] The emergence of the penny press greatly influenced communication technologies by covering news outside those of government interests. The first penny paper, the Sun, was founded in New York in September 1833. After that time, newspapers became nonpartisan since they were not supported by political parties. Penny papers hired reporters and correspondents to seek out and write the news, while at the same time, started to sound more journalistic than editorial. Reporters were assigned to beats and were involved in the conduct of local interaction. The penny press contributed to changes in newspaper content and structure. New journalism practices resulted in the development of concepts such as news reporting, emphasizing the importance of timeliness, and appealing to wider audiences. These newspapers, though not completely uninfluenced by political parties and their views, were self–funded and not party–funded. This allowed them to shift allegiance on political issues that the papers dealt with quite easily, which also aided in their success and acceptance by the general public.
IMPACTS
With these new publications, the lower classes were newly introduced to the latest information unlike before.
The spark of the new penny presses began a new revolution in the world of journalism. The whole content and structure began to completely change, allowing new material to be released more quickly and efficiently. Penny presses began to allow news to reach larger and wider audiences, expanding publication size and influences.
The period between 1833 and 1860 is often referred to by historians as a “spectacular phenomenon” for it revolutionized American journalism. Since the mid–eighteenth century, the population in America had been growing steadily. In 1833, there were 650 weeklies and 65 dailies in distribution, each with an average circulation of 1,200 (Martin, 1988). The advent of the “penny newspaper” (the colloquial name given to newspapers sold at one penny when contemporary newspapers cost 6 cents) in 1833 was to transform not only the delivery and the content of the news, but also those who for the first time had access to the news, which was no longer limited to the mercantile and political elite. According to Emery and Emery (1996), there are three factors which are essential to the successful development of a newspaper: readership, delivery, and production improvements. In the early nineteenth century, all of these factors played an important role in the development of the newspaper. Consequently, as a new economic level of the population was introduced to the newspaper, this came to have profound effects on mass literacy and society.
SOCIO–ECONOMIC BACKGROUND
Changes began to appear in the workforce in terms of service and technology, and functional and practical needs for literacy grew. “Economic needs for reading and writing reached unprecedented levels” (Graff, 1987, p. 261). Accordingly, the elite’s fears toward educating the masses began to subside, and it was slowly becoming accepted that they too should be educated.
The early nineteenth century also saw an explosion of print. Numerous religious groups, political parties, educational groups and cultural promoters pervaded the market with print in search of sales and influence (Graff, 1987). Technological advances in printing also paved the way for the development and proliferation of the newspaper. The wooden, hand–powered press which had remained unchanged since Gutenberg, was transformed in this century. The printing press frame was converted from wood to steel, the press became steam powered, and the print surface became a cylindrical cast of letter punches. More innovations would follow, including the switch from printing on discrete pieces of paper to printing on continuous rolls (Carroll, n.d.). These developments were vital to the rise of newspaper circulation in order to print larger quantities of papers and sell them at a reduced cost.
A PRESS FOR THE MASSES
The penny papers flourished based on increased circulation, but also due to a new importance being placed on advertising. Unlike their predecessors, the penny papers did not rely on annual subscriptions or subsidies from political parties. Advertising began targeting the working class readership’s needs. While in the past newspapers did not print advertisements they did not agree with, the penny papers relinquished their “authority” on moral judgement, leaving this up to its readers. “The cheap press had emphasized technological improvements and recognized the importance of news as a device for advertising the paper as an advertising medium” (Innis, 1951, p. 162). The penny papers made advertisement available to more people, to an entire new economic class, thereby enlarging the potential market for manufactured goods (Shudson, 1978).
The writing in the penny papers was yet another novel concept that added a new dimension to journalism as we know it today. Particularly in the beginning, the stories were sensationalist and were selected to draw in the readers. Stories were often detailed and included brutal accounts of murders and household disputes. Along with the sensationalism, came an emphasis on local and human interest stories (Mott, 1978). The penny papers broke from the traditional newspapers of the time and began reporting “interesting” stories regardless of their relevance. When the penny newspapers did report on serious issues, they were often treated with less “heaviness“ than their 6 cents counterparts (Mott, 1978). As it relied on sales and advertising, the penny press was free to publish whatever stories it thought interesting or pertinent, but ultimately selection was based on what would garner more advertisement revenues. Bennett was quoted as saying that only the penny press could be considered a free press because it was deferential only to its readers, but really it deferred a great deal to its advertisers. Before the 1830s, newspapers were not even expected to be objective, but rather to present a partisan viewpoint (Shudson, 1978). Mott says of Bennett’s endeavour that it represented half sheer opportunism and half humanitarian idealism(Mott, 1978, p. 232). Bennett tried to sell as many papers as possible, and therefore adapted the stories for the less educated working class, but he was also a democrat at heart, and applied the doctrine vox populi vox dei (the voice of the people is the voice of god) to the running of his paper (Mott, 1978).
THE IMPACT ON LITERACY AND SOCIETY
All this, then, resulted in the fact that the mass public could now not only afford to buy the newspaper, but its needs were being taken into consideration. Was the penny paper then instrumental in increasing literacy levels, and/or did increased literacy levels of the early nineteenth century make the penny newspaper possible and successful?
History shows that the penny papers were conducive in expanding America’s newspaper readership. In his book, American Journalism, Mott cites from the Public Leger, a penny newspaper in Philadelphia in 1936:
In the cities of New York and Brooklyn, containing a population of 300,000 the daily circulation of the penny papers is not less than 70,000. This is nearly sufficient to place a newspaper in the hands of every man in the two cities, and even of every boy old enough to read (Mott, 1978, p. 241).
One out of three Americans were reading the newspaper daily. America’s literacy levels were already on the rise when the penny paper was launched, however, the penny press played a key role in pushing literacy levels higher, at an accelerated rate. Since the penny newspapers were simply written, and affordable, they may have incited more people to read daily, thus allowing them to improve their own literacy. It should be noted that as literacy levels grew among the population, the quality of the writing in the penny press also improved. Furthermore, when the penny newspaper brought the news to the masses, it gave them “a new consciousness and new ideas“. The penny papers placed an importance on the voice of the common people, and often published that people should be provided with a realistic view of contemporary life; that abuses by authority (such as banks, churches, courts, etc) should be exposed; and that the newspaper has a duty to give readers the news and not to support a political party. The penny press was instrumental in increasing literacy levels in a pragmatic society that was technologically ready to move forward.
SUMMARY
History shows that American journalism was indeed revolutionized during the nineteenth century, particularly with the introduction of the penny newspaper. Shudson (1978) explains the evolution of the newspaper in three sequential stages:
� the press is a monopoly controlled by the government;
� the press is controlled by political parties;
� the press finally breaks free from both government and politics by enlisting the commercial profitability of advertising and appealing to a much wider audience.
Several other factors played an important part in the development of the newspaper in the nineteenth century: the country’s growth in population, the establishment of public education and increased literacy, democratic forms of government, increased popular interest in public affairs, and lastly the reduction of price (Mott, 1987). However, providing an affordable and easy–to–read newspaper to the mass public can obviously be attributed to the penny newspaper’s legacy.
COMPILED BY:
SHRADDHA ACHARYA
SOURCES
2) https://www.openschoolofjournalism.com/resources/encyclopedia/penny–press – OPEN SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM
3) https://www.dawn.com/news/801366 – DAWN
4) WIKIPEDIA
5) https://www.thoughtco.com/penny–press–definition–1773293 THOUGHTCo.
One response
This is an highly informative post about penny press. It highlights how it started and how it affected the era of journalism especially in America. It also talks about the influence of penny press and it’s impact on Literacy and society.