[HOME]
A HISTORY OF PENNSYLVANIA NEWSPAPERS
Newspaper publishing in Pennsylvania began in the pressrooms of two energetic Philadelphia editors, Andrew Bradford and Benjamin Franklin. In 1719 Bradford issued his American Weekly Mercury, the first continuous newspaper in the Middle Colonies – the third in all the colonies. Ten years later, Franklin purchased the nascent Pennsylvania Gazette and shaped it into one of the nation’s truly engaging sources of information, advice, and criticism in the colonies. The lure of editorship eventually captured other imaginations: Bradford’s nephew William began the Pennsylvania Journal in 1742; William Goddard’s Pennsylvania Chronicle was founded in 1767; and on the eve of the Revolution, John Dunlap pulled the first issue of his Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser, the nation’s first daily and direct ancestor of today’s Philadelphia Inquirer.
Between 1740 and 1776 the number of Philadelphia printing houses trebled, and the output served not only Pennsylvania’s English-speaking readership, but its German population as well. The German press of America began in 1739 with Christopher Sauer’s newspaper, Der Hoch-Deutsche Pennsylvanische Geschicht-Schreiber, which under the later name of Die Germantauner Zeitung, developed into one of the most influential pre-Revolutionary weeklies in America. The first newspaper in Lancaster, the fortnightly Gazette, displayed alternate columns in English and German. William Miller’s Philadelphische Staatsbote, founded in 1762, enjoyed statewide popularity throughout the German-speaking community. Modern cultural historians note that Pennsylvania was so much a center for the German press and influence in colonial times that German very nearly became the official language of the province. According to the census of 1790, 110,357 of Pennsylvania’s 423,373 residents were of German extraction. Pennsylvania had 70.5% of the new nation’s Germans.
By 1776, Philadelphia had no fewer than seven newspapers, with editions ranging from 500 to 3,000 copies and circulations as far away as the West Indies. John Scull and Joseph Hall launched their Pittsburgh Gazette in 1786, the first newspaper west of the Appalachian Mountains, to be followed by other western papers: the Uniontown Fayette Gazette in 1798, the Washington Western Telegraph in 1795, and the Bedford Gazette and the Crawford Weekly Messenger in Meadville in 1805. A new journalistic phenomenon, the penny newspaper, arose during this period, facilitating the spread of information to a far wider audience than the expensive papers had reached. By 1840 Pennsylvania led all other states in the number of newspapers published. Philadelphia alone had 52 weekly and 15 daily papers published during the 1850s. The total daily product of Pennsylvania’s newspaper press had climbed past 200 titles by 1860.
The news industry expanded greatly during the Civil War years, and continued to grow until the close of the century. Pittsburgh by 1880, for instance, had ten daily newspapers, which included the new Evening Telegraph, the Post, and the Chronicle Telegraph. Harrisburg boasted three dailies, the Telegraph, the Patriot, and the Harrisburg Independent. The Scranton Morning Republican of 1867 was the first postwar daily outside Philadelphia. The Philadelphia North American, established in 1839, became one of the truly important progressive newspapers of the eastern United States, and the Evening Bulletin, which began as Cumming’s Evening Bulletin in 1847, evolved into one of the largest evening newspapers in the country.
Early in the 19th century, a new American culture was developing from a mix of immigrant ethnic and religious groups. The newspapers of Pennsylvania document the emerging nationalism, the spirit of discovery, and the concept of manifest destiny. At the same time, no other state had as many foreign-language newspapers: at least 60 were being published at the end of the century. The Pittsburgh Courier, the Philadelphia Tribune, and the Christian Recorder are all among the oldest and most influential Afro-American newspapers in the country. The famous Williamsport Grit, started in 1882 as a rustic week-ender filled with ethnic “grit” and humor, stood as the nation’s most widely distributed country and small-town weekly, producing both state and national editions.
Although the Germans are the most prominent European ethnic group to leave a record of their settlement through the medium of newspapers in Pennsylvania, there were many setters from Italy, Lithuania, Slovakia, Ukraine, and Sweden. The Poles were one of the largest European ethnic groups to settle in Pennsylvania. Scholars agree that two million Poles settled permanently in the United States between 1850 and 1924.
Poland did not exist as a nation in the 19th century. Polish immigrants departed from a homeland that was divided by the partitioning powers of Prussia, Russia, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The newcomers found work in the expanding industrial cities of the Northeast and in the anthracite coal mines of Pennsylvania. By 1920, Pittsburgh had about 200,000 Poles and Philadelphia had at least 50,000. Another 75,000 had settled in the anthracite cities of Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, and Hazleton and its smaller towns of Shenandoah, Mount Carmel, and Shamokin. The cities of Reading, Conshohocken, and Erie also had prominent Polish populations.
Just as the German press served to assimilate the immigrants to life in the New World, so did the Polish press. The role of the ethnic press was directly related to the stages at which the group was assimilated. The press carried news of the old and new countries, educated the community about customs and circumstances of life in the United States, and disseminated news about religious and fraternal affairs.
Although Zgoda (Harmony), Kuryer Polski (The Polish Courier), Dziennik Chicagoski (The Chicago Daily News) and Polak w Ameryce (The Pole in America) were not published in Pennsylvania, these titles had subscribers in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and other states where Poles had settled. In total, about 110 Polish newspaper titles were established in the 1880s and 1890s.
Straz (The Guard), founded in Scranton, Pennsylvania in 1897, is the oldest continuously published Polish American newspaper. Philadelphia’s Gwiazda (The Star), typical of the smaller Polish newspapers, was more short-lived. Established by Stephan Nowaczyk (1869-1923) in the Port Richmond section of Philadelphia in 1902, Gwiazda’s circulation was limited primarily to the Delaware Valley. Circulation hovered at 6,000 to 7,500 from the 1930’s to 1985. Originally published entirely in Polish, an English section was introduced and gradually expanded to fill half the newspaper.
Patterns of newspaper growth have changed drastically in the twentieth century. Economic pressures forced many newspapers either into bankruptcy or consolidation. Even Pittsburgh and Philadelphia have been reduced to two major dailies; the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and the Philadelphia Daily News and the Philadelphia Inquirer respectively. In Harrisburg, three once independent newspapers are now issued as a combination of the morning Patriot and the afternoon edition of the Evening News, as the Harrisburg Patriot-News. Yet while urban dailies are disappearing, the newspaper medium is persisting in a form quite different from the large metropolitan press. The spectacular growth of suburban newspapers seems to suggest a regeneration of the old country tabloid. These slim, ephemeral, neighborhood papers record valuable “local” events and opinions often left unnoticed in the big city newsrooms.
Despite shifts in editorial principles and distribution practices, Pennsylvania news journalism continues to enjoy an excellent reputation for its diversity, quality and comprehensiveness. Since the mid-1990s many of the major city and town papers across the Commonwealth are now featured as online publications.
The total number of Pennsylvania newspapers currently published varies according to source of information and according to definition. The 2003 136th ed. of Gale Directory of Publications and Broadcast Media lists 86 daily newspapers and 311 weekly, semi-weekly, tri-weekly, monthly and bi-monthly papers. The 2001 Pennsylvania Manual, published by the Commonwealth’s Department of General Services, lists 101 daily papers, but enumerates 282 weekly, semi-weekly, and tri-weekly papers.
Pennsylvania newspapers have been chronicled in Clarence Brigham’s History and Bibliography of American Newspapers 1690-1820 and Winifred Gregory’s American Newspapers, 1821-1937. The state’s participation in the Gregory list was spurred by actions taken by both the Pennsylvania Library Association and the Pennsylvania Historic Commission. The latter body also began the publication of A Checklist of Pennsylvania Newspapers, of which only Volume 1, covering Philadelphia County, appeared in 1944.
At the 1959 conference of the Pennsylvania Library Association, the importance of continuing work on newspaper bibliographic control, begun in the 1930s, was recognized. A Committee for the Preservation of Newspapers was appointed. A statewide plan for a union list of all newspapers of a general character was distributed to many Pennsylvania libraries and by 1962; Ruth Salisbury of the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania began her editing task which resulted in Pennsylvania Newspapers: A Bibliography and Union List (Pittsburgh, 1969).
Nine years later, a new edition of the Salisbury union list resulted from the work of the Research Materials Committee of the Pennsylvania Library Association. The second edition of the bibliography and union list was edited by Glenora Rossell of the University of Pittsburgh, and published by the Association in 1978. Both PaLA efforts concentrated on the holdings of libraries and historical societies. The State Library’s Newspaper Section Head, Louis Rauco, also surveyed newspaper publishers in 1977 to determine which files of newspapers, in paper and in microform, were held by the publishers. No systematic survey was conducted until 1983 to determine county government offices’ holdings.
An effort at bibliographic control, which also included some microfilming, was coordinated in the early 1970’s by the Columbia County Historical Society in Bloomsburg. In 1972 the Society issued a Checklist of Newspapers, noting holdings of 20 libraries in eight north and central counties. Except for the holdings in the public library in Williamsport and at Bucknell University, these holdings were not reported to the Library of Congress. The participants’ holdings are, however, included in the PaLA union lists.
The Huntingdon County Historical Society published Huntingdon County Newspapers: a Finding List, in 1979. Six repositories, including the State Library, the Pennsylvania State University Libraries, two publishers, and two libraries in the county, were listed, with holdings of thirty titles. A list of nineteen other papers, of which no copies were known to exist, was appended, with a plea for information regarding survivals.
In 1970 the Pennsylvania State University Libraries issued its volume of Newspapers in Microform and updated it by a second list in 1978. In the 1978 edition, 109 Pennsylvania titles were reported in microfilm and 17 in microprint. Today, the Microforms and Newspaper Library at Penn State’s University Libraries holds 136 Pennsylvania newspaper titles in microfilm. They currently receive paper copies of six state titles primarily from the central region including the Patriot-News from Harrisburg. Additionally, there are a number of full-text newspapers, including eight Pennsylvania titles that are available worldwide using on-line databases purchased by the University Libraries.
