History Lesson

[Update with regards to the last post: There will be no narrative journalism insert due to logistical issues. I'm still going to try to get my final article published somewhere. Let me know if you would like to see it.]

In doing research for my thesis, I stumbled upon a gem: the first issue of the New York Times, then called New-York Daily Times. The first printing was 18 September 1851. You could pick it up for a penny - that covered the physical paper; profit and paychecks came from advertisements. There was no Sunday edition.

The first edition featured "A Word about Ourselves." I will let these excerpts speak for themselves. And then I will highlight bits I think are important, as a gloss. So they won't be speaking for themselves, after all.

We understand perfectly, that great capital, great industry, great patience are indispensable to its success, and that even with all these, failure is not impossible. But we know also, that within the last five years the reading population of this city has nearly doubled, while the number of daily newspapers is no greater now than it was then; - that many of those now published are really class journals, made up for particular classes of readers; - that others are objectionable upon grounds of morality; - and that no newspaper, which was really fit to live, ever yet expired for lack of readers.

Upon all topics, - Political, Social, Moral and Religious, - we intend that the paper shall speak for itself; - and we only ask that it may be judged accordingly. We shall be Conservative, in all cases where we think Conservatism essential to the public good; - and we shall be Radical in everything which may seem to us to require radical treatment and radical reform. We do not believe that everything in Society is either exactly right, or exactly wrong; - what is good we desire to preserve and improve; - what is evil, to exterminate, or reform.

...And while we design to be decided an explicit in our positions, we shall at the same time seek to be temperate and measured in all our language...There are very few things in this world which it is worth while to get angry about; and they are just the things that anger will not improve.

We hope to make the Daily Times acceptable to the great mass of our people, and shall spare no effort to do so. We have an abundance of means, -plenty of able and experienced assistance, and every facility for making at once, the best and the cheapest newspaper in the United States.