Page:History of American Journalism.djvu/177



was a "hot time in the old town/' regardless of where the "old town" was located. Such times were naturally mirrored in the press. In the matter of excellence, possibly the newspapers of Boston came first, those of Philadelphia second, and those of New York well down the list. For instance, James G. Brooks, who had edited The Minerva, one of the foremost literary papers of the early nineteenth century, but then editor of The Courier, publicly posted on the walls and fences of New York a bulletin which said, "I publish M. M. Noah of The Enquirer as a coward. James G. Brooks." It is an interesting comment to record that these two New York papers later became more friendly and united under the title, The Courier and Enquirer, on May 25, 1829.

CONTENTS OF NEWSPAPERS

To the party press a most important piece of news was always the report of the official proceedings of Washington. Somehow it never occurred to the typical partisan editor of this period that he might make these reports more interesting if they were pruned of less important items, but instead he gave the routine detail of Congressional debates, no matter how exciting might be the news of his local community, and evidently thought that which came from Washington had additional news value be- cause of its source. Even advertising space was sacrificed to make room for the speech of some representative at Washington who liked to hear himself talk and who was spurred on to talk the longer because his words would probably appear in print. The columns of the party newspaper were always open for com- munications from politicians of the same political faith a courtesy which was usually greatly abused both to the annoy- ance of some readers and many advertisers. In addition, there were usually long-winded editorials which often included a repetition of the matter already stated in other columns. But if it had not been for such full reporting in party organs it would have been extremely doubtful whether the deliberations of Con- gress would have been preserved for posterity.

Next to giving his readers all the political gossip of the time, the editor of the period thought he ought to provide a choice