Page:History of American Journalism.djvu/211

Rh Louisiana Gazette. When Congress, however, again set off Missouri and Louisiana each as a separate territory, Charless on July 11, 1812, returned to the original name of The Missouri Gazette. Charless retired from the paper on September 13, 1820, when he sold it to James C. Cummins. On March 13, 1822, he, in turn, sold it to Edward Charless, the oldest son of the founder, who changed the name to The Missouri Republican, as a personal tribute to his Jeffersonian doctrines. It is now published as The St. Louis Republic.

In order to counteract the influence of The Gazette the politi- cal opponents of Charless raised a fund of one thousand dollars to start a Republican newspaper in St. Louis. An advertisement in The Lexington Kentucky Reporter brought them Joshua Norbell, of Nashville, Tennessee. Early in May, 1815, he started a rival sheet called The Western Journal. Two years later he was suc- ceeded by Sergeant Hall, of Cincinnati, who issued the first number of his paper under the new name of The Western Emi- grant. Two years later the paper became The St. Louis Enquirer, which once had for its editor Thomas H. Benton, who later for- sook journalism for politics and became the United States Senator.

Journalism in Michigan began with that most interesting pre- cursor, the spoken newspaper, conducted under the auspices of the Reverend Father Gabriel Richard, a priest of the Order of Sulpice, who came to Detroit in 1798 as resident pastor of the Roman Catholic Church of St. Anne. Mention has been made in an earlier chapter of how he appointed a town-crier whose duty it was on Sunday to stand on the church steps and to tell the public in general and the congregation in particular such news as was fit to speak. Advertising had its place in this spoken newspaper which told of the things for sale, etc. For the benefit of those absent at the spoken edition a written one was publicly posted near the church. For some time Father Richard was assisted in this way of publishing the news by Theopolis Meetz, who was at the time sacristan of St. Anne's Church, but who later became a printer and newspaper publisher.