Boston’s Long Journalism History

A Boston 1775 reader alerted me to last month’s announcement from Emerson University that the Society of Professional Journalists has named the city of Boston a National Historic Site in Journalism.

Prof. Manny Paraschos of Emerson’s Journalism Department pushed for this designation, based on a series of American newspaper firsts in the city, starting with the first newspaper in North America (Publick Occurrences, 1690), the first newspaper in North America to last more than one issue (Boston News-Letter, 1704-1776), and the second lasting North American newspaper (Boston Gazette, 1719-1798).

By the Revolution, several other American cities had newspapers, and some had more than one. However, Boston still clearly had more newspapers per capita than the larger ports of Philadelphia and New York.

Paraschos’s website includes a map developed by his students of the Boston Journalism Trail. Items 1 through 16 cover the eighteenth century.