ABSTRACT
Until the late 1870s, journalism education in the United States was in the hands of professional tradesmen, usually printers. The most famous of these early printers was Benjamin Franklin, who wanted to improve the press by improving the virtue of printers. Franklin felt most printers of the time were endangering democracy by publishing defamatory essays. He wrote that “nothing is more likely to endanger the liberty of the press than the abuse of that liberty by employing it in personal accusation, detraction, and calumny” (Frasca, 1995, p. 5). About Franklin’s mission, Frasca noted that “Franklin’s challenge in the early republic was thus doubly formidable-not only to impart moral instruction to a mass audience, but also to overcome the deleterious effects of scurrilous journalism which eroded the edifice of public virtue that Franklin had devoted a lifetime trying to erect” (p. 8).
