ABSTRACT
American journalism began, like American politics, as a version of British institutions. American printers in the eighteenth century imported their presses, type, and ink from Britain, and borrowed most of their news directly from London papers. For the first half century of American newspapers, readers could find little local news; the American colonies were an outpost of a British world, and the papers demonstrated closer connections to London than to neighboring colonies or even to their own sites of publication.
