ABSTRACT
American newspapers are older than the country. The very first, in 1690, lasted only one issue, but the second, in 1704, was a Boston weekly that endured. During those early days, an important criminal case tested the royal governors’ ability to control the press, as the Crown did in England. The role and influence of the press continued to increase. Virginia’s Declaration of Rights was first, in 1765. Drafted by an unlikely author, a planter of modest formal education named George Mason, it stated that “the Freedom of the Press is one of the great Bulwarks of Liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic Government.” Newspapers thrived through most of the twentieth century. For many years in mid-century, there were more than one thousand seven hundred dailies.
