For those of us in the newspaper industry, Friday is a special day.
It was Sept. 25 when the very first newspaper was printed. Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick (sic) was published in Boston by publisher Benjamin Harris and printer Richard Pierce. Harris was also the proprietor of a bookselling and printing shop and maintained a coffee shop known as the London Coffee-House where the city’s elite would gather and exchange news and views.
According to historical reports, Publick Occurrences, Harris announced in the first edition, would “offer a broad account of world and local news, carefully reviewed for accuracy. The breadth of coverage and the high standards Harris imposed seem to have targeted the city’s merchants as the primary audience for the newspaper.”
The year was 1690 — 86 years after the world’s first newspaper was printed in Germany.
Although Harris and Pierce had grandiose plans for the Publick Occurrences, they did not pan out. The newspaper, which was a four-page spread, was suppressed by the British government and never published again.
But the thirst for a local newspaper was created.
It would be 14 years before Boston got another newspaper it could call its own. In 1704, the Boston News-Letter, which was founded on April 17, 1704, became the first continuously published colonial newspaper. The pro-British News-Letter was discontinued in 1776 at the beginning of the American Revolution.
The newspaper industry has come a long way since Harris’ one and only edition of the Publick Occurrences. Between the late 18th century and mid-19th century, newspapers were springing up throughout the East and even getting starts in specific far-off towns as people headed West to find a new start.
The country’s oldest newspaper is The Hartford (Conn.) Courant, which began on Oct. 29, 1764, as The Connecticut Courant; in North Carolina, The Fayetteville Observer is the state’s oldest newspaper, in print since 1816; and here in Scotland County, its own hometown newspaper, The Laurinburg Exchange, has been a constant provider of news for 139 years.
Despite the continuous turn toward online news, the printed newspaper remains a preferred medium for most subscribers, especially in smaller communities like rural Scotland County, where hometown news generally isn’t found online outside the area.
As we celebrate our earliest beginning — whether it be 1690 with the Publick Occurrences or 1881 with The Exchange — we will give thanks to those who came before us, those who have supported us and continue to make every effort to be a viable source of information going forward.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
“The only security of all is in a free press.” (Thomas Jefferson)