Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 29:115 (Jul 1872)
Article: The Influence Of The Press
Author: John Bascom

BSac 29:115 (July 1872) p. 401

The Influence Of The Press

Rev. John Bascom

The present form of our civilization has been, probably, effected by the printing-press more than by any other agent. Yet, as the press is a mere piece of mechanism, — a method simply of dissemination, — it is evidently the form of society, and not its very spirit and character, that is due to this instrument. What the press shall print and scatter must be determined by something beside the press itself. The buzz and hum of society are found here. This is the fan that blows the flame; but the very flame, and the metal molten by it, are quite other things.

The press has been at work in the English world of thought almost four centuries, and the newspaper for a little more than half that time. The newspaper, as a printed medium of news, is of English origin. The first authentic regular weekly publication was that of Nathaniel Butter, in 1662, entitled “The Certain News of this Present Week.” In the word “gazette” we have traces, however, of an earlier written paper common to some of the Italian cities. Gazetta was the coin paid for the privilege of listening to the reading of these bulletins. The New York Gazette, the first paper published in that city, the Gazette of revolutionary memory in Boston, and the many other journals that have borne

BSac 29:115 (July 1872) p. 402

this name, thus stand closely connected by etymological, if not by historic, descent with the early papers of Venice and Florence.

Butter’s paper was succeeded, especially during the civil wars that made way for the Commonwealth, by numerous regular and irregular papers, chiefly employed as means of political influence and of spreading the stirring events of the hour. From that time onward the development of the newspaper has been continuous, though by no means with uniform rapidity. At the opening of the Revolution there were in the Colonies thirty-six weeklies and one semi-weekly. In 1800, there were in the United States two hundred papers, several of them dailies. The oldest of these dailies was the Pennsylvania Packet, or the General Advertiser, first issued in 1784. Nearly all the great dailies of the present have had their origin within the century. The Commercial Advertiser, the oldest of the New York dailies, began with the latest years of the previous century. The number of dailies in the United States in 1850 was two hundred and fifty-four, and in 1860 was three hundred and seventy-four; of bi- and tri-weeklies, one hundred and sixty-five; and of weeklies, three thousand one hundred and seventy-three. The number of monthlies was two hundred and eighty; and of quarterlies, thirty. The ten years just closing have witnessed a great addition to this number, and especially to those ...