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The daily newspapers which immediately followed the pioneers in this field soon developed to such size that they came to be called blanket sheets. Commercial in character, they had only limited circulation and usually sold at six cents per copy. For $30 a year a business man might not only have the paper for himself but also a square of advertising for his business. Early in the second quarter of the 19th century a new type of daily appeared, cheaper in price and smaller in size—the so-called penny press. The forerunner of this new journalism was The Daily Evening Transcript which Lynde M. Walter began in Bos ton, July 24, 1830, at the low subscription price of four dollars per annum. While the first daily to sell for a penny was The Cent (1830) started by Dr. Christopher Columbus Conwell, the first successful publisher and therefore the founder of penny journalism was Benjamin H. Day, whose Sun first rose in New York, Sept. 3, 1833, although Horace Greeley had made an un successful attempt the first of the same year in New York to market The Morning Post at two cents. The Sun immediately met with remarkable success because it gave in condensed form to the mechanics and to the servant girls the tittle-tattle and the backstair gossip of the city ; it gave more attention to the assault and battery cases of the police courts than to the attacks of President Jackson on the U.S. Bank. But The Sun was soon followed by other penny dailies not only in New York but also in other important cities, such as Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston, etc. Similar both in size and in subject matter to The Sun, they were called penny trash by the sixpenny sheets. The latter in turn were spoken of by the penny papers as "our bedquilt con temporaries."' A bitter war arose between the two types of dailies, but it was the penny press that met with popular favour and pros pered financially, because it contained the heart throb and the human interest. In all its columns it stressed not what was im portant but what was interesting. Not until Charles Anderson Dana purchased The Sun in 1868 did that paper change its char acter and become one with a class appeal under his editorship.
Possibly the man who most influenced American journalism at this period was James Gordon Bennett, who with $500, two wooden chairs and an old dry-goods box began The New York Herald in a cellar on May 6, 1835. Bennett was editor, publisher, advertising director, circulation manager and everything else down to the printer's devil. He reported the pro ceedings of the police court with a freedom that shocked his sixpenny contemporaries and soon found that scandal sold papers on the streets. To him nothing was sacred, not even the church or his own personal affairs. Often assaulted on the street, he reported the affair in his own paper in detail and announced his own engagement in what is considered one of the most interesting specimens of newspaper literature. Though full of malicious squibs and furious diatribes, The Herald was in some other respects con ducted with remarkable skill and enterprise in being the first to print the news. To his son of the same name Bennett left one of the greatest money-making newspapers in the history of American journalism. The son continued many of the father's policies, but
on a larger scale. Expense was not considered when he sent Stanley to Africa to find Livingstone and fitted out an Arctic expedition that had a most unfortunate outcome. In case of distress in any particular country he was among the first through his Herald to start a subscription campaign. He began that for the relief of the suffering in Ireland with a gift from The Herald of $100,000. Often regarded as eccentric and peculiar, he exerted a tremendous influence upon American journalism because of the emphasis which he placed upon international news without neglecting that which was local in character. He also set the style in the mode of treatment of news and in many ways established the yard stick by which it is measured.
After the arrival of the penny press there came many changes in the manufacture and in the marketing of newspapers. To secure speed in production Robert Hoe took the type from a flat bed and put it on a revolving cylinder turned by steam. News boys, in addition to distributing papers among regular patrons, were given additional copies to sell in the streets. The printing of larger and larger editions brought many improvements in the manufacture of both presses and paper. The introduction of compulsory education contributed to an interest in the news.
Though starting as a penny paper in April 1841, as a Whig organ, The New York Tribune began its second volume in April 1842, at two cents a copy. Horace Greeley, one of the most picturesque figures in American journalism, was its editor and one of its proprietors down to shortly before his death after his defeat in 1872 for the presidency. Upon the completion of its 2oth year (1861) it announced its circulation as 287,000. But this figure included both the daily and the weekly : the former was later given as slightly in excess of 55,000. In the same year The Herald had a daily distribution of over 75,00o copies— possibly the largest at that time in the world and about 25,000 in excess of The Times of London. The circulation of The Sun was about midway between that of The Herald and that of The Tribune, while The Evening Post, which from the start had ad dressed itself to a more cultured audience, had only 18,000. Gree ley made his paper not only an organ of Whig politics, but also a purveyor of novel and new ideas in both social and political economy. Among the editorial contributors in the latter field was Albert Brisbane, father of Arthur Brisbane of the present day. In the Franco-Prussian war, The Tribune achieved considerable fame through the publication of dispatches sent by cable at enor mous expense. In a way The Tribune was a sort of school of journalism in which the following distinguished journalists and publicists received their first training : Henry Jarvis Raymond, Charles Anderson Dana, George William Curtis, Carl Schurz, John Hay, Whitelaw Reid, Henry James, William Dean Howells, Bayard Taylor, George Ripley, Margaret Fuller, Edmund Clar ence Stedman, Richard Grant White, Richard Hildreth, John Russell Young and Sidney Howard Gay—all of whom later held important positions in New York journalism.