The Entertaining Press

Abstract

This article, a study of sensationalism In the early Boston press, presents the thesis that the colonial press, especially in Boston, catered to a mass literate audience by stressing stories of sensation, human interest and scandal. It attacks the conventional view that the modern press, which emphasizes entertainment, was born In the mid-nineteenth century in the form of the "penny press. " A close analysis of the early Boston press shows that most of the features of the modern press were present well before the turn of the nineteenth century. Three factors contributed to this journalistic development. First, the early American press inherrted a tradition of sensationalism from the English press, a culture reinforced throughout the eighteenth century by the colonial press's reliance on British newspapers for copy. Second, the urban and frontier environments of colonial America provided a steady pattern of violent and sensational events about which enterprising printers were eager to publish stories. Third, mass literacy in eighteenth-century Massachusetts, which cut across social classes, stimulated the colonial printer's efforts to publish an entertaining newspaper This study is based on a content analysis of Boston newspapers published in the period 1704-1784. It concentrates on a sample of issues of all known papers published in the colony in six randomly selected years: 1710, 1720, 1740, 1748, 1768, and 1784. Nearly 1,800 stories are Included in the analysis.