HISTORY's Moment in Media: How Early Newspaper Ads Shaped News Today

Nearly 15 years later on April 17 1704 Boston39s postmaster John Campbell began publishing The Boston NewsLetter a weekly widely considered to be the first continuously published newspaper in what would become the United States And two weeks later on May 1 1704 318 years ago this month the NewsLetter published the American colonies39 first newspaper advertisementsIn that premiere issue Campbell had solicited for advertisers quotAll persons who have any Houses Lands Tenements Farms Ships Vessels Goods Wares or Merchadizes ampampc to be Sold or Lett or Servants Run away or Goods Stoll or Lostquot he wrote in a short notice with the erratic spelling and aggressive capitalization common to the era quotmay have the same inserted at a Reasonable Ratequot And in the May 1 issue three advertisers paid those reasonable rates one seeking the recovery of stolen goods one looking for lost anvils and one offering to sell or rent a farm in Oyster Bay Long IslandBut it was none other than Benjamin Franklin who made advertising in America a bit more interesting In 1729 the former Bostonian began publishing The Pennsylvania Gazette in his adopted hometown Philadelphia Franklin who famously discovered electricity invented bifocals and helped found the United States was also the first person to add illustrations to ads simple woodcuts that depicted the items being sold He also introduced more descriptive text to his ads becoming arguably the first copywriterNewspaper advertising in early America didn39t merely benefit the advertiser it also drove the spread of newspapers Before advertising became prevalent newspapers were expensive but once advertisers began contributing to the bottom line cover prices could drop to a point at which more people could afford them Between that and advances in producing paper it is estimated that the number of newspapers in the country grew from around 35 in 1775 to 532 by 1820 The pioneering NewsLetter however would publish its last issue in February 1776Advertising also helped to professionalize newspapers Before mass advertising newspapers were typically organs of a political party filled with opinion essays supporting a particular point of view Once advertisers were footing the bill and with an overabundance of ads needing articles to run alongside papers moved from weeklies to daily hired professional reporters and became more recognizable as the news sources we know todayBy the 1830s the quotpenny pressquot had arrived when The New York Sun lowered its price to just one cent Supported by advertising newspapers were truly a mass medium In the 1840s the advent of the telegraph allowed papers to begin quickly reporting news from far afield And by the Civil War in the 1860s newspapers had become a critical tool for Americans to learn about the progress of the war and importantly read lists of those wounded and killedNewspaper ads played another key part in history During and after the Civil War a new role developed men who would physically carry ads from shops and businesses and bring them to newspaper offices for publication Those men were called agents Their businesses became known as advertising agencies In 1861 there were 20 of them in New York And in 1864 a man named William James Carlton founded his own shop Four years later Carlton hired a bookkeeper named J Walter Thompson Roughly a decade later Thompson bought the firm and renamed it for himself Until 2018 when it was merged into Wunderman Thompson JWT was the oldest continuously operating ad agency in the worldClick the social buttons to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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HISTORY's Moment in Media: How Early Newspaper Ads Shaped News Today

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