Gazette of the United States

John Fenno, founder of the Gazette of the United States, was a businessman[2] and schoolmaster[3][4] from Boston.[5] As a supporter of the new Constitution,[6] he envisioned a national, authoritative newspaper that would promote the new administration in order to unify the new country.[7] Fenno's vision attracted Federalists as sponsors such as Christopher Gore,[6] Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton,[8] and Senator Rufus King.[9] The motto of the Gazette, "He that is not for us, is against us", reflected its political intentions.[10]

The first issue of the newspaper (April 15, 1789) explains the intentions of its founder and editor John Fenno.

Aside from his political goal, Fenno also founded the Gazette as a promising commercial opportunity, expecting to retire wealthy in ten years.[6] He planned to secure printing contracts with the government and subcontract the printing of his newspaper.[9] Unusually, the Gazette did not publish advertisements because Fenno did not want to suggest ties to a local region,[11] or offer general printing services.[9]

Fenno moved to New York City (then the capital of the US) to start publishing his newspaper. While his sponsors had sent him to the capital with substantial funding,[6] Fenno initially struggled to start printing the Gazette. No printer in New York would agree to a subcontract, and Fenno had to hire former colleague John Russell to print the paper. Sponsors provided little aid when Fenno wanted more.[9] On April 15, 1789, the Gazette of the United States finally started printing as a semiweekly newspaper,[1] a month before the Constitutional Convention would begin an intense dispute for the state of the country.[12]

The paper's first government printing contract was signed in July 1789, later than expected.[13] John Fenno began to fall into debt as the year progressed.[14] With a circulation never more than 1,400 copies, his project did not meet his expectation for commercial success.[3] Many newspaper subscribers did not pay for their subscriptions or only partially paid,[15] and awaited contracts were made too slowly.[13] Thus the Gazette could not make up its own operating costs[14] or support Fenno's family,[13] not to mention the loans Fenno received when he began the business.[14] Supposedly enthusiastic sponsors still did not offer the help Fenno expected.[8] The worsening financial situation forced him to begin advertising in November.[14] In 1790, Philadelphia was declared the new American capital city;[14] Fenno's business moved there in the following year.[1]

Controversy about the Federalists' financial policies led to the government giving aid to the struggling newspaper. Hamilton gifted a grant to Fenno in 1790 and 1791, and Fenno also received control of the Senate's and most of the Department of Treasury's printing business.[14] Although Fenno's wish for his Gazette to become official was never fulfilled,[16] it did receive semi-official status[17] through his government job.[18] Even after the grants, Fenno's debt continued to grow until 1793,[14] when he stopped the publication of the Gazette on September 18, 1793,[1] amid the yellow fever epidemic.[14] After a request from Fenno, Hamilton and Rufus King raised an amount of money about equal to Fenno's debt.[19] On December 11, 1793, the newspaper started printing again, a now daily publication, excluding Sundays.[20] Adopting the conventions of urban newspapers, it offered printing services to paying customers and avoided subcontracts.[21]

After John Fenno died on September 14, 1798, from yellow fever, his son John Ward Fenno took over the newspaper until 1800,[3] with editorial assistance from Joseph Dennie.[22] In 1800, the capital moved to Washington, but the Gazette did not move there while its own importance and the influence of the Federalist Party waned.[1] The editorship was taken over by Caleb P. Wayne on June 28, 1800.[23] Under Wayne, a semiweekly newspaper was published simultaneously with the daily Gazette from August 10, 1801,[24] to November 2, 1801.[25] Beginning on November 2, 1801, the newspaper listed its publisher as "Published ... for E. Bronson ... by Thos. Smith".[26] On February 20, 1804, it began to list its publishers as "E. Bronson and E. Chauncey".[27] The last issue was printed on March 7, 1818, and the Gazette merged with the True American.[1][27] Their successors continued to print throughout United States history, and The Philadelphia Inquirer is their modern descendant.[36]

Throughout its history, the Gazette was renamed multiple times:

The Gazette printed news, letters, and political essays in a four-page, three-column format.[1] Literature like poetry was also published with political themes.[10] Prominent politicians contributed essays, such as John Adams[41] and especially Alexander Hamilton.[42] It also printed government works through federal contracts such as the Department of State's laws.[41] Sometimes Fenno would publish a letter or poem about a trivial or non-political subject.[43]

The Gazette supported the political philosophy of Fenno's Federalist sponsors. Policies the newspaper advocated, which were often controversial, included government support for manufacturing, a national bank, fully paying the national debt,[44] and neutrality in tensions between Britain and France.[42] Fenno was determined to persuade his readers by a wide variety of means. Readers found praise for his allies[12] and elaborately descriptions of the ceremonies of officials such as President George Washington and then-Vice President John Adams,[45] Historian Eric Burns has found only one instance of criticizing Alexander Hamilton in the history of Fenno's editorship, in the publication of an anonymous letter to Fenno, but no evident reason to do so; he also writes that "it may be the only example from the entire era of any avowedly factional newspaper sniping at its own viewpoint, however briefly."[46]

Opponents of the Federalist agenda were heavily criticized. Official documents were selectively published to look favorable to the Federalists, even falsified.[12] In response to the Jay Treaty (1795), the Gazette urged the treaty's detractors to cease their criticism completely to avoid "subvert[ing] all governance, and introduc[ing] anarchy and confusion"; never again would the newspaper demand for dissent to be silenced fully.[47] Despite the Gazette's effusive praise of Washington, he hardly ever commented about the friendly newspaper and even criticized Fenno once for partisan reporting.[48]

Fenno regulated his newspaper's partisanship by not discussing elections much, partly because he opposed the principle of democratic election itself. To Fenno, the status quo was optimal, and most of the populace was unfit for elected office. Therefore, he expressed general support for incumbents and opposition to challengers, but did not discuss his partisan views in elections.[13] He did not consider himself a partisan editor[44] or even a politician,[8] but rather a defender of legitimate authority in the national interest.[44] Privately, however, he did express contempt for the opponents of the Federalists.[49]

Democratic-Republicans like Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, who were becoming concerned with Hamilton's fiscal policy, objected to the increasing partisanship of the Gazette of the United States.[41] They saw the Gazette of the United States as similar to a British government-sponsored newspaper,[50] intent on promoting a British-style government.[51] The newspaper had published essays such as Discourses on Davila by John Adams[41] and Publicola by John Quincy Adams,[50] which seemed to advocate monarchy and aristocracy.[51] Jefferson denounced Fenno's publication as "a paper of pure Toryism, disseminating the doctrines of monarchy, aristocracy, and the exclusion of the influence of the people."[52] In addition, Fenno was uncooperative in printing information intended to provide an alternative bias on Jefferson's request, and his sponsors, particularly in advertising, continued to seem pro-Federalist.[50]

On October 31, 1791, the National Gazette was founded as a nationwide rival to the Gazette of the United States from a Democratic-Republican perspective at the urging of party leaders Thomas Jefferson and James Madison,[53] edited by Philip Freneau.[54][55][56] Over the course of its history, the National Gazette would print attacks on the Federalists by Freneau,[57] Madison,[58] and less prominent politicians.[57]

Criticism of the administration prompted condescending responses from Fenno, which were seen to confirm Freneau's negative depictions of Fenno and his allies. Moreover, Fenno often resorted to name-calling and personal attacks.[59] Hamilton himself wrote multiple essays to criticize the National Gazette.[60] The political impact of the National Gazette more than satisfied Jefferson and Madison.[61] By publicizing Hamilton and Jefferson's rivalry, the two papers further worsened the two statesmen's relationship,[62] and the intense partisan debate between the two papers alienated readers.[1] Nowadays, archives of the Gazette of the United States provide an important and unique insight into the era's political situation.[63]

Later in 1792, the paper's connections to the Democratic-Republicans were publicly exposed,[61] which Freneau and his sponsors struggled to explain.[64] Hamilton wrote accusations against them in the Gazette of the United States.[65] The Democratic-Republicans resorted to similar accusations about the Gazette of the United States.[66] An debate about which side's partisanship was worse concluded in them losing;[67] ultimately, the National Gazette backfired on its benefactors. Jefferson's relationship with the Washington administration deteriorated, and both Jefferson and Madison ended most of their involvement with the press.[68]

The National Gazette was failing, facing problems with subscriptions, advertising, and printing services similar to those of the Gazette of the United States.[69] Due to Jefferson and Madison's scandal, Freneau lost funding from Jefferson,[54] and the National Gazette's sponsors did not bail it out.[68] The National Gazette permanently stopped printing on October 26, 1793, during the Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic, outlived by the Gazette of the United States.[54][70] Historian Jeffrey Pasley blames the failure of the National Gazette on Jefferson and Madison's flawed political strategy and Freneau's flawed business strategy.[68] On November 8, 1794, the Philadelphia Aurora, edited by Benjamin Franklin Bache, started printing,[71] taking the place of the National Gazette as the Federalists' rival newspaper.[1]

John Fenno's goal for the Gazette of the United States to be the definitive newspaper that would unite the nation was never fully realized, but his newspaper did set the foundation for American newspaper politics.[2] The Gazette of the United States was the leading Federalist newspaper of the 1780s and 1790s.[1]

The National Gazette, founded to counterbalance the Gazette of the United States, was the first American party newspaper[68] and influenced other newspapers to link themselves to political parties.[72] Partisan newspapers like the two gazettes, while fundamentally political, were private and had to support themselves through commercial means. The unpopularity of The London Gazette, an officially supported British newspaper, forced Federalist Alexander Hamilton, Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson, and future government officials to support partisan newspapers and thus influence public opinion through indirect means[21] like government jobs[41] rather than official status, which nevertheless encouraged newspapers to become more partisan in turn.[21]

• History of American journalism
• History of American newspapers
• Media bias in the United States

• Burns, Eric (2006). Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism. PublicAffairs. ISBN 978-1-58648-334-0.
• Chernow, Ron (2004). Alexander Hamilton. Penguin Press. ISBN 978-1-59420-009-0.
• Hickey, Donald R. (1999). "Farmer's Weekly Museum, 1793–1810". In Lora, Ronald; Longton, William Henry (eds.). The Conservative Press in Eighteenth-and Nineteenth-century America. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 103–111. ISBN 978-0-313-31043-0.
• Longton, William Henry (1999). "Port Folio, 1801–1827". In Lora, Ronald; Longton, William Henry (eds.). The Conservative Press in Eighteenth-and Nineteenth-century America. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 33–50. ISBN 978-0-313-31043-0.
• Pasley, Jeffrey L. (2000). Shields, David S. (ed.). "The Two National 'Gazettes': Newspapers and the Embodiment of American Political Parties". Early American Literature. University of North Carolina Press. 35 (1): 51–86. JSTOR 25057179.

• Daniel, Marcus Leonard (2009). Scandal and Civility: Journalism and the Birth of American Democracy. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-517212-6.
• Mott, Frank Luther (1941). American Journalism: A History of Newspapers in the United States through 250 Years, 1690–1940. The Macmillan Company.

• Archives of issues from the Library of Congress's Chronicling America:
  • 1789–1793
  • 1793–1794
  • 1794–1795
  • 1795–1796
  • 1796–1800
  • 1800