page_title: History of newspaper publishing
section_title: North America
hierarchical_section_title: History of newspaper publishing / 16th century to 1800 / North America
caption_attribution_description: English: Armistice Day page from the New York Times
context_page_description: The modern newspaper is a European invention. The oldest direct ancestors of the modern newspaper were the handwritten news sheets that circulated widely in Venice as early as 1566. These weekly news sheets were filled with information on wars and politics in Italy and Europe. The first printed newspapers were published weekly in Germany from 1609. Typically they were heavily censored by the government and reported only foreign news, and current prices. After the English government relaxed censorship in 1695, newspapers flourished in London and a few other cities including Boston and Philadelphia. By the 1830s high speed presses could print thousands of papers cheaply, allowing for low daily costs.
context_section_description: In Boston in 1690, Benjamin Harris published Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick. This is considered the first newspaper in the American colonies even though only one edition was published before the paper was suppressed by the colonial officials, possibly due to censorship and control issues. It followed the two-column format and was a single sheet, printed on both sides.
  In 1704, the governor allowed The Boston News-Letter, a weekly, to be published, and it became the first continuously published newspaper in the colonies. Soon after, weekly papers began publishing in New York and Philadelphia. The second English-language newspaper in the Americas was the Weekly Jamaica Courant. These early newspapers followed the British format and were usually four pages long. They mostly carried news from Britain and content depended on the editor's interests. In 1783, the Pennsylvania Evening Post became the first American daily.
  In 1751, John Bushell published the Halifax Gazette, the first Canadian newspaper.
caption: Front page of The New York Times on Armistice Day, November 11, 1918.
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