Penny Papers Progress

"The penny papers are often described as America's first popular, commercial newspapers, independent of political parties and truly devoted to "news" in the modern sense ...The penny papers advanced ...trends in new ways because they produced and packaged news of more diverse kinds to appeal to a larger urban audience." (Starr, 134)

Penny papers were largely non-partisan papers in a time when partisan papers were popular and increasing in production, an 1850 U.S. Census showed that 80 percent of newspapers were partisan papers. Though penny papers could rarely escape the grasp of partisanship even though they made declarations of independence from partisan papers.

The papers, in their journey to make it to circulation eventually formulated the basic outline as to what we consider media format today. They provided costumers to their advertisers almost as much as they sold readers the papers. Penny papers were the first to print a wide range of coverage for local news and to turn news into a form as entertainment.