THROWBACK: MAJOR CHANGES AT THE ‘BOSTON DAILY EVENING TRANSCRIPT’
“We have been forced into this change of form by the pressure of advertisements on the news”
From the beginning of our BINJ adventure, we noted that history is central to our plans for the future. As was recently acknowledged by the Society of Professional Journalists, which placed the first and only plaque of its kind on Boston City Hall last year, the Hub is the birthplace of American journalism. Among countless noteworthy feats: five of the first seven newspapers in North America were published here (starting with Publick Occurrences, 1690); a woman first edited a major daily newspaper in this city (Christian Science Monitor, 1908); the country’s most important abolitionist newspaper was headquartered on the current site of City Hall Plaza (The Liberator, 1831).
With Throwback BINJ, we’ll be unearthing untold more lessons and nuggets — to educate and entertain our readers and hopefully to benefit the diminishing few who remain working and participating in the Greater Boston media. The most revealing fruits of our spelunking missions will show up here on Medium — some looking at how issues in the current headlines have been covered before, an occasional “on this day in history,” and even interviews with seasoned media makers who are willing to share their experiences.
For this debut installment, we’re thrilled to excavate an 1866 letter to readers from the Boston Daily Evening Transcript brass. Things were different back then to say the least; instead of layoffs, they were adding space for advertisements and news. What hasn’t changed, however, and what compelled us to launch with this clip, is the independent spirit flowing through the justified (in more than one way) type …
The Transcript appears today enlarged with four additional columns. We have been forced into this change of form by the pressure of advertisements on the news, editorial and miscellaneous departments of the paper, and by the necessity of adapting the size of the sheet to the increasing demands made by the times on the attention of journalists. The Transcript grows as the city grows, and if the city persists in becoming every year more and more a metropolis, the Transcript must enlarge to keep up with its expansion …
The Transcript will continue to be in politics an independent, without being a neutral journal. Neutrality in politics, for the last six or seven years, has been impossible, except at the expense of stifling all thought and feeling on those momentous questions which affect a nation’s existence. In looking back on our course during that period we take special pride and pleasure in the reflection that we have been neutral in nothing. The Union Republican Party was but the name which the patriotism of the country took, and we went in, heart and soul, not only for its principles, but its tendencies. Independent, in the sense of not being under any restraint from owing fealty to its politicians.
The Transcript will continue to be, as it always has been, a Boston paper, paying special attention to the affairs of the city. — From the Boston Daily Evening Transcript (October 1, 1866)
