Page:History of American Journalism.djvu/300

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ust 3, 1850;


The Morning Post, on May 24, 1851; The San Francisco Dailf- Whig, on September 27, 1852; The Daily Sun, on May 19, 1853; The Evening News, on November 1, 1853; The Daily Globe, on March 13, 1856; The True Calif ornian, on May 26, 1856; and The Evening Telegram, on October 1, 1858.

JOURNALISM HISTORY REPEATED

Journalism history repeated itself on the Pacific Coast. In the East presses which printed early newspapers had often done previous service on religious tracts: especially was this true in New England and in Pennsylvania, where for the most part these tracts were put out in the interest of that earnest band seeking religious freedom in America by settling in New Eng- land, or by the Pennsylvania Quakers, who made William Bradford their official printer. On the Pacific Coast the print- ing-press was first brought either to promulgate the Catholic faith among the Spanish-speaking population, or to support the principles for which the Mormon Church stood. Later, these same presses were used to print the newspapers.

Just as the colonial newspaper never forgot the arrival and de- parture of ships, so the early press of the Pacific Coast featured marine intelligence. In its glowing accounts of achievements of clipper ships it furnished its best illustration of its news instinct. Again, just as Henry Ingraham Blake, the first star reporter in American journalism, knew the name of every vessel docking at the port of Boston, so the nautical reporter on the early San Francisco paper knew every clipper ship which passed through the Golden Gate, a still harder task, for in 1852 seventy-two clipper ships are said to have dropped anchor in that harbor. The arrival of these fast boats in San Francisco had another news value in that they brought news from home. These clippers were met in the harbor by rowboats which took off the news, just as it had been done at an earlier period in Boston and New York, and then hastened to the port. Their budget of news was promptly seized at the dock and rushed to the newspaper offices, where the more important facts in an abbreviated form were put into type at the earliest possible moment. The next day a longer account appeared in the papers.