First Daily U.S. Newspaper — The Pennsylvania Evening Post

Pennsylvania Evening Post

 

Tuesday, May 30 — The nation’s first daily newspaper, the short-lived Pennsylvania Evening Post, began publication on this date in 1783, printed by Benjamin Towne in Philadelphia. Americans’ hunger for news was such that by 1850, there were some 250 dailies. The number of newspapers peaked around a hundred years ago, when there were 2,600 dailies published across the nation, with a circulation of over 24 million.

Today, the number of daily newspapers in the U.S. has dropped to around 1,330. In the year 2000, there were almost 56 million daily subscribers. Within a decade, that number dropped by 10 million. In the U.S. today there are nearly 7,400 publishers of daily or other newspaper issues, and they employ over 200,000 people.

You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau online here.

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