Periodical Publications.

The eighteenth century, Samuel Miller wrote in 1803, "may be emphatically called the age of periodical publications." In 1780 there had been thirty-nine American newspapers; by the end of the century the United States, with a population of about three million, supported a total of 242 newspapers, twenty-four of them dailies, 180 weeklies, and the rest published two or three times a week. By 1820 there were more than four hundred papers published every week and forty-two published daily. With the first daily newspaper being printed in America in 1783, the rise of daily papers over the next twenty years was an astonishing fact.

Coffeehouses.

Generally costing six cents or more a copy, newspapers were too expensive for the average person to buy. Instead, a merchant seeking information from another port would go to a coffeehouse, where he could talk with other businessmen and read copies of newspapers bought...