History
The Philadelphia Inquirer was founded as The Pennsylvania Inquirer by printer John R. Walker and John Norvell, former editor of Philadelphia's largest newspaper, the Aurora & Gazette. An editorial in the first issue of The Pennsylvania Inquirer promised that the paper would be devoted to the right of a minority to voice their opinion and "the maintenance of the rights and liberties of the people, equally against the abuses as the usurpation of power." They pledged support to then-President Andrew Jackson and "home industries, American manufactures, and internal improvements that so materially contribute to the agricultural, commercial and national prosperity." Founded on June 1, 1829, The Philadelphia Inquirer is the third oldest surviving daily newspaper in the United States. However, in 1962, an Inquirer-commissioned historian traced The Inquirer to John Dunlap's The Pennsylvania Packet, which was founded on October 28, 1771. In 1850 The Packet was merged with another newspaper The North American, which later merged with the Philadelphia Public Ledger. Finally, the Public Ledger merged with The Philadelphia Inquirer in the 1930s and between 1962 and 1975, a line on The Inquirer's front page claimed that the newspaper is the United States' oldest surviving daily newspaper.
Six months after The Inquirer was founded, with competition from eight established daily newspapers, lack of funds forced Norvell and Walker to sell the newspaper to publisher and United States Gazette associate editor Jesper Harding. After Harding acquired The Pennsylvania Inquirer, it was briefly published as an afternoon paper before returning to its original morning format in January 1830. Under Harding, in 1829, The Inquirer moved from its original location between Front and Second Streets to between Second and Third Streets. When Harding bought and merged the Morning Journal in January 1830, the newspaper was moved to South Second Street. Ten years later The Inquirer again was moved, this time to its own building at the corner of Third Street and Carter's Alley. Harding expanded The Inquirer's content and the paper soon grew into a major Philadelphian newspaper. The expanded content included the addition of fiction, and in 1840, Harding gained rights to publish several Charles Dickens novels for which Dickens was paid a significant amount. At the time the common practice was to pay little or nothing for the rights of foreign authors' works.
Read more about this topic: The Philadelphia Inquirer
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I believe that history has shape, order, and meaning; that exceptional men, as much as economic forces, produce change; and that passé abstractions like beauty, nobility, and greatness have a shifting but continuing validity.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“It may be well to remember that the highest level of moral aspiration recorded in history was reached by a few ancient Jews—Micah, Isaiah, and the rest—who took no count whatever of what might not happen to them after death. It is not obvious to me why the same point should not by and by be reached by the Gentiles.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“We said that the history of mankind depicts man; in the same way one can maintain that the history of science is science itself.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)