America's first newspaper ran one issue and got shut down in four days
Boston, September 25, 1690.
Benjamin Harris, an English bookseller who had already failed once trying to start a free press in London, put out a four-page paper called Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick. Two columns, 7.5 by 11.5 inches. The last page was left blank on purpose, so you could write a letter on it and mail the whole thing to a friend.
He promised it monthly, “or, if any Glut of Occurrences happen, oftener.”
Issue one had a smallpox outbreak, a murder, the execution of Native prisoners of war, and a story that Louis XIV was sleeping with his son's wife, who had already died, which did not stop the story.
Four days later the Governor and Council ordered it “Suppressed and called in,” citing “Reflections of a very high nature” and “sundry doubtful and uncertain Reports,” and forbade printing without a license. Every remaining copy was destroyed. One survives, found in London in 1845.
The colonies went 14 years without another newspaper. When John Campbell finally started the Boston News-Letter in 1704, he reprinted London news and kept his head down.
Masthead of the surviving copy: Massachusetts Historical Society, public domain.
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