Around what year was new technology making it possible for newspapers to sell for a penny?

Johann Gutenberg, inventor of Europe's first printing press that used movable type, died penniless and blind in 1468. Much of what is known about his life comes from lawsuits filed by business partners eager to reap profits sure to be had by anyone who could satisfy the newly created demand for knowledge and news.

In the 50 years after Gutenberg started printing, an estimated 500,000 books were in circulation, printed on about 1,000 presses across the continent. Gutenberg's invention was a simple device, but it launched a revolution marked by repeated advances in technology and, as a result, a popularization of the ideals of liberty and freedom of information exchange. The first publications that could be called "newspapers" appeared in Strasbourg and in Wolfenbuttel in Germany in 1609. They distinguished themselves from other printed material by being published on a regular basis. They reported on a variety of current events to a broad public audience. Within a few decades, newspapers could be found in all the major cities of Europe, from Venice to London. The power of the press to foment trouble had been well established. In 1517, Martin Luther rocked the Roman Catholic Church with his "95 Theses," in which he decried the clergy's abuses of power. Thanks to the printing press, copies of the theses and news of its posting circulated widely in Europe, eventually forcing a rift in the church and ending its long religious supremacy. Europe's monarchs, fearing for their own prerogative, kept a sharp eye on printers, requiring them to obtain official license. In England, the notorious Star Chamber, an often secret, non-jury tribunal, enforced the royal line with a heavy hand, ordering, for example, the execution of William Carter in 1584 for publishing pro-Catholic pamphlets. The first serious challenge to this order came during the English Civil War in the 1640s when King Charles I and his Cavaliers warred against the insurgent Long Parliament. The Star Chamber was abolished in 1641, and the poet John Milton, emboldened by the resulting power vacuum, published "Areopagitica," his polemic against censorship, in 1644. His was the first significant argument for freedom of the press. "Truth," Milton wrote, "needs no licensing to make her victorious." Unfortunately, Milton didn't help the cause when he later took over licensing printers for the government under England's Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell. The power to license is, of course, the power to deny a license. Milton's pamphlet was based on the notion that reason and fact could be used to question tradition and challenge supposed "truth." It was a radical idea that gained popularity among Europe's educated people, thanks in large part to newspapers. Just 10 years earlier, the Gazette de France had carried reports of Galileo Galilei's heresy trial. Galileo, too, had been arguing for truth, advocating a separation of science and religion. By 1695, licensing the press had become so unpopular in England that Parliament abolished it. But that did not end censorship. The government simply turned to enforcing its will through libel laws, which forbade criticism of the government, true or not. In fact, the rule of thumb in such cases was "the greater the truth, the greater the libel." If criticism were based on fact, the logic went, there was an even greater possibility that it could undermine the existing order. About this time, the first newspaper appeared in that hotbed of insurrection, the American colonies. In 1690, Publick Occurrences was published in Boston. Its first issue reported, "The Christianized Indians in some parts of Plimouth {sic}, have newly appointed a day of Thanksgiving." It also noted that the king of France was sleeping with his daughter-in-law. Agents of the restored British monarchy, alarmed by this impertinence, quickly shut down the paper after one edition. Despite censorship, newspapers sprouted across the colonies and continued to pester the crown. Events came to a head in 1735 when newspaper publisher John Peter Zenger was put on trial, charged with seditious libel. Sedition is incitement of rebellion against a government. Zenger had been doing a booming business, printing controversial material that official printers for the provincial government couldn't accept. Two years earlier, he had founded the New York Weekly Journal with the backing of several prominent critics of New York's unpopular royal governor. The paper regularly decried his incompetence, and it was only a matter of time before Zenger was jailed. Faced with a hostile judge, Zenger's lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, argued for truth as a defense of libel, a radical strategy: "It is the cause of liberty . . . the liberty of exposing and opposing arbitrary power (in these parts of the world at least) by speaking and writing truth." The judge instructed the jury to determine only whether Zenger had published the material and said he alone would consider the question of libel. The jury, however, ignored the instructions and returned a verdict of not guilty, establishing a precedent in American press law. The crown was undeterred. Strapped for cash after the French and Indian War (1754-63), the government realized that it could raise desperately needed funds and regulate newspapers through its power to tax. The infamous Stamp Act of 1765 required printers to pay for a stamp on each sheet of paper and for each advertisement. Imposed during the postwar economic depression, the tax was a serious burden. William Bradford adorned the front page of his Pennsylvania Journal with tombstones, writing,"The publisher of this Paper, unable to bear the Burden, has thought it expedient to STOP a while in order to deliberate, whether any Methods can be found to elude the Chains forged for us." Insurgent colonists convened the Stamp Act Congress in New York City and declared firm opposition to "taxation without representation." Colonial newspapers were so successful in arousing public resentment of the tax that it soon became unenforceable and was repealed in 1766. By 1775, 37 newspapers were being published in America. In those heady days before the Revolution, printers were at the front lines in the war of public opinion, representing all factions -- patriot, Whig and Tory. Print shops were sacked regularly as violence escalated and the war of words intensified. Thomas Paine published his first "Crisis" paper in the Pennsylvania Journal Dec. 19, 1776, writing, "These are the times that try men's souls. "Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph." Recognizing the important role of newspapers and political pamphlets in forging the new republic, the Founding Fathers made sure that the first amendment to the Constitution said: "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press . . . . " But the modern meaning of those words would not be understood immediately. In 1798, President John Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Acts, outlawing false, scandalous or malicious writing about the government or its officials. In practice, Adams, a Federalist, used the law to stifle his Republican critics, led by Thomas Jefferson. The question of whether the law violated the First Amendment was never decided because the Supreme Court had yet to adopt the practice of reviewing laws for constitutionality. That wouldn't occur until 1803 when the court assumed that power in the landmark case of Marbury v. Madison. The controversial laws expired in 1801 and were not renewed. The earliest newspapers protected by the First Amendment knew little of the goals of fairness, accuracy and independence espoused by today's major newspapers. Rather, they were intensely political and viciously partisan. Typical was the Aurora, published by Benjamin Franklin's grandson, Benjamin Franklin Bache. "Lightning Rod Junior," as he was known, celebrated the end of George Washington's presidency by declaring, "The name of Washington from this day ceases to give currency to political iniquity and to legalized corruption." These were potent words in a fragile democracy. Another type of newspaper emerging in the newly liberated states was the mercantile paper. In New York, the Commercial Advertiser was founded in 1797, offering business news and advertisements. While political papers were relatively cheap and profitless, mercantile papers attracted well-heeled advertisers and readers. Until this time, newspaper publishing had been a cottage industry. A lone printer, perhaps with assistance, might churn out 125 printed pages in an hour, using a press not much different from that which Gutenberg designed. Publishers simply could not print fast enough to meet daily demand, so issues appeared infrequently. The first American newspaper published daily was the Pennsylvania Evening Post in Philadelphia in 1783. The technological limitations changed with the Industrial Revolution, which ushered in the first of many upgrades in printing technology. The press in Gutenberg's day was adapted from the design of a simple wine press -- turning a wooden screw squeezed a wooden plate against a bed of inked type. A sheet of paper in between received the ink. Cast iron eventually replaced wood, and significant improvements were made in the manufacture of paper. In 1814, the Times of London installed a steam-powered press that used a rolling cylinder to press paper against a flat bed of type. It printed 1,100 sheets in one hour. The newspaper industry was transformed virtually overnight as production increased tenfold. This greater supply of newspapers fed a growing urban middle class that had leisure time and the ability to read. By this time, freedom of the press had been well established during the administrations of Jefferson and James Madison, ardent defenders of the cause. After the Sedition Act expired in 1801, no new federal libel laws were passed. Printers continued to be charged under state statutes, but this gradually waned as states, too, instituted greater freedoms. In 1821, New York's constitution provided that "every citizen may freely speak, write and publish his sentiments on all subjects." Alexis de Tocqueville, the French commentator on America, was moved to write, "The power of the periodical press is second only to that of the people." One effect of the improvements in printing was that newspaper publishing became profitable. Soon, publishers experimented with ways to attract readers, feeding escalating competition for circulation. In 1833, Benjamin Day began selling copies of his New York Sun for a penny -- far less than the five or six cents of a typical paper -- and hawking a brand of lurid, popular journalism. Unlike the politically motivated papers of the last century, this "New Journalism" focused on crime and human interest stories. From 1834 through 1836, the Sun's circulation rose from 5,000 to 15,000. Using a tactic that a few publications still exploit, the Sun invented stories. One reported that half-bat, half-human mutants were living on the moon. Writers vied for scoops, no longer waiting on the docks for news from abroad but racing each other into a harbor on "news boats" to meet ships from faraway lands. They obtained "news" of Europe from passengers and by reading European newspapers. Briefly in the 1820s, several New York City papers cooperated to share the cost of a news boat. The venture broke up as competition heated and newspapers posted foreign correspondents, whose reports were sent by rail and on new steamers crossing the Atlantic. The early 19th century was a time of growing diversity among American newspapers as publishers targeted specific audiences. Foreign-language papers, especially German, began appearing in cities. The African American press was born in 1827 when John B. Russwurm and Samuel Cornish launched Freedom's Journal to defend blacks "against the attacks of vile men." In 1847, Frederick Douglass put out the North Star in Rochester, N.Y., the first of several influential papers that Douglass would publish to promote emancipation. By mid-century, almost 400 daily newspapers were published in the United States. On May 1, 1844, Samuel F.B. Morse set up the world's first telegraph machine to transmit results of the Whig Party convention in Baltimore to an astonished crowd at the railroad station in Washington. "The ticket is Clay and Frelinghuysen," he declared. The impact of the telegraph was dramatic because news could be transmitted instantaneously over great distances. The power of this new device provoked concern among publishers such as James Gordon Bennett of the New York Herald. Bennett said he feared that, " . . . mere newspaper, the circulation of intelligence merely -- must submit to destiny and go out of existence." His was among the earliest of many forecasts that new technology would doom newspapers. Instead, newspapers became the biggest customers of the telegraph because far-flung reporters could wire news to their home offices. The technology, however, was expensive and unreliable so journalists developed the habit of compressing the most vital information into short dispatches. These carried the most important news -- typically the who, what, where, when and sometimes why and how -- and would be written at the top of a story. Supporting information would follow this lead in descending order of newsworthiness. Thus was born the traditional "inverted pyramid" structure of newspaper writing, in which editors could lop news stories from the bottom without fear of losing the most important facts. Because these news reports appeared on the front page, opinion and comment were slowly pushed inside. The second half of the 19th century was the most auspicious era in the history of the newspaper. It was the gilded age, marked by conspicuous consumption and ruthless pursuit of profit. Newspaper barons dominated the industry. Advances in printing technology pushed newspaper circulation to new highs, making publishing big business. In 1846, American Richard Hoe introduced his famous "lightning" rotary press, which squeezed sheets of paper between two revolving cylinders, one of which was fitted with type. This new rotary press increased printing capacity to about 8,000 sheets an hour, a figure soon pushed to 20,000 sheets an hour. In 1865, William Bullock introduced the so-called web press fed by a continuous strip of paper. By 1882, the New York Herald's press could crank out 24,000 12-page papers in an hour. Two years later, German-born Ottmar Merganthaler revolutionized newspaper production with much the same impact as Gutenberg. Mergen-thaler patented the Linotype machine. Until this time, printers had set type by hand, a time-consuming process that required reaching to a case holding thousands of individual letters of type. Capital letters were in "upper case" and small letters in "lower case." One by one, printers placed letters in a hand-held rack to fill lines of type. But the Linotype used a keyboard and automatically selected molds for each letter. (The "J" at the beginning of this article is a mold, or matrix, for casting one letter.) When all molds for one line of type were in place, the machine poured molten lead against the molds, producing a single piece of metal that could print the entire line. Meanwhile, electric lighting extended reading hours into the night. By the time Stilson Hutchins published the first edition of The Washington Post Dec. 6, 1877, the United States had more than 800 daily newspapers. New York City alone had more than two dozen. The social upheaval of Reconstruction would mix with the crusading antics of ambitious publishers to produce a second "New Journalism," more sensational and crusading than the first. The New York Times made a name for itself in the 1870s when it exposed the infamous Tweed Ring, which had been draining city coffers. Nellie Bly pioneered reporting for women. She became a household name by beating Phineas Fogg's mythic 80-day trip around the world in a publicity stunt organized by her publisher, Joseph Pulitzer, who, more than any other figure, exemplified the era. In 1883, he purchased the New York World, with a circulation of 20,000 and in five years, was selling 250,000 copies a day. Perhaps the most enduring testament to his ambitions stands in New York Harbor. Thanks to Pulitzer's public campaigning, funds were raised to build a pedestal for the Statue of Liberty, donated by France. To herald the first day of the 20th century, on Jan. 1, 1901, Pulitzer published a special, smaller edition of the World. This format later was adopted by other papers, especially in London, and came to be known as "tabloid," after the trademarked name of an easy-to-take tablet of medicine. By then, Pulitzer and his publishing nemesis, William Randolph Hearst, were warring for readers in New York City. It became a race to the bottom. In 1895, Hearst had purchased the New York Journal and hired away the entire Sunday staff of Pulitzer's World, its business manager and Richard F. Outcault, its popular cartoonist. Outcault's comic, "The Yellow Kid," featured an impudent urchin and was one of the earliest newspaper comics and the city's most popular strip. Some of the newspaper industry's earliest color presses printed it. In response, Pulitzer simply hired someone else to draw the Yellow Kid. New York was bombarded with two Yellow Kids, plastered on promotional bills, even starring in a music review. Journalists soon referred to "yellow journalism" as typical of the era. One of the greatest excess of the era came in 1898. In Cuba, a rebel movement for independence from Spain had begun. An American battleship, the Maine, had steamed peacefully into Havana harbor to bolster American interests but sank after a mysterious explosion. For months, the Journal and the World, knowing that nothing sells papers like a war, had been agitating for Cuban independence and urging the United States to do the same. When a World correspondent in Cuba wired Hearst that he had nothing to report, Hearst allegedly cabled back, "Please remain. You furnish the pictures, and I'll furnish the war." And that he did. "THE WHOLE COUNTRY THRILLS WITH THE WAR FEVER," and "JOURNAL HERE PRESENTS FORMALLY, PROOF OF A SUBMARINE MINE," were just two of Hearst's headlines. Though it may well have been an accident, the sinking of the Maine plunged America into war with Spain. "How do you like the Journal's War?" Hearst cooed. At the height of the frenzy, Hearst and Pulitzer each were selling 1 million newspapers a day. What had been just sensational journalism had turned downright irresponsible. Deception replaced exaggeration. In a show of disgust, Mary Baker Eddy founded the Christian Science Monitor as an alternative, "clean journalism," in 1908. When World War I began, the government was determined not to allow papers to sway policy as they had in Cuba. The Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act a year later were designed to limit unrestrained speech. Under the acts, postmasters could suspend mailing privileges of newspapers containing anti-American sentiments. At least 100 papers suffered this fate. The National Civil Liberties Bureau, forerunner of the American Civil Liberties Union, was established about this time to defend freedom of the press and individuals. The Supreme Court took up the issue in 1919 in Schenck v. U.S., and Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes articulated the doctrine of "clear and present danger" to determine the point at which the government might constitutionally limit free speech. Chastened newspaper editors formed the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) in 1922 and, a year later, the society issued a code of ethics, formalizing a growing consensus within the industry about the need for self-restraint. Among the ASNE "canons" were "Freedom from all obligations except that of fidelity to the public interest is vital" and "By every consideration of good faith a newspaper is constrained to be truthful." The journalistic method, whereby accuracy, balance and independence are held as gospel, was becoming entrenched. The number of newspapers in the country reached its zenith in 1910, with 2,600 dailies saturating the market. A few farsighted newspaper owners had, by this time, begun accumulating chains of newspapers. Edward W. Scripps started the first in 1878 and, by 1917, ran 32 newspapers. News agencies disseminated not only foreign news but also illustrations, cartoons and news features. In short, newspapers were consolidating operations, improving coverage while keeping costs down. By now, advertisers had learned that buying space in every paper was expensive. More cost effective, they reasoned, would be to sell their wares in the paper with the largest circulation. This imposed great hardship on smaller papers, and many were forced out of business. In 1923, 502 U.S. cities had competing daily papers, but 20 years later, that number had dropped to 137. Competition was cutthroat because newspaper production had become expensive regardless of how many papers were sold. Presses and reporters cost money, as did printers and press operators. As a result, competition diminished, and newspapers grew more urbane in an effort to broaden their appeal. Through this period, as the number of one-newspaper towns increased, most papers were independently owned. Publishing families passed ownership from one generation to the next. This was soon to change. After World War II, the government lifted wage freezes. Increased wages, compounded by postwar inflation, and the cost of new printing equipment raised production expenses as much as 30 percent a year in the late 1940s. Cash-strapped papers were forced into debt, and with increasing frequency began selling out to such growing chains as Knight, Harte-Hanks, Cox and the Tribune Company. The chains slashed costs by pooling resources among papers. Deep pockets helped them to weather increasingly frequent labor strikes and to invest in new technology. In 1962, New York City's newspaper printers struck, shutting down the seven major dailies for four months. The strike cost the papers a combined $190 million and, within five years, four of them were out of business. Unions feared increasing automation. The photocompostion machine, which set type by photography, was replacing Merganthaler's Linotype, and its molten lead. The change would virtually eliminate the need for skilled typesetters. Tax laws contributed to the trend. At their postwar peak, gift and estate taxes were as high as 70 percent. When newspaper owners died, heirs often were forced to sell to pay estate taxes. So intense was the competition between chains to snap up papers that, in one instance, the son of the publisher of the Litchfield (Ill.) News-Herald received a bid for the family paper during his father's wake. In 1961, A.J. Liebling wrote in The Press, his famous critique of the industry, "The function of the press in society is to inform, but its role is to make money." The company making the most money was Gannett. By the end of World War II, Frank Gannett had accumulated 25 small-town papers in New York State. After his death in 1957, the company embarked on an unprecedented buying spree, and by 1971 was purchasing an average of one newspaper every three weeks. In that year, about half of U.S. dailies were chain owned. By 1990, that figure would rise to 75 percent. And while the number of independent newspapers continues to decline, the trend toward one-newspaper towns is almost complete. Today, few cities have dailies in true competition. Among them are the District, New York (with three); Boston; Chicago; Denver; Trenton, N.J.; Wilkes-Barre, Pa., and Green Bay, Wis. While a few other cities have more than one paper, those papers either have the same owner or operate under what is called a Joint Operating Agreement (JOA). Established under the Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970, a JOA allows newspapers to consolidate operations by acting as a single commercial enterprise while maintaining some editorial independence. The San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Examiner, for example, operate under a JOA. One architect of Gannett's binge was Allen H. Neuharth, an executive with the company. In 1965, he led the takeover of two papers in Melbourne, Fla., combining them into a single daily that he christened Florida Today. In 1982, Neuharth launched USA Today, America's first nationwide, general-interest daily, replete with flashy color. Edited in an Arlington newsroom, its pages are transmitted by satellite to printing plants around the country. It was initially derided by critics as "McPaper" because its articles were so short and lacked analytical depth. Simply put, USA Today was marketed directly for a generation of Americans brought up watching television. Today, a beefed-up USA Today has become profitable and enjoys wide circulation. Of all technical advances that have challenged and transformed the newspaper industry, none altered the landscape so quickly and completely as television. Last year, for example, the average American spent an estimated 161 hours reading newspapers. Over the same period, he or she watched 1,610 hours of television, according to Veronis, Suhler & Associates, Inc., a communications industry analyst. The newspaper industry, which already had lost some of its audience and advertising revenue to radio earlier in the century, was ill-prepared to deal with this new competition. Today, about 1,500 daily newspapers are in circulation, 1,000 less than a century ago despite a nearly fourfold population increase. Most striking is television's effect on the evening newspaper. In 1946, there were 1,429 evening and 334 morning dailies. Fifty years later, only 846 evening papers remained, while morning papers totaled 686. More-over, the "AMs" account for about four-fifths of total U.S. weekday circulation. The newest challenge to the printed page is the Internet. By one estimate, more than 500 daily newspapers publish electronic editions of at least part of their paper on the World Wide Web. Yet newspapering is a hardy institution that has survived the capricious demands of history for nearly four centuries while helping to shape that history. Mitchell Stephens, author of A History of News, writes, "Each wondrous invention -- the printing press, electronic and broadcast communications, satellites, computers has worked for us, and each continues to practice its magic. None of these revolutionary technologies has yet to exhaust itself." As for the printing press, he says, "{It} is still expanding bookshelves, newsstands and consciousnesses." Heming Nelson is a researcher in The Post's News Research Center. CAPTION: NEWSROOM JARGON: Like any specialized field, daily journalism has its own jargon. Here are a few terms you might hear in a newsroom and some that may come in handy if you are close to news. STORY: Any news or feature article in the paper. NEWS: An occurrence deemed to be of interest to a significant proportion of the public. FEATURE: A story, not necessarily newsy, about an interesting person, place or thing. PEG (also NEWS PEG): A recent event, ideally one that happened "yesterday," on which a writer can "hang" a story that otherwise would have little sense of immediacy. LEDE: The first sentence or paragraph of a story. Reporters devote great effort to crafting these words in the belief that they will "hook" the reader. REPORTING: Contrary to popular usage, this is the process, analogous to "researching," in which reporters find out the information that will go into their stories. After a reporter reports, he or she writes. SLUG: The one-word name assigned to a story in progress in the newsroom. It serves as the story's file name in The Post's computer network. GRAPH, GRAF: Short for paragraph. NUT GRAF: A one-paragraph kernel that summarizes the essence of the story. In a straight news story, it may be the lede. But some writers start with a soft lede and get to the nut graf a few paragraphs later. JUMP: Used as either noun or verb. The place where a story on the front page of a section (aka "section front") jumps to an inside page. COPY: The text of a story. HED: Pronounced head, it's the headline. These are written by copy editors, not reporters. ART: Any illustrative material accompanying a story. RULE: The black line separating stories or surrounding photos or boxes on a page. A vertical rule appears to the right of this column. OFF THE RECORD: If a reporter accepts information on this basis, it cannot be published in any form, even without naming the source. Many reporters do not accept information under this condition. It is generally understood that sourcing restrictions cannot be imposed retroactively. They must be agreed to before revealing information. ON BACKGROUND: If this is the basis, the information can be published, but the source cannot be named. He or she usually is identified with a general description such as "a high-ranking Pentagon official." ON DEEP BACKGROUND: The source can neither be named nor described, even in a general way, only as a "source." RUN: Verb meaning to publish, as in, "We'll run that story Thursday." NEWSPRINT: It's the paper, not the ink. TABLOID, TAB: A small-format newspaper, typically printed at half the size of regular pages. The word originally meant a small tablet of medicine. The Post's Health, Home, Washington Business and Weekend sections are tabloids. BROADSHEET: Regular-sized newspaper pages. KEY: A sentence or two, typically on a section front and sometimes headlined, directing readers to a story inside the section. EAR: The upper corners of section fronts. The left ear on A1, for example, gives a brief weather forecast. MASTHEAD: The list, usually on the editorial page, of a newspaper's management hierarchy. NAMEPLATE: The newspaper's name atop the front page. CAPTION: FREEDOM OF THE PRESS: The First Amendment to the Constitution says, "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press . . . ." These are some major Supreme Court decisions defining that freedom: Near v. Minnesota, 1931 The court struck down a Minnesota law prohibiting publication of malicious, scandalous or defamatory newspaper articles. The justices said the law was an unconstitutional "prior restraint" of the press. This was the first time that the court voided a state law as infringing on the First Amendment. While the court said there is a strong presumption against prior restraints, exceptions can arise in extreme situations -- for example, for materials that are obscene or incite acts of violence. New York Times v. Sullivan, 1964 Justices ruled that the press is protected from libel claims brought by public officials unless the officials prove that the articles were written with "actual malice," defined as knowing that the statement was false or publishing with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not. This ruling has made it more difficult for public officials to sue the media. New York Times Co. v. United States, United States v. The Washington Post, 1971 In these Pentagon Papers cases, the court rejected the Nixon administration's effort to halt publication of articles about U.S. involvement in Vietnam even though they were based on classified documents. The justices said a "heavy presumption" exists against exercising any prior restraint. The government had asserted that publication would jeopardize national security interests, but the court found that it had failed to prove harm or otherwise justify its request. Branzburg v. Hayes, 1972 The justices ruled, that under some circumstances, news reporters do not have the right to refuse to provide information to grand juries concerning a crime. This has meant that, if journalists refuse to identify confidential news sources, they may face the threat of jail. Some have been jailed. CAPTION: The first American newspaper. It was killed in 1690 after one issue. CAPTION: By 1847, Richard Hoe's 10-cylinder, revolving press printed simultaneously on 10 sheets of paper. CAPTION: In the dock, publisher John Peter Zenger, defended by Andrew Hamilton. CAPTION: Women set type and created pages in a London print shop in 1861.