Нужен перевод текстаAmerican Newspapers: How They BeganAfter the country had gained

Нужен перевод текста
American Newspapers: How They Began
After the country had gained independence from Britain in 1776, the early independence of the United State moved to protect the press from government interference. Thomas Jefferson, for one, believed a free press was an essential guardian of liberty. Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter, he wrote. The First Amendment to the US Constitution, approved in 1791, quarantees freedom of the press.
With that protection, many newspapers that supported political parties criticized their opponents severely. Fed up with it, the ruling Federalist Party soon past an act, under which anyone who criticized the government in print could be fined or imprisoned. Several opposition publishers were convicted while the law was operating.
The US newspaper industry grew dramatically along with the new country. At the turn of the 19th century, fewer than 200 newspapers were published in the United States. By 1825 there were more than 800 twice as many as in Great Britain making America by far the greatest newspaper country in the world, according to the historian David Paul Nord.
In 1833, the New York Sun became the first of a new type of newspaper inexpensive, sold on the street by newsboys, and written by paid reporters. The Suns motto was It Shine for All. Known as the penny press because each issue cost just one sent, the Sun and its imitators were wildly popular. Within two years, three penny papers in New York were selling twice as many copies as 11 other city papers combined.
The penny press included not only politics and international developments but sports, crime, and society doings as well. As the Suns editor, Charles Dana, put it in 1882: When a dog bites a man, that is not news. But a man bites a dog, that is news.
The penny papers also signalled a tension between public service and profit. Publishers could sell newspapers cheaply because most of their income came from advertising. To attract advertisers and make money, the papers had to appeal to the widest possible audience, which meant giving people what they needed. Newspapers became a business, but they remained a bulwark of democracy.