Peter Funt Column: Penny papers

Published 8:30 am Wednesday, July 30, 2025

On Sept. 3, 1833, a 23-year-old publisher named Benjamin Day revolutionized the news business by producing a paper that sold for just a penny.

The Sun, which soon became the nation’s most successful daily, used as its slogan, “It Shines for All,” an obvious play on “sun,” but, in fact, the key word was “all.” Newspapers in that era cost five or six cents — out of reach for most Americans. A single penny, however, could be managed by all.

I thought about that the other day when reading a promotion from the Philadelphia Inquirer, the country’s third oldest daily, which came into being four years before The Sun. The offer: Get the Inquirer for one cent—not per day, but for a full week! (This is for complete digital access for six months at twenty-five cents; cancellable at any time.)

While the Inquirer is acting out of apparent desperation, The Sun, published in New York, was reinventing newspaper production, distribution and, moreover, reporting.

Mr. Day utilized a modern steam-driven, two-cylinder press to print The Sun. While hand-fed presses were capable of printing approximately 125 papers per hour, the new machines produced as many as 18,000 copies in the same time. With such volume, he was able to sell copies in bulk to street hawkers, who brought The Sun to the masses.

Within two years the paper was selling 15,000 copies a day, creating a market for advertising that eventually became the revenue base for newspapers and most other media.

These simple yet remarkable shifts led to the most important innovation of all: the redefinition of reporting and the news itself. With its broad working-class audience, The Sun was among the first news organizations to send reporters into the field, covering politics, crime and sports.

Some of the paper’s content verged on sensationalism, even fabrication — another innovation that, alas, has become more pervasive over time.

When Mr. Day took in a partner named Charles Dana, in 1868, The Sun rose to new heights. As editor, Mr. Dana molded it into what became known as “the newspaperman’s newspaper,” with editorials and human interest stories. These were the best of times for daily newspapers, lasting well over a century.

For today’s struggling papers, following Benjamin Day’s pricing strategy isn’t likely to yield much. Their hopes might best be rooted in The Sun’s editorial published in 1897, famously declaring, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.”

Peter Funt’s latest book is “Inside Fantasy Football.”