The New York Sun launched the penny-press model of cheap news funded by advertising

Evidence

The New York Sun first appeared on September 3, 1833: all text and in smaller format than the broadsheets, to save on costs. Day did it all—he was “proprietor, publisher, editor, chief pressman, and mailing clerk.” For the paper’s first issue, he took the unusual step of filling it with advertisements from businesses he had never solicited. You might say that he ran advertisements, in effect, to try and find advertisers. Such could also be understood from his statement on the front page: “The object of this paper,” he wrote, “is to lay before the public, at a price within the means of every one, ALL THE NEWS OF THE DAY, and at the same time afford an advantageous medium for advertising.” His plan for delivering on the promise of such a broad readership was to feature stories from which no one could look away. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 30

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader research on the origins of the attention economy and commodified attention, and to Wu’s own later chapters on how advertising subsidized media. — connects to: A fabricated moon story made the New York Sun the world’s most read newspaper. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 53
• DEFINE: Establishes the original bargain of the attention-merchant model: cheap/free content in exchange for audiences to sell to advertisers.

Broader Connections

• A fabricated moon story made the New York Sun the world’s most read newspaper. #expands (0.85) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 53