The harbinger of the new journalism was Benjamin H. Day, a former compositor for the _Evening Post_, who in September, 1833, began issuing the first penny newspaper with sufficient strength to survive, the _Sun_. The idea of this innovation came from London, which had possessed its _Illustrated Penny Magazine_ since 1830, sold in huge quantities in New York and other American cities; Bryant had often praised it as an instrument for educating the poor. The _Sun_ began with a circulation of 300, which it rapidly increased, until after the publication of the famous “moon hoax” in 1835 it boasted the largest circulation in the world; three years later it distributed 38,000 copies daily. Not until the Civil War did it raise its price above one cent, and it continued to be read by the poor almost exclusively. It was not a political force, for it voiced no energetic editorial opinions, nor was it a better purveyor of intelligence than its neighbors. It showed no more enterprise in news-collecting, its correspondence was inferior, and its appeal, apart from its cheapness and special features, lay in its great volume of help-wanted advertisements.
The new journalism therefore had its real beginning when, on May 6, 1835, in a cellar in Wall Street--not a basement, but a cellar--Bennett established the _Herald_. He had fifteen years’ experience, five hundred dollars, two chairs, and a dry-goods box. It also was a penny paper. But its distinction rested upon the fact that it embodied four original ideas in journalism. The first, and most important, was the necessity of a thorough search for all the news. The second was that fixed principles are dangerous, and that it is most profitable to be on the winning side. Bennett felt with Hosea Biglow that
A merciful Providence fashioned us hollow In order thet we might our princerples swallow.
The third was the value of editorial audacity--that is, of impudence, mockery, and Mephistophelian persiflage--for Bennett had seen in Boston that the saucy, indecorous _Galaxy_ had been universally abused, and universally read. The fourth idea embodied in the _Herald_ was the value of audacity in the news; of unconventionality, vulgarity, and sensationalism.