In the early 1800s it was unusual for Americans to be interested in sporting matters on their own shores. News from Europe was the only sporting news of merit, and publishing an American sporting journal was considered a risky use of capital.
The first attempt along these lines may have been in 1829 Baltimore, where John S. Skinner published a monthly magazine which focused on race horse pedigrees called The American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine. Another early attempt was published in New York by the recognized writer and horseman Cadwallader R. Colden, whose organ was called The New-York Sporting Magazine and Annals of the American and English Turf, first published in 1833.
Among the most notable of the sporting press arrived in 1831, when William T. Porter and James Haw published the first issue of The Spirit of the Times, focusing on horse literature and sporting subjects. They had chosen the name for their broadsheet from a quotation in Shakespeare’s King John, “The spirit of the times shall teach me speed.” [Read more…] about The Spirit of the Times: A 19th Century Chronicle of American Sports
In the first edition of his Dictionary of the English Language (1755) the term lexicographer is defined by Samuel Johnson as a ‘harmless drudge that busies himself in … detailing the signification of words’. A dunce, in other words. Really?
Longtime Glens Falls Post-Star reporter Maury Thompson will present a program on local figure Charles Evans Hughes on April 12th in Ticonderoga.
Women March in Seneca Falls will host a panel discussion of media professionals, “People for Free Press…a First Amendment Right,” on March 25, 2017 at the Women’s Rights National Historical Park. This non-partisan, inclusive event seeks to inform about the U.S. Constitution’s right of a free press. Panelists will focus remarks on the First Amendment right to a free press and their personal/professional experience with efforts in the US to diminish that right. A Q&A will follow the presentations.