Public Notices

In Britain and in the United States

In the Middle Ages, the (English) Crown designated a half-dozen sites in London where a herald would read proclamations from the king. These announcements first found their way into print in 1665 when the London Gazette, considered the first English-language newspaper (at least as we now understand the term), began publishing. It was the Crown that put out the Gazette, and thus the newspaper was little more than a broadsheet filled with public notices.

In the 1690s, private competition reached the London newsstand. Yet even those newspapers that were not published directly by the government continued to seek its consent and imprimatur. In 1704, across the Atlantic, a newspaper called The Boston Newsletter hit the streets of the Hub; like many early American newspapers, it bore the slogan, “Published by Authority.” Though newspapers had ceased to exist merely for the purpose of publishing government decrees, they continued to run the notices as proof of the papers’ journalistic credibility. “Unlike in our day, it was looked at as an act of authenticity,” says Charles Clark, a professor emeritus of history at the University of New Hampshire who wrote about early American newspapering in a book called The Public Prints.

Sometimes these announcements appeared under the rubric “Proclamations for Royal Government,” Clark explained, but usually papers “just printed the notices in what we would think of as the news columns—even though that distinction is a bit of a stretch for those days. In many instances the notices constituted the news.” (Toward the end of the 18th century, according to Clark, newspapers also began to feature private-sector legal announcements: creditors demanding payment were popular. “The most frequent things,” Clark said, chuckling, “are men putting in notices: ‘My wife is leaving my bed and board. I shall no longer be responsible for her debt.’ “)

The practice persisted in the United States even after the colonies declared their independence. The founders may have objected to the Stamp Act, but they seemed pleased to have been able to learn about it in the newspaper. In 1789, among the acts of the first session of the Congress was a directive to the secretary of state to publish all bills, orders, resolutions, and votes in at least three newspapers.

For its efforts at transparency, the fledgling government was rewarded with an increasingly suspicious press.

Public notices have not always been a legal fiction, to be buried in a barren corner of the newspaper (…). For years, to American newspapers public notices were not only a feature and moneymaker but a source of identity and journalistic pride. To government, they were an essential means of communicating with citizens, a tool that was employed long before the advent of American democracy.

Sasha Issenberg is a writer-at-large at Philadelphia