Biography

of Benjamin Henry Day (First Blog Entry)

Composed by: Tisha Claudia Lim

Completed on: 9/10/2012

Curious to know who is the father of the ever first penny press and the first
illustrated paper? Ever heard of the New York Sun? Well, the first penny newspaper, the
New York Sun, (in which buyers had had to pay only one cent for each paper) was created
and founded by Benjamin Henry Day, an American journalist and publisher in 1833.
Born on the 11th of April 1810 to Henry Day and Mary Ely, Benjamin soon started
working only at the age of 14 in his hometown, Massachusetts, as a printers apprentice
in Springfield Republican (a printing press company, established by Samuel Bowles II,
that played a crucial role in founding the Republican Party). Soon after, Benjamin then
moved south to New York and began working as a writer and printer for the New York
Evening Post, Journal Commerce, and the Courier and Enquirer.
In 1833, during the year of financial depression, lack of work finally inspired him to
publish his own paper, the New York Sun. Although at that time, he, like any other
ordinary working class, does not have much capital, he still managed. His equipment was
made up of odds and ends. He wrote and edited the first edition of the paper himself,
which consists only of four pages, nevertheless, the paper was a huge success. The main
reason was: the price. The paper only costs one cent and is affordable for everyone, even
the poor. One of the successful characteristics of the paper is not only that it turned
readers attention away from the depression news, but it emphasized on small local news
and appealed to humorous yet interesting human stories. As a result, the other New York
papers, which cost five cents above the New York Sun (though today five cents may

seems to be a little, but during that era five cents was a huge gap) and stressed on national
economic crises and political news, were largely ignored and not favored by the country
as a whole.
The sensational success of the paper did not just stop there. It created employments.
Writers, printers, editors, publishers and even newsboys were needed. Benjamin
eventually bought the London Plan newspaper distribution, in which newsboys
hawked newspapers around the city for sale. Thus, the papers motto quotes, It Shines
for All, in other words, it benefits everyone during the hard times.
In 1831, Benjamin married Evelina Shepard and she borne four children for him. One
of them is Benjamin Henry Day Jr., who later became an illustrator and printer renowned
for his invention of ben-day dots (also known as Pointillism, a technique of painting
tiny dots to form an image that would blend into eyes of the viewers).
The Sun, however, suddenly increased its circulation in 1835, due to its publication of
a hoax concerning the discovery of the moon, but it was later criticized for beguiling and
deceiving the readers.
From here, there are two very different sources that suggest different aspects for the
close-up of the New York Sun. First source suggests that, the readers remained loyal to
the paper and by 1839, Benjamin claimed the paper had reached its peak of 50,000,
which then led him to launched the another penny paper, the True Sun. However, the
other source suggests that things did not turn out well for Benjamin, as his was involved
with several suits relating to the Moon Hoax and his declining paper led him to sell the
company to his brother-in-law, Moses Yale Beach. After the York had been taken over,
he then produced the True Sun. In regardless to which sources, he did start a new
magazine, Brother Jonathan, in 1842, aiming on reprinting old English novels.

After much success and enabled wealth, Benjamin eventually retired in 1862 and
stayed at home in his later days. In 1889, he caught a cold (along his constant battle with
pneumonia) and died a week later, aged 79. He will always be honored and remembered
as the father of the penny paper and his valued contributions not only in the field of
Journalism, but also the various fields during the depression.