And the first American newspaper?

The first American newspaper, that is, the first newspaper in the English colonies in North America, in what was to become the United States, was published in Boston in 1690, Publick Occurences Both Foreign and Domestick. Its proprietor, Benjamin Harris, promised in it to furnish readers monthly—more often only if "any Glut of Occurrences happen," with a faithful account of "such considerable things as have arrived unto our Notice." The news covered would be that of "Memorable Occurents of Divine Providence" and "Circumstances of Publique Affairs." Note the passivity of publishing only things that "have arrived unto our Notice," the intention of normally publishing only once a month, and the assumption that the newsworthy actors to cover were both divine and human.

It was the human actors who tripped up these ambitions, principally Harris himself. He had failed to secure the royal governor's permission to publish, and his paper was shut down after its first issue, never to reappear. The next venture into journalism would not emerge for more than a decade— also in Boston, the Boston Newsletter, in 1704. It was conceived by John Campbell, Boston's postmaster, a bookseller, and— unusually for early newspaper entrepreneurs—not himself a printer. Like other early papers in the colonies that would follow, the content was primarily news items reprinted from London newspapers.