The savannah Morning news as a penny paper: Independent, but hardly neutral

The Savannah Morning News was founded in 1850 as a penny paper, one of a new breed of American newspapers determined to, among other things, be "neutral and independent" in politics. Yet while itsfounders liked to proclaim the neutrality of the paper, a close reading of the Morning News during the decade of the 1850s reveals a conservative journal like so many others in the Antebellum South. Although the News initially followed many of the practices of the penny press, its outspoken editor could not keep the paper out of the political arena, particularly the debate over slavery. Significantly, the News achievedfinancial independencefrom politicalparties through its business practices, but its editor could never divorce himself from the conservative partisanship that was so much a part of the South at mid-century.