By general consensus the first attempt to start a regularly published newspaper in America was Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick, issued in Boston on September 25, 1690. Its founder was a transplanted British printer, Benjamin Harris, who had been sent to the pillory in London for faking a story about a popish plot against the crown. First, he ran an exposé of the plot, and when it turned out there was none on at the moment, he took credit for breaking it up. Harris tried again in Boston with a monthly journal, printed on four sheets about the size of modern notebook paper, that offered a number of local stories ranging from house fires to a suicide. There was an account of a smallpox epidemic raging in Boston and a hair-raising tale of the depredations of Indians who “barbarously Butcher’d” forty white settlers. There were also a few snippets of foreign news about sexual improprieties within the French royal court.

Boston authorities were not pleased. The Indian story was especially troublesome because colonial policy had become one of conciliation with the native population. The governor ordered the paper shut down four days later for publishing “doubtful and uncertain Reports.” Harris fled back to England, where he ended his days hawking quack medicines.

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