Who's the Oldest What?

U.S. newspapers are prone to boast, when they can, about their great antiquity. Last month, in a story noting the 200th anniversary of the Hartford, Conn., Courant (pronounced current), TIME accepted the Courant's claim to being the oldest U.S. newspaper. This endorsement evoked spirited objections from a host of pretenders to the same or a kindred crown. Among the claimants:

o THE MARYLAND GAZETTE, published six times a week in Glen Burnie, and self-styled the "oldest newspaper in the United States." A paper of that name was indeed founded in Annapolis in 1727--37 years before the Courant's birth. But that Maryland Gazette died in its tenth year. It stayed dead until 1922, when the Maryland Republican, a paper independently established in Annapolis in 1809, appropriated its predecessor's name and dusted off the title.

o THE VIRGINIA GAZETTE, which began life in Williamsburg in 1736. The Gazette stopped publication in 1833. But in 1939 it was revived by the late John D. Rockefeller Jr. as part of a $70 million restoration of colonial Williamsburg. Today's Virginia Gazette sells mostly to tourists and looks much as it did two centuries ago.

o THE NEWPORT, R.I., MERCURY, a weekly started by Ben Franklin's nephew James in 1758. Until 1934, the Mercury probably was the nation's oldest newspaper. But in that year it was acquired by the daily Newport News, a separate paper, and the name since then has been perpetuated as the title of the News's weekly edition.

o THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, which claims to be "The Oldest Daily Newspaper in the United States, Founded 1771." Neither claim is accurate. The Inquirer was not born until 1829. But through a cat's cradle of sales, consolidations and mergers, it absorbed hoarier Pennsylvania papers, some living, some dead. Among these acquisitions was the Pennsylvania Packet, on whose previous existence (b. 1771, turned daily 1784, d. 1839) the Inquirer's dubious title rests.

As a matter of indisputable historical fact, the oldest U.S. daily is one that does not even bother to advertise the distinction. "Founded by Alexander Hamilton in 1801" reads the masthead of the New York Post, which has been in continuous daily publication since that year* and under the same name.--As for the country's oldest newspaper, daily or weekly, that title, too, lies beyond doubt. In 1837, a 73-year-old Hartford weekly named the Connecticut Courant put forth a daily edition called the Hartford Courant. Thus the U.S.'s oldest newspaper describes an ancestorless continuum that is a straight line two centuries long.

* Started as the New York Evening Post, it dropped the "Evening" in 1934.

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