The Horace Greeley Foundation

Late in 1831 at age 20, Greeley relocated to New York City, which already had a population of more than 200,000.

The young printer published a number of periodicals, some successful and some not, before establishing the New-York Tribune in 1841.

The Tribune began as a four-page paper of 5,000 copies, price one cent. The daily circulation climbed to 13,000 in 1849 to 45,000 by 1860 to 90,000 by the end of the Civil War.

In his autobiography, Greeley expressed his goal. “The idea is . . . to embody in a single sheet the information daily required by all those who aim to keep ‘posted’ on every important occurrence; so that the lawyer, the merchant, the banker, the forwarder, the economist, the author, the politician, etc., may find here whatever he needs to see, and be spared the trouble of looking elsewhere.”

The Tribune was far more than a New York newspaper.  A weekly, which reached a circulation of 200,000 by the Civil War, was read in small towns and rural areas throughout the country. Greeley wrote, “We mean that no weekly shall surpass this in giving a full graphic and faithful account of what the World is Doing, whereof it is Thinking, and how it is Progressing.”

Greeley purchased the most modern steam-driven printing presses, increasing the size of the newspaper and the speed with which it could be printed. He realized the potential of the telegraph in gathering news.

The Tribune was instrumental in the birth of mass media. Greeley’s newspaper influenced a wide audience and played many of the roles later taken by diverse large-circulation periodicals, radio and television, and the internet.