The paper promised readers it would not be "violently" partisan and aimed for a measured, factual tone unusual for the sensationalist press of the era. Renamed The New York Times in 1857, it grew into one of the most influential newspapers in the world, eventually winning more Pulitzer Prizes than any other publication and helping to define standards of American journalism.
Henry Jarvis Raymond, a restless former Whig politician and journalist, teamed with banker George Jones to launch a newspaper explicitly positioned against the era's shrill partisan press. Their opening editorial promised that the paper would get angry at things worth being angry about — but not constantly, and not for sport. It was, in effect, a founding pledge of institutional restraint that few contemporary papers even attempted.
The first issue cost one cent and ran to four pages, competing against dozens of established New York dailies. Raymond's editorial instinct for sober, thorough coverage set it apart, and the paper survived where flashier rivals folded. Renamed The New York Times in 1857 to reflect its growing ambitions beyond a single city, it built a reputation for accuracy that, decades later, would let it break the Pentagon Papers and Watergate-adjacent stories, and investigate Theodore Roosevelt-era corruption.
The paper's motto, "All the News That's Fit to Print," adopted in the 1890s under Adolph Ochs, crystallized the founding ethos Raymond had sketched in 1851. Today the Times has won more Pulitzer Prizes than any other news organization, a legacy traceable to a four-page penny paper that opened, almost apologetically, by promising not to shout.
Key people: Henry Jarvis Raymond, George Jones