History Facts on Newspapers

The idea of the newspaper is old as ancient Rome, where the events of each day were published in a scroll called the Acta Diurna, roughly "the acts of the day." Started around 59 B.C., it was the first newspaper of any kind.
The first newspaper in America appeared fifty years later, after the first book was published, with issuing of Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick in 1690, the work of a recently arrived English printer named Benjamin Harris.
Books and newspapers came first [before magazine] because they were necessities as the colonies established themselves.
Newspapers in the Colonial period were largely propaganda tools, spreading protest and eventual Independence from Britain on the one hand and the views of Tory sympathizers on the other.
The 18th Century, saw the growth and maturing of American newspaper industry, fed by the First Amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing freedom of speech and the press.