The Beginnings of a Statewide Press
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This 1814 map of Georgia illustrates how most of the counties in the state were organized along the Savannah River and Atlantic Coast. Georgia's early newspapers were published in the eastern portion of the state, but as settlers moved west, so too did entrepreneurial newspaper publishers.
Courtesy of Columbus State University. Archives, J. Kyle Spencer Map Collection (MC 136).
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Masthead of the Georgia State Gazette, or, Independent Register, from the issue published on December 2, 1786 in Augusta, Georgia. The paper became the Augusta Chronicle, which is Georgia's oldest newspaper still in publication.
Courtesy of Georgia Newspaper Project, Georgia Historic Newspapers.
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Obituary for President George Washington, published in the January 14, 1800, issue of the Louisville Gazette. Death notices for both prominent national figures and local citizens of interest were common in Georgia's earliest newspapers.
Courtesy of Georgia Newspaper Project, Georgia Historic Newspapers.
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The masthead from the December 24, 1808, issue of the Georgia Express, the first newspaper published in Athens, Georgia.
Courtesy of Georgia Newspaper Project, Georgia Historic Newspapers.
New titles appeared as Georgia's capital moved across the state. In 1785 the state officially moved the seat of government from Savannah to Augusta. During this period, several newspapers appeared in the new capital. The first of these was the Augusta Gazette, which began circulation in August of that same year. The modern-day Augusta Chronicle traces its roots to the publication, making it the oldest newspaper in Georgia still in print. A second newspaper, the Southern Centinel, and Universal Gazette, began publication in 1793, making Augusta the first city in Georgia with multiple newspapers in print. Two more newspapers appeared in Savannah that same decade, while the State Gazette and Louisville Journal began publication in the state’s newly appointed capital, Louisville, in 1798. By the turn of the eighteenth century, there were five newspapers in print in Georgia, and by 1812, there were at least twenty.[3] Much of that growth came in smaller cities and towns, including Athens, Milledgeville, Washington, and Sparta. Some of these newer publications took on a more partisan tone than their predecessors, reflecting the rise of political parties in the United States in the late eighteenth century.