Pennsylvania Gazette. December 21, 1742

     This issue of The Pennsylvania Gazette is the first I've ever read, but it proved interesting enough that I might entertain myself with a few more issues in the future.

     The first thing I noticed about this paper was its emphasis on foreign news. The first page or so is dedicated solely to happenings in Europe. I thought that was interesting because when I read papers today the top headlines are almost always about The United States or the city that the paper was published in. I remember the first time I saw one of Atlanta's major newspapers- it was incredibly thick and pertained almost entirely to what was happening in that city. It makes sense though, that papers in the 1700s might be more dense with foreign news since people couldn't just hop onto the internet and Google "What's happening in Egypt" like they can today. The world must have been a lot more mysterious in that time. Now, I can get on Twitter and tell you several things about almost any country in the world, as long as its people have twitter accounts. The more options there are for gathering news about the world, the less emphasis there has to be in one paper. Even in my small hometown I've come across several papers and magazines that are much more niche-oriented, specialized to appeal to a certain kind of person; so the world's news isn't all just in one place.

     Probably the oddest part of this paper is the classifieds section. Well, it's odd to me anyway, since things are insanely different now than they were in 1742. I've always known that people have been bought and sold, but to see ads in the gazette about negro women for sale was rather surreal. I never thought about it as being that casual I guess. "Oh hey Philadelphia, I've got a person for sale over here no big deal." That's just how people lived I guess. When I look at the classifieds I'm almost always on the lookout for cute puppies for sale, not young women.