Benjamin Franklin Was the Nation’s First Newsman

By Adam Smyth Author, The Book-Makers: A History of the Book in Eighteen Lives Benjamin Franklin was, in his own words, “the youngest son of the youngest son for five Generations back.” Born to a Boston candlemaker who had emigrated from Ecton, England, Franklin became an American printer of national significance: the editor and publisher, at 23, of what became his nation’s most important newspaper, the…