FIRST NEWSPAPER. Reading through the section “Today in History,” on the Library of Congress website (https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/september-21/), something caught our attention.

We knew that Pennsylvania was already known to have the first newspaper; we learned about it in elementary school. But, did you know the rest of the story …

Today, Sept. 21, back in 1784, the Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser, “began publishing daily editions … Having first been launched as The Pennsylvania Packet by John Dunlap in 1771, it became the first daily newspaper in the country.

“The New England Courant,” the first independent American newspaper, was published by Benjamin Franklin’s older brother in 1721. At the beginning of the Revolutionary War, 37 independent newspapers kept the colonists informed. The press contributed to the war effort by publishing broadsides, relaying information, chronicling the war and sustaining community life.”

In other news from the Library of Congress, Bill Moyers’ work will be added to its archives Sept. 28. Moyers, a longstanding journalist, will have 50 years of his work captured and archived as part the American Archive of Public Broadcasting: https://americanarchive.org/special_collections/bill-moyers

“To have our decades of work preserved in such a way — where anyone can come online and visit so many hours of programming — is an unexpected honor,” said Moyers in an interview with LOC. “That the American Archive of Public Broadcasting is making this possible will allow viewers for generations to come to see what mattered to us over the years — and how we covered our times through the stories of contemporary democracy and its struggle to survive and thrive as well as the perceptions of many of our society’s foremost thinkers and creators.”