February 13 · This Day in America
In Philadelphia, the printer Andrew Bradford rushes the first issue of American Magazine off his press — a slim journal surveying the political state of the British colonies. He has done it on purpose, and barely: he beat Benjamin Franklin's competing magazine to print by three days, the opening shot in American periodical journalism and a very American race. Neither magazine lasts the year; Bradford's folds after three issues, Franklin's after six. But the idea does not fold. A colony that prints its own magazines is a colony learning to talk to itself, to argue in public, to imagine an audience that is not in London. Three decades later that habit of self-conversation will help write a Declaration. It starts here, with a printer in a hurry.
Source: www.britannica.com
Also on this day · 1914
At a New York hotel, the composer Victor Herbert gathers songwriters, publishers, and a copyright lawyer to form the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. The radical idea: that when a band plays your song for profit, you should be paid for it. Early members include Irving Berlin, John Philip Sousa, and James Weldon Johnson. It is the moment American music became something a person could make a living from.
Source: www.history.com