In the Baltimore Sun, Arunah S. Abell created the prototype of the impersonal, institutional newspaper that today dominates American journalism. As an advocate of the "penny press" he helped push the newspaper from a medium for the elite to a carrier of information to the common citizen. He developed the modern newspaper in its management style, physical plant, and institutional strength. Abell's Sun was the national leader in finding new methods to gain news from its start in 1837 until the Civil War.

Arunah Shepherdson Abell was born in East Providence, Rhode Island, on 10 August 1806 to Caleb and Elona Shepherdson Abell. His great grandfather Sir Robert Abell had come to America from England about 1630; Abell's grandfather and father were officers in the military, his father in the War of 1812.

Abell attended school in East Providence until the age of fourteen, when he started working for a dealer in West...