George Wisner played a brief but innovative role in one of the dramatic transformations of American journalism. He was a printer and editor who in 1833 became co-owner, with Benjamin Day, of the first successful penny newspaper in America, the New York Sun. Wisner selected the news for the Sun and is considered the first police reporter. His condensed reports established a model for newspaper writers. Wisner's association with the Sun lasted less than two years, but he made it a leader among penny newspapers. Historians credit the penny press with establishing the modern concept of news as a wide-ranging account of daily life that appeals to the masses rather than to social elites.

Wisner was born in 1812 in Springport, Cayuga County, New York, near the town of Auburn. His father, Moses Wisner, farmed about 150 acres in west central New York, not far from Syracuse. The Wisner family had...