Although he did not attain the fame of his younger brother, Benjamin, James Franklin was America's first crusading editor and first major defender of press freedom. In the New-England Courant, the third continuous newspaper to appear in Boston and the fourth in the colonies, Franklin introduced an iconoclastic, saw-toothed style of journalism which outraged religious and political leaders in Massachusetts. The Courant's correspondents, branded the "Hell-Fire Club" by their opponents, imitated leading English periodical writers to a large extent. They did, however, add an immediacy and a local angle to the kind of radical Whiggism displayed in Cato's Letters and a sarcastic bite to the type of urbane reasonableness made popular by the Spectator.

Born in Boston to Josiah and Abiah Folger Franklin, James Franklin traveled to England for an apprenticeship in the printing trade. He returned to Massachusetts in 1717 with a used press and began competing...