Newspapers were mailed from city to city. And editors in other cities would, as the mood struck them, print stories from out-of-town papers as if they were dispatches. But that still fits with your thesis, as there was no monopoly on the content of those "foreign dispatches" as there is today. And the discretion and choice of the local editor still determined what his paper would contain.
Anyone who goes to Washington is welcome to go into the Periodicals Room of the Madison Library and read as many as you choose of the newspapers of the Framer's Era. I especially recommend the (NJ) Brunswick Gazette, S. Arnett, Editor.
Congressman Billybob
Tenth in the ten-part series, "The Owner's Manual (Part 10) -- The Remaining Amendments"
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Your discussion of the newspapers at the time the First Amendment was being written and ratified, are spot on.
It is also my understanding that the Associated Press was successfully sued by a Chicago newspaper on antitrust grounds.It seems to me that the Fairness Doctrine presupposes journalistic objectivity - and that not is only journalistic objectivity a fact not in evidence, "journalistic objectivity" is a conceit which is promoted by an organization which exists in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Which conceit is central to the business model of that monopoly, and of its member newspapers.
Which leaves me wondering how any resurrection of the Fairness Doctrine withstands challenge of the foundational premise that there is an objective standard of contemporaneous speech - when the core reality underlying the First Amendment is that the government must not define what speech is objective. Considering that the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses of the First Amendment protect the unverifiable claims of religious doctrine from adjudication by Congress, how does Congress have the right to judge which speech is "conservative," or Republican, or Democratic, or "objective?"
And without such a determination, of course, a requirement for balancing is absurd on its face. What is "balanced" in such case?
The raw power reality is, of course, that SCOTUS would have to stand up the Associated Press journalism in order to rule sensibly on such a case - and that would mean each justice having to read in the papers what a meanie he is, for the rest of his days. The only justice not subject to the flattery and derision of the papers being Justice Thomas, who gave up on journalism upon his confirmation. He is actually, therefore, the only justice who should not recuse himself from such a case.