Massachusetts

Milestones in US publishing history that occurred in the state include the first book printed in the English colonies (Cambridge, 1640), the first regularly issued American newspaper, the Boston News-Letter (1704), and the first published American novel, William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy (Worcester, 1789). During the mid-1840s, two noted literary publications made their debut, the North American Review and the Dial, the latter under the editorial direction of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller. The Atlantic, which began publishing in 1857, Harvard Law Review, Harvard Business Review, and New England Journal of Medicine are other influential publications.

As of 2002 there were 32 daily newspapers in the state (including 12 morning, 21 evening) and 16 papers with Sunday editions. The Boston Globe, the most widely read newspaper in the state, has won numerous awards for journalistic excellence on the local and national levels. The Christian Science Monitor is highly respected for its coverage of national and international news. Major daily newspapers and their average circulations in 2002 were:

Massachusetts is also a center of book publishing, with more than 100 publishing houses. Among them are Little, Brown and Co., Houghton Mifflin, Merriam-Webster, and Harvard University Press.