Georgia

Georgia's first newspaper was the Georgia Gazette, published by James Johnston from 1763 until 1776. When royal rule was temporarily restored in Savannah, Johnston published the Royal Georgia Gazette; when peace came, he changed the name again, this time to the Gazette of the State of Georgia. After the state capital was moved to Augusta in 1785, Greensburg Hughes, a Charleston printer, began publishing the Augusta Gazette. Today's Augusta Chronicle traces its origin to this paper and claims the honor of being the oldest newspaper in the state. In 1817, the Savannah Gazette became the state's first daily. After the Indian linguist Sequoyah gave the Cherokee a written language, Elias Boudinot gave them a newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, in 1828. Georgia authorities suppressed the paper in 1835 and Boudinot joined his tribe's tragic migration westward.

After the Civil War, Henry Grady made the Atlanta Constitution the most famous newspaper in the state, with his "New South" campaign. Joel Chandler Harris's stories of Uncle Remus appeared in the Constitution, as did the weekly letters of humorist Charles Henry Smith, writing under the pseudonym of Bill Arp. In 1958, Ralph E. McGill, editor and later publisher of the Constitution, won a Pulitzer Prize for his editorial opposition to racial intolerance. In 2001, the Constitution, the Atlanta Journal merged to form the Journal-Constitution, owned by Cox Newspapers.

As of 2002, Georgia had 27 morning dailies, 6 evening dailies, and 28 Sunday newspapers. The following table shows leading daily newspapers with their 2002 estimated circulations:

Periodicals published in Georgia in 2002 included Golf World, Atlanta Weekly, Savannah, Industrial Engineering, Robotics World, and Southern Accents. Among the nation's better-known scholarly presses is the University of Georgia Press, which publishes the Georgia Review.