Publisher

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Language Variants

Herausgeber; Uitgever; Kustantaja; Editor.

Usage Notes

The term publisher is used inconsistently across contemporary and academic accounts. In general, it refers to the owner, proprietor or principal financial stakeholder of a newspaper. When discussing the nineteenth-century, it is usually identified as an individual, a family or named partners as they appear in the newspaper imprint (the legal information and address of the newspaper). Owing to the small management and staff sizes of many nineteenth-century newspapers, the term is often conflated, attached or used interchangeably with other recognisable leadership or production roles including owner, proprietor, editor, and printer.

Examples:

As a production role

Imprint (“Hobart Town; printed by Andrew Bent”) from The Hobart Town Gazette and Southern Reporter, 18 January 1817: 2. Trove.

“newspapers tend to spring from printers and periodicals from publishers” [DNCJ, MdW, 515]

“Anyone with the price of a newspaper plant and a message to print may become a publisher overnight.” [Lenox Lohr, “Broadcasting System”, London Times (8 June 1939), 59, qtd. in Stamm, 56]

“Linjan määrittelee siis kustantaja ja sen toteutumista valvoo kustantajan nimeämä päätoimittaja.”

As a leadership role

“Robert Chambers […] was co-proprietor of a huge publishing firm” [DNCJ, vi]

“An Appeal is now made […] on behalf of Mr. ANDREW BENT, late Newspaper Proprietor of Van Diemen’s Land” [Bent, 4]

“For Whitelaw Reid, owner and publisher of the paper, was also the Republican candidate for the vice-presidency.” [Kwiat, 106]

“He was an owner, editor, and featured contributor of the Buffalo Express.” [Branch, 584]

“In a controversy between him and Hetherington, the publisher of the unstamped Poor Man’s Guardian…” [Vizetelly, 1.74]

“Als Herausgeber der Allegemenien Zeitung des Judentums von 1890 bis 1909, Grundungsmitglied de Verbandes der Vereine fur judische Geschichte und Literatur in Deutschland (1893), Autor einer Geschichte der judischen Literatur (1896), als Literaturhistoriker, Literaturkritiker und Journalists war Gustav Karpeles (1848–1909) einer der einflussreichsten Sprecher der Juden in Deutschland auf kulturellem und literarischem Gebiet am Ende des neunzehenten und Anfang des zeanzigsten Jahrhundrets” [Krobb, 72]

“Editor and publisher notes are not generally input in newspaper records. If an editor’s or publisher’s name is more widely known than the newspaper, a note and added entry may be included.” [Sagendorf and Moore, 32]

As a conflated or ambiguous role

“Edward Baines the elder […] editor and publisher of the Mercury from 1801, was a vigorous proponent of the commercial interest” [Rosengarten, 599]

“As editors, publishers, and journalists in the wake of World War I reconsidered the social significance of their professions” [Stamm, 63]

“many editors and publishers combined their work with extensive political involvement.” [Djerf-Pierre and Weibull, 301]

“uitgever van onder meer de Volkskrant en Trouw.”