Cautions in using datings from Early American Newspapers

[Joel S. Berson]

One must be careful in using the datings in Early American
Newspapers' database.  EAN uses the date on the masthead, and if
there are two dates on the masthead (some newspapers specified a
week, e.g. "May 1 to May 8") EAN uses the first of the two
dates.  Apart from the illogic of dating as May 1 a newspaper issued
on May 8, EAN's approach leads to some anomalous results when the
newspapers do something unusual or commit a misprint.  For example:

1)  A newspaper for the week of Mon Nov 26 - Mon Dec 3 is misdated on
its masthead as "Mon Nov 29 - Mon Dec 3".  EAN lists this issue as
Thu Nov 29.  (Nov 29 is a Thu, but of course not the first day of
this issue's week.)

2) Two consecutive 2-page issues are dated Thu May 24 - Thu May 30
and Thu May 24 - Thu Jun 7.  The mastheads thus have two errors: May
30 is not a Thu, Jun 1 is (EAN takes no note of this, since it is the
ending date); and two issues have been given the same starting
date.  EAN has combined these into one 4-page issue, dated Thu May 24.

3)  A newspaper would normally have been dated Apr 23 - Apr 30.  For
some reason, all that is extant is a 2-page Postscript with the
single date Apr 30.  Its next week's 4-page issue is dated Apr 30 -
May 7.  EAN dates both as Apr 30, combines them into a single 6-page
issue -- managing to interleave the two Postscript pages with the
first two pages of the 4-page issue! -- and lets one believe there is
no Apr 23 issue.  (I don't see any excuse for the interleaving -- the
microfilm pages are in the correct order.)

4)  A newspaper that is issued on Apr 30 mistakenly prints Apr 20 on
its masthead.  Naturally EAN dates it as Apr 20, on an anomalous day
of the week, thereby placing it as an extra issue between Apr 16 and
Apr 23, and lets one believe there is no Apr 30 issue.

(Is this all clear?)

And this is only from a single mid-18th century year!

Fortunately, one can -- and should -- vet EAN's date with the
newspaper masthead. Although, as I have noted, sometimes mastheads
are incorrect, very seldom is the issue date wrong (as in (4)
above).  Issue numbers are much less reliable, but can be used to
check on the consecutiveness of issues when the date is mysterious.

Joel

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