Jonathan Taylor writes:

Apropos of Jill Lepore's new Critic at Large piece on early American newspapers, this topic was of particular interest to the New Yorker in its early days. One of the first instances of the once-frequent "That Was New York" department, in 1929, was about the New-York Gazette, founded in 1725 and "the first New York newspaper." (I put this in quotes advisedly; who knows what revisions might have come to the historical record? "That Was New York" retailed a colorful story, since shown to be a fable, about why Staten Island is part of New York City and not New Jersey.)

Back to colonial newspapers: Later in 1929, a four-part series ran under the "That Was New York" banner, collecting "items from the press" from the Revolutionary period, replete with florid, character-assailing advertisements. However, these "clippings," signed David Boehm, give no citations, and I confess to feeling completely uncertain as to whether they are a collection of real items, or the driest of parodies by Mr. Boehm. (Who, by the way, has no other New Yorker bylines; is he the same David Boehm who cowrote the 1931 opera-parody Broadway play "Sing High, Sing Low" with The New Yorker's Murdock Pemberton—perhaps also the David Boehm who collaborated on the screenplay of "Gold Diggers of 1933"?)