Moses Yale Beach and Nancy Day Beach

As the enterprising owner of New York’s Sun, Moses Beach introduced innovations that helped to transform the newspaper business. He joined the fledgling Sun in 1834, and four years later became that paper’s sole proprietor. Despite robust competition from rival dailies, Beach turned the penny-a-copy Sun into a profitable publication by vastly improving the paper’s newsgathering ability. To speed breaking news to New York City from around the country, he utilized carrier pigeons and express riders. During the Mexican-American War, he increased the efficiency of news dissemination by helping to found the New York Associated Press, one of the nation’s first news cooperatives.