Morton McMichael.  In a memorial address delivered before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania on the 17th of April, 1879, Col. John W. Forney spoke of Mr. McMichael’s journalistic career:  “His newspaper was characteristically clean, pure, elevated, and impersonal. He never wrote or talked about himself; never spoke of an adversary by name, unless he had cause to praise him; and never stained his pages by printing scandal.

Credit: From the History of Philadelphia: 1609-1884

Morton McMichael, who did so much to elevate the press of Philadelphia, completed his course of studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Subsequently he read law with David Paul Brown, and was admitted to the bar in the year 1827. Prior to the latter date, however, his inclinations led him into literary pursuits, and at a very early age he began that journalistic career which lasted until his death, in January, 1879, and which, in its scope and achievement, has never been excelled by any Philadelphian. In 1826 he succeeded T. Cottrell Clarke as editor of the Saturday Evening Post, a journal established in 1821 as an outgrowth of Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette, which was originally published in 1728. In 1831, Mr. McMichael became editor-in-chief of the Saturday Courier, a new enterprise, and in 1836, together with Louis A. Godey and Joseph C. Neal, began the publication of the Saturday News. In 1844 the Saturday Gazette, long known as Neal’s Saturday Gazette, was published, Morton McMichael and Joseph C. Neal being associated as editors.