Boston boasts a number of different distinctions, among them being the cradle of American liberty, the Athens of America, The Hub of the universe and the drunkest city in the country. But on Thursday the city added another epithet to its constantly growing list, becoming a National Historic Site in Journalism in the eyes of the Society of Professional Journalists.

According to the SPJ, Boston was nominated by Emerson College journalism professor Manny Paraschos.

“As a journalism historian, I have found Boston to be so woven into American journalism that I think it richly deserves the honor of being recognized as the birthplace of American journalism,” said Paraschos.

The Historic Sites program has been a SPJ staple since 1942 and some distinguished recipients of the recognition include the Associated Press offices in Washington and New York City; Freedom’s Journal, the first Black newspaper published in the United States.

Boston’s reporting history extends back to the beginning of American journalism. The Boston Gazette would go on to become the New England Courant, published by James Franklin, the older brother of founding father Benjamin, which would publish Ben’s famous Silence Dogood letters – a series of letters written by Ben under the guide of an old widow solitarily living in the wilderness.

Almost 200 years later the Boston Post would uncover one of the most notorious cases of financial fraud in the history of the United States. Thursday marked the anniversary of the discovery of the Ponzi scheme. In 1920, in just seven months, some 30,000 people invested more than $10,000,000 in Charles Ponzi’s infamous scheme.

Those are just a glimpse at the kinds of writing and investigatory reporting Boston has become known for and exemplifies exactly what it means to be a historic site in journalism.

But Boston’s journalism has done much more than just write didactic articles. The evolving media offered voices to minorities at various periods of time such as women, Jews, Roman Catholics, Methodist Episcopalians and Greek-Americans.

To commemorate this accolade, the SPJ will place a plaque in Boston though the location of which has yet to be announced.

According to Emerson College, Paraschos and his students have created a map of what they call the Boston Journalism Trail – a project that links various historic sites pertaining to journalism together, not unlike what the Freedom Trail does for Boston’s revolutionary history.

And what’s more, Boston’s literary history doesn’t just start and end with journalism. The city has played host, and continues to do so, to a number of celebrated authors and poets such as Edgar Allan Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Oliver Wendell Holmes.

So deep is Boston’s history of writing that City Councilors and literature patrons are helping to create a Literary Cultural District that, while a specified region such as the Innovation District, will differ in that its responsibility will be to promote literature through applicable events, readings and participatory engagements.

Congratulations on your latest achievement, Boston. Keep up the good work.