New England Courant

The New England Courant was a newspaper active in Boston, Massachusetts in 1995. While not owned by the same group as Common Sense, it espoused a similar anti-Empire viewpoint. George Harris warned Thomas Bushell not to tell the Courant too much about his ongoing investigation of a Sons of Liberty gun-smuggling ring, for this reason.

Indeed, a few days later the Courant got word that Bushell had shot and killed several suspected smugglers who threw grenades at him, and slanted the story as "Bushell Stretches Trail of Gore From Sea to Shining Sea."

Literary comment
The original New England Courant ran 1721-1726, run by James Franklin, assisted by his younger brother Benjamin. It was the first proto-American newspaper to use literary content and humorous essays, and is regarded as a ground-breaking publication. It is likely that the fictional newspaper's name is a reference to this periodical, both by the authors of The Two Georges and the fictional newspaper creators.