This thesis analyzes the specific journalistic conventional practices of newspapers in Georgia as they focused on the “Cherokee Question” in 1828-1832, the critical period during which the state considered the removal of the Cherokees from Georgia. The research compares news and opinion texts in five Georgia newspapers with news and opinion texts in the newspaper launched by the Cherokee nation in 1828,the Cherokee Phoenix. While the conventional practices in the white-owned press tended to legitimize removal, the Phoenix adopted some of the same conventions in order to defend and negotiate Cherokee culture and issues.