Included in the very first issue of The Prophet was the following item, explaining the origins of the newspaper. This makes the proposal sound very democratic and a local effort, and Crawley’s Descriptive Bibliography (v1 p255) suggests, apparently based on this article, that the proposal for the newspaper was local, came from George Leach and was enthusiastically adopted by William Smith.
On the last page of the The Mormon for May 30, 1857, the editor, Apostle John Taylor, included an article entitled:
Aux Elders et aux Saints, en Canada, en France,
en Suisse, en Italie, et dans les iles
de la Manche.
(To the Elders and Saints in Canada, in France, in Switzerland, in Italy and throughout the isles of the Sea.)
What followed was a treatise or the text of a tract in French expounding the truth of the gospel and urging members to “let their light shine before men.” As far as I can tell, nothing in the 2,500 word text is unusual. Except that it is in French and published in a New York City LDS newspaper.