After stints with newspapers in Boston and New York City, he co-founded the Public Ledger in Philadelphia and later independently founded The Sun of Baltimore, Maryland; both were penny papers to appeal to the working class.

Abell is noted as an innovative publisher in the newspaper business, making use of new systems and technology: pony express delivery of news from New Orleans, using the telegraph to transmit news from the first Mexican–American War and a President's speech to the Congress in Washington, D.C., and using the new rotary/cylinder printing press invented by Richard March Hoe.

[3] After leaving school at the age of 14, he worked as a clerk in a retail business specializing in West Indian wares, before he became an apprentice at the Providence Patriot newspaper in 1822.

[1] Under Abell, the Ledger continued to appeal to the working class as a penny paper; he concentrated on sensationalist stories and scandals.

[7] While it was an independent newspaper, The Sun editorially leaned toward the ideals of Jacksonian democracy as championed by sixth President Andrew Jackson.

[4] By 1850, business was good enough that Abell commissioned architect James Bogardus to design a new building for the paper; it was to feature a cast iron facade.

[9] Despite its origins as a penny paper, by the late 19th century the Sun had won a position as the newspaper of choice of Baltimore's upper class.

[1][4][5] The carrier pigeons were part of a network that Abell established with another newspaper publisher in New York; they carried messages between that city, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., and from incoming ships.

News from Europe was delivered to Halifax, Nova Scotia by ship; from there it was transported overland by pony express to Annapolis Royal, N.S., by steamship to Portland, Maine, and then by rail to Baltimore.

For instance, state senator Henry Herbert Balch denounced Abell during a filibuster of legislation to authorize construction of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in 1949.