When Thomas Gee launched Baner Cymru in 1857, he was able to call upon some twenty years of business experience and writing articles for the press. Gee sought to publish a weekly Welsh language newspaper which would provide wider perspectives directly to a large potential audience of Welsh speakers. The paper had higher aspirations than many monthly journals of the time. Having taken over the Liverpool-based newspaper Amserau in 1859, the renamed Baner ac Amserau Cymru quickly became widely read. In the newspaper's advertisement printed in Mitchell's Press Directory for 1861, it was not too much of an exaggeration when its owner asserted:

To those who may be unacquainted with the value of a Welsh paper as a medium for Advertising, it may be stated that there is a Welsh population in Liverpool alone of about EIGHTY THOUSAND; and it is estimated that there in the Principality from seven to eight hundred thousand whose reading is almost exclusively confined to the productions of the Welsh press...

Gee succeeded in attracting a number of able journalists, such as John Griffith ('Y Gohebydd'), who was appointed London reporter of the Baner and spent much of his time reporting parliamentary debates and attending political meetings throughout Wales.

In 1861, the price of the paper was 3d, dropping by 1870 to 2d each Wednesday, and 1d on Saturday. The newspaper was well laid out and printed. It advocated Gee's own views-Liberal and Nonconformist. Issues such as ensuring the vote by ballot; the disestablishment of the Anglican church in Wales; the Abolition of Tithes; Welsh home rule: these were all aired in its pages. The newspaper continued until 1972, when it became a current affairs journal, renamed Y Faner, which ceased publication in 1992.