Ch 2 Industrial press

This chapter describes the emergence of the partisan press and the development of the “penny press” in the US and Europe between 1800 and 1900.  It also emphasizes the interrelationship between the emerging media in France, Britain, Germany and the US.  A selection from this chapter is found in the features section:  The industrial printing revolution.

Discussion questions

1. Lampooned:  Famed British author Charles Dickens used James Gordon Bennett (New York Herald) as his model for Col. Diver of the Rowdy Journal in Martin Chuzzlewit.   Look up the novel at the Gutenberg Project and compare  the fictional character with Bennett.   You might also compare the Dickens fictionalization of Bennett with Orson Wells portrayal of William Randolph Hearst in the 20th century.
2. Where are they now?  What has become of Niles Register and some of the other papers of the partisan press era?  Did the New York Herald, Tribune, Sun, and Times survive from the penny press era?  Who owns the Times of London today?
3. Remember the Maine — Did Hearst get it right when he said the Spanish blew up the Battleship Maine in Havana harbor in 1898? What do we know about the incident today?
4. Trans-Atlantic connections — Look through the chapter and find  examples of reporters and editors who worked on both sides of the Atlantic or the English Channel.  Using historical resources, find other connections.  If you find something significant, post it on the comments section on this web site.

People & Events

Major figures: John Walter II, Benjamin Day, James Gordon Bennett, James Gordon Bennett Jr., Horace Greeley, Henry Raymond, Joseph M. Levy, William T. Stead, Henry Morton Stanley, Emile Zola, Georges Clemenceau, Carl Schurz, Kark Marx, August Sherl, Joseph Pulitzer, William Randolph Hearst, E.W. Scripps, Nelly Bly, Alfred Harmsworth, Walter Lippmann

Events  & Trends:  Halfpenny press, partisan press, steam printing, penny press, taxes on knowledge, yellow journalism, crusading journalism, stunt journalism,  four stages of the media

Documentary Videos

Around the World in 72 Days — Excellent documentary  based on the Brooke Kroeger biography  of Nelly Bly.

Interesting Links

Partisan media: Whigs and Tories, Federalists and anti-federalists

1. Excerpts from the Aurora newspaper of Philadelphia (1798) — This is the notorious anti-Federalist newspaper that so infuriated John Adams and the Federalists. It may have been a factor in  the creation of the Alien & Sedition Acts of 1798.
2. The Sedition Act, 1798 Reaction: The Virginia Resolution and the Kentucky Resolution
3. Covering the war of 1812. Niles Register, Sept. 4, 1813.
4. William Cobbett on American Ships, 1829
5. Senate Coverage — 1830 Note the lack of direct quotes or even substance.

Human rights — abolitionist / women’s / labor publications

1. William Lloyd Garrison’s introductory editorial in The Liberator, Jan. 1, 1831.
2. Confessions of Nat Turner, 1832
3. Without Pity or Remorse: excerpt from Edward Abdy’s America, 1836 with extensive comments on slavery.
4. Frederick Douglass, autobiography,1845
5. Abolitionist interviews with escaped slaves, Canada,1850
6. Frederick Douglass’ 1852 Democratic Convention speech
7. New York Times reporter Frederick Law Olmstead tours the slave states, 1856
8. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (full text)
9. Excerpt from Running A Thousand Miles For Freedom by the escaped slaves William and Ellen Craft (London, W. Tweedie, 1860).
10. Narratives of slavery (University of Virginia )
11. Narratives of slavery (Library of Congress)
12. A letter to my old master, 1865, by  Jourdon Anderson.  “… As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you…” 

The Penny Press

1. The Great Moon Hoax by the New York Sun in 1835 was intended to be a demonstration of how the new, cheaper penny press was no worse than the more expensive journals.
2. It was only a paper moon — but a legendary hoax, John Kass, Chicago Tribune, Aug. 25, 2011.
3. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835 Especially Chapter 11; Liberty of Press in the United States 

Editorial Cartoons

1. Views of Ireland’s Potato Famine, including many articles and illustrations from English and Irish newspapers. The potato famine created an enormous wave of immigration to the US. in the 1840s.
2. The Influencing Machine by Brooke Gladstone is a comic book history of the media.
3. Classic editorial cartoons from the Chicago Tribune.

War and Peace in the  Press

1. Hezekiah Niles: the Editor who tried to stop the Civil War — Niles was a Baltimore editor who saw war coming as early as the 1820s and attempted to find ways to mediate the conflict.
2. William Howard Russell reports the Charge of the Light Brigade, 1854, for the London Times. Compare the way the Light Brigade is written to Henry Villard’s account of the next item.
3. BBC Witness program on the Charge of the Light Brigade.
4. William Howard Russell reports the disaster at Bull Run for the New York Herald in 1861. Note the difference in lead structure and the terseness of Villard’s dispatch. This difference is, partly, a reflection of the influence of the telegraph.
5. Reaction to the disaster in the Crimea included a famous poem by Tennyson about the Charge of the Light Brigade. The ill treatment of troops also led to bitter complaints. Rudyard Kipling’s “Tommy” is one example.
6. History theory and practice of the electronic telegraph, by George Prescott, AP, 1860
7. John Brown’s Raid — Editorial reaction from US newspapers around the country in 1859. Notice how some Northern newspapers are very much opposed to abolitionism and very supportive of the South. This was the so-called”Copperhead” press.
8. Staunton (Va) Spectator, Though Lincoln is Elected, there is No Danger, Nov. 13, 1860.
9. Nathaniel Hawthorne writes “Chiefly About War Matters” for the Atlantic Monthly, 1862
10. William Howard Russell reports on the Civil War in My Diary North and South
11. Personal narratives of Civil War soldiers
12. Charleston (S.C.) Mercury , Editorial Against Black Confederate Troops, January 13, 1865
13. Three Months Among the Reconstructionists, 1866 article in the Atlantic Monthly

Reporters as explorers

1. John L. O’Sullivan On Manifest Destiny, 1839
2. An Overland Journey from New York to San Francisco,1859, by N.Y. Tribune editor Horace Greeley, who famously said: “go west, young man.” See especially:
   • The big trees of Mariposa Grove. Note especially his remorse over the chopping down of the largest sequoia. That story is told in more detail here.
   • Interview with Brigham Young.Greeley says afterward: “I joyfully trust that the genius of the nineteenth century tends to a solution of the problem of woman’s sphere and destiny radically different from this.”
   • Life of Horace Greeley by J. Parton. It only goes to 1855, so it misses the later controversies.
3. Shall the Red Man Be Exterminated? Putnams Magazine, 1869
4. Currier & Ives prints and lithographys of everyday life in the mid 19th century.
5. Satire of the Liberal Republican convention of 1872, especially lampooning candidate Horace Greeley.
6. The Battle of Little Big Horn — Harpers Weekly 1876 and Chief Red Horse 1881
7. Autobiography of Apache war chief Geronimo, 1903.
8. Nelly Bly goes undercover “Inside the Madhouse.”
9. Nelly Bly goes   Around the World in 72 days, 1889.
10. Nelly Bly celebrated on the radio in 1945 (from newspaper heros web site by Bob Stepno).
11. The Autobiography of a Newspaper Girl – 1902
12. Mark Twain’s description of German daily newspapers in Tramp Abroad (1880).

The Press Barons

1. Joseph Pulitzer – Front Page Pioneer –  Iris Noble, Copp Clark Publishing Co. Limited, 1957.  (Full text)
2. Joseph Pulitzer, Master Journalist – James Creelman, Pearson’s Magazine, 1909. (Magazine article)
3. The Brass Check – Upton Sinclair, 1920.
4. History of American Journalism – James Melvin Lee, 1917.