Ch 2 Industrial press

Summary

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.

Chapter Outline

Press + to open
2.1 Steam-powered printing launches a new media era 79
2.2 The “penny” press: A news media revolution 81
2.3 New York’s penny press: The rising Sun 82
2.4 New York’s penny press: The sensational Herald 85
2.5 New York’s penny press: The moral Tribune 86
2.6 New York’s penny press: The Times as the paper of record 88
2.7 The press and civil rights: Early African American newspapers 89
2.8 The press in Britain: The Times of London 91
2.9 The press in Britain: The Daily Telegraph 92
2.10 The press in Britain: The Pall Mall Gazette 93
2.11 In France, la presse bon marche 94
2.12 The press in France: The Dreyfus affair 95
2.13 The German and Hungarian press 96
2.14 The Revolutions of 1848 97
2.15 Karl Marx as a journalist 98
2.16 The penny press of Germany 99
2.17 Progressive Era newspapers in the US 100
2.18 Crusading journalism and Pulitzer’s World 100
2.19 Around the world with Nelly Bly 102
2.20 E. W. Scripps and the first newspaper chain 102
2.21 The scientist and the crank 103
2.22 Science and the news 104
2.23 Yellow journalism and Hearst’s Journal 105
2.24 The press and civil rights: Reconstruction and Progressive Eras 108
2.25 Lord Northcliffe and The Daily Mail 110
2.26 Walter Lippmann’s four stages of the press 111
2.27 Jurgen Habermas and the public sphere 112
2.28 The five stages of printing technology 112

Extended Content

Discussion questions

  1. Lampooned: How famous — and how hated — was James Gordon Bennett?  His name is still used an expletive in the UK, even in the 21st century.   Back in the 19th, during his lifetime, Biritish author Charles Dickens used James Gordon Bennett 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.  Are there other connections you can find?
  5. American journalism as seen from across the pond  — Read British editor W. T. Stead’s essay, The Americanisation of the World, from his book published in 1902.  How do you think his point of view has held up over the centuries, and in what ways might he have missed the mark?

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, Mark Twain, 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

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   And the reaction:  The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1799.
  3. William Cobbett on American Ships, 1829 (
  4. Newspapers of the 20th century (as envisioned by editors of the 19th century).  One major improvement — truth, truth, truth!
  5. Charles Henry Ambler, Thomas Ritchie: A Study in Virginia Politics (1913)  Overly worshipful biography of the politically powerful editor of the Richmond Enquirer 1804 – 1845.

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. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835 Especially Chapter 11; Liberty of Press in the United States  
  3. Biographies of three famous editors from the penny press era, written in 1898 by US historian James Parton:
    1. Horace Greeley  — Founder of the New York Tribune, 1841, who saw journalism as an editor’s job.  Greeley was a major political force in the US in the 1850s whose backing was essential for Abraham Lincoln’s nomination.  Parton said:  Greeley aimed to produce a paper which should morally benefit the public. It was not always right, but it always meant to be.
    2. James Gordon Bennett — Founder of the New York Herald in 1836, Bennett saw journalism as a reporter’s job, and was the first to set up a Washington DC bureau.  He was also pugnacious and loved to get in arguments with his detractors.  Parton said:   Six times he was assaulted by persons whom he had satirized in his newspaper… On one occasion, for example, after relating how his head had been cut open by one of his former employers, he added: “The fellow no doubt wanted to let out the never failing supply of good-humor and wit which has created such a reputation for the ‘Herald.’… He has not injured the skull. My ideas in a few days will flow as freshly as ever, and he will find it so to his cost.”
    3. John Walter and sons — Founder of the London Times in 1787.   —  When The Times had been in existence little more than a year, Walter took the liberty of making a remark upon the Duke of York, one of the king’s dissolute sons, saying that the conduct of his Royal Highness had been such as to incur His Majesty’s just disapprobation. For this offense he was arrested and put on trial for libel. Being convicted, he was sentenced to pay a fine of fifty pounds, to undergo a year’s imprisonment in Newgate, to stand in the pillory for one hour…

Reporters as explorers

  1. American journalist John L. O’Sullivan explains 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.
    • 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. Jules Verne, Michael Strogoff — In which Daily Telegraph reporter Harry Blount  risks his life to follow a fictional uprising in Siberia and send news to the Telegraph ’s readers. 
  4. Nelly Bly goes undercover “Inside the Madhouse.”
  5. Nelly Bly goes   Around the World in 72 days, 1889.
  6. Nelly Bly celebrated on the radio in 1945 (from newspaper heros web site by Bob Stepno).
  7. The Autobiography of a Newspaper Girl – 1902
  8. Mark Twain short stories about journalism:  Editorial Wild Oats, (1875).
  9. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, JHistory Podcast.

The Press Barons and their critics

  1. Yellow journalism (PBS) in the crucible of empire (PBS)
  2. The Yellow Kid and the origins of yellow journalism
  3. Pulp magazines project has hundreds of examples of thriller, crime and science fiction from the 20th century.
  4. Joseph Pulitzer, “Planning a School of Journalism: The Basic Concept,” North American Review, May, 1904.  “Our republic and its press will rise or fall together.”
  5. Joseph Pulitzer – Front Page Pioneer —  Iris Noble, Copp Clark Publishing Co. Limited, 1957.  (Full text)
  6. Joseph Pulitzer, Master Journalist — James Creelman, Pearson’s Magazine, 1909. (Magazine article)
  7. W. T. Stead’s  1902  The Americanisation of the World,  “It is in the newspaper offices that the drive, bustle and intense strain of American life is preeminently centred…”   
  8. Attacking the devil — a site devoted to W.T. Stead, publisher of the Pall Mall Gazette in the 1880s and 90s.
  9. Satan’s Invisible World Displayed: A Study of Greater New York, by W.T. Stead, available on Gutenberg. org
  10. W.T. Stead on William Randolph Hearst:

    Certainly no man in all New York has such a chance of combining all the elements that make for righteousness and progress in the city as the young Californian millionaire-editor who founded the Journal.
    There is, however, no greater delusion than to imagine that a newspaper in America has any influence merely because it is a newspaper. The habit of running newspapers as if they were mere commercial dividend-earning undertakings has so largely discounted the influence of the press as to lead many shrewd observers to declare that they would just as soon have the newspapers against them as in their favour.”

  11. The Brass Check — Upton Sinclair, 1920.  An especially bitter attack on the press of the day, Sinclair compares journalists to prostitutes who take the “brass check” — a token system representing payment for services rendered.
  12. History of American Journalism — James Melvin Lee, 1917.