People: 1830's-1860's

Benjamin Day

Benjamin Day was born in 1810 and was possibly one of the most successful American journalists of that time. He opened a printing office in New York City and in 1833 began to publish The New York Sun. The Sun not only was much cheaper than other New York Dailies, but was the first paper to ever employ newsboys as means of circulation. The paper soon claimed the largest circulation in the world with a total of 19, 360. Benjamin Day sold the Sun in 1835 to his brother-in-law for only $40,000. Before his death in 1889, he founded the monthly Brother Jonathon, a paper that would later become the first illustrated weekly in the United States.




James Gordon Bennett

James Gordon Bennett was born September 1, 1795 in New Mill, Scotland. He moved from Nova Scotia, to Portland, and then to Boston before reaching New York in 1823. After trying for many years to start a paper, Bennett began the Herald in 1835; the paper that became infamous for it’s in depth and shocking coverage of the murder of Helen Jewett, a New York City prostitute. When it came to advertisements, the Herald was the first to issue a cash-in advance policy, a standard that is common today. Although the Herald was politically independent, it often endorsed politicians such as Zachary Taylor and Franklin Pierce. Bennett gave control of the paper to his son in 1866, before his death on June 1st, 1872.







Horace Greeley

Horace Greeley was born February 3, 1811 in Amherst, New Hampshire. He moved to New York City in 1831 to apprentice as a printer and three years later he founded the New Yorker. In 1841, he merged the New Yorker and the Jeffersonian to create The New York Tribune, which soon became the leading Whig newspaper in the metropolis area. As editor of the Tribune, Greeley used it as a stage to voice his liberal views, such as the opposition of slave power by slave owners seeking control of the federal government. After a disappointing political defeat for the presidency in 1872, Whitelaw Reid, owner of the New York Herald, took control over the Tribune. Greeley’s dying words were directed to Reid, shouting at him, “You son of a bitch, you stole my newspaper.” Greeley died in Pleasantville, New York on November 29th, 1872.

Joseph Pulitzer

Joseph Pulitzer was born April 18, 1847 in Hungary. After being rejected from the military for his frail health, he immigrated to the United States to serve in the American Civil War. He settled in St. Louis, Missouri where he began working for the Westliche Post, a German language newspaper. After being elected to the State Assembly in 1869, he bought the Post and ten years later, merged it with the St Louis Dispatch, creating the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He bought the New York World in 1882 after acquiring more money and social status and in 1895 printed the widely known Yellow Kid comic. In 1911, Pulitzer died on his yacht in South Carolina.

William Randolph Hearst

William Randolph Hearst was born on April 29, 1863 in San Francisco, California. He took over the San Francisco Examiner from his father, and soon acquired The New York Morning Journal and the Evening Journal. He became well known for his support of the Spanish-American War and acquired a chain of papers and periodicals such as Harpers Bazaar, Boston American, and Cosmopolitan. Hearst was a strong pusher of yellow journalism and had used it to inspire support for U.S military ventures into Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Phillippines. He strongly supported the New Deal from 1933 to 1934 and was an avid follower of Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1934, he flew to Berlin to have a private interview with Adolf Hitler. After Hitler asked why he was so misunderstood by American press, Hearst responded, “Americans believe in Democracy and are adverse to Dictatorship.” In 1951, William Randolph Hearst died in Beverley Hills, California at the age of 88.

Adolph S. Ochs

Adolph Simon Ochs was born on March 12, 1858 in Cincinnati, Ohio. The family moved to Knoxville, Tennessee where he left grammar school at the age of eleven to become a printers assistant at the Knoxville Chronicle. At nineteen, he became the publisher of the Chattanooga Times and in 1896 he bought The New York Times, which at the time was a newspaper of low circulation and slowly losing more and more money. By shifting the focus to objective news reporting and lowering the price of the paper to 1 cent, Ochs not only saved the paper, but made it one of the most premiere newspapers of New York City by the 1920's. After Adolphs death on April 8, 1935, his son-in-law Arthur Hayes Sulzberger took over the Times.

Important Newspapers: 1830's-1860's

The New York Sun

The New York Sun began publication on September 3, 1833. It acquired the slogan "It shines for all", and was edited by Benjamin Day. It merged with The New York World-Telegram to form the New York World- Telegram and Sun on January 4, 1950. It became famous for the "Great Moon Hoax" of 1835 in which stories were printed attributing John Herschel , astronomer, of finding life on the moon. These false discoveries included findings of extraordinary animals such as goats, unicorns, and bat-like winged humanoids who built temples among the vast oceans and trees on the moon. The New York City editor for the Sun, John B. Bogart stated the famous line "When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news." For more information, visit here.






The New York Herald


The New York Herald ran from May 6, 1835 to 1924 and was a strong supporter of the Democratic Party during the Civil War. It was published by James Gordon Bennett Sr. The paper financially backed Henry Morton Stanley's trip to Africa in search of David Livingston and George W. Delong's expedition to the Arctic region. It merged with its rival paper, "The Tribune" in 1924 to form "The New York Herald Tribune". While it was still under the authority of Bennett, it held the leading circulation in its time before the "The New York Herald Tribune" was sold to John Hay Whitney in 1959. The paper ceased publication in 1966 and is now owned completely by the "The New York Times". For more information, visit here.

The New York Tribune

The New York Tribune was established by Horace Greeley in 1841. While sensationalism was the main point of other papers at the time such as the Sun and the Herald, Greeley had hoped to create a straightforward and trustworthy newspaper. The Tribune was a Radical Republican newspaper during the Civil War and the slogan "On to Richmond" actually pressed Irwin McDowell (the Union General) to advance to Richmond, despite that his army was not ready. The decision resulted in a crushing defeat at the First Battle of Manassas on July 21, 1861. The owner of the Herald, Whitelaw Reid, took control of the Tribune following Greeleys defeat for the presidency in 1872. The paper formed "The New York Herald Tribune" under Reid's son Ogden, who continued to run it until his death in 1947. For more information, visit here.

The New York Times

The New York Times was founded September 18, 1851 by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones. Holding the slogan, "All the news that's fit to print", it ran a series of articles exposing a corrupted American politician and head of Tammany Hall, Boss Tweed in 1871. After printing a headline "A Doubtful Election" about Samuel Tilden's victory over Rutherford B. Hayes in the 1876 Presidential election, an electoral commission and Congress decided months later that Hayes was the winner. In 1884, it made the transition from being a Republican based paper to being a politically independent paper. In 1904, it moved its headquarters to 42nd Street, where it gave its name to Times Square. The New York Times was the first to recieve immediate wireless transmission from a naval battle, which reported the destruction of the Russian Fleet during the Russo-Japanese War. The Times has won 94 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper in history. For more information, visit here.

Important Newspapers: 1880's

The New York World

The New York World was a newspaper that was in publication from 1860 to 1931. The news paper was running unsuccessfully until it was bought by Joseph Pulitzer 1883. In 1890 Pulitzer bought the New York World building, using it as the main offices. It became the tallest office building in New York City.

In 1896 the World started using a four-color printing press and it became the first to launch a color section of the newspaper, which was the yellow kid cartoon, Hogan's Alley. This is what started the big battle between Pulitzer's World and Hearst's Journal.

The World was accused of being sensational, which later lead to the rise of the term yellow journalism. The World published articles about the poor conditions in the tenements and all of the imperfections of the city. They also wrote a lot of articles exploiting the Spanish-American War. All of these crime stories were exciting to readers, which lead to an increased sale in papers. This also took place with The New York Journal.


The New York Journal

The New York Journal was a New York newspaper that was published between 1895 and 1937 by William Randolph Hearst. It was published as a morning newspaper. Hearst's newspaper coined the phrase "Bulldog Edition" which referred to the earliest edition of a newspaper. After buying the newspaper The New York Journal entered into a circulation war with the New York World.

The newspaper had one of the highest circulations in New York in the 1950's, yet with the natural decline of newspaper circulations it was closed in 1966. While participating in a lock-out after The New York Times and The New York Daily News were struck by a union, the Journal agreed to a merger with the New York World-Telegram and Sun and the New York Herald-Tribune, becoming the New York World Journal Tribune, which also eventually folded after eight months.

The Christian Science Monitor

The Christian Science Monitor is an international newspaper that is published daily from Monday through Friday. It was started in 1908 by a Mary Baker Eddy, who was also the founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist. Most of the newspaper staff are members of the church, but membership is not required to become an employee. The paper mainly uses its own reporters who are stationed in eleven different countries, rather than using wire services. Wire services are different organizations of journalist that report on different things around the world and then they report back to different newspapers, so that the independent papers don't have to send their own reports out.

Even though the paper is published by the church, it was not created to spread their religion, it was created to solely report current issues and events. The only tie it has to its church and the religion is the title of the paper, and the fact that in every issue there is one religious article. Since the paper has been founded it has won the Pulitzer Prize for journalism seven times. When the paper was first published it was published in a broad sheet form, but in recent times it is published in a tabloid style. The newspaper is still in circulation to this day.

Yellow Journalism: 1880's

Yellow Journalism

Yellow Journalism is a form of journalism that exploits and exaggerates the news stories in order to attract the readers and make a bigger profit.

This term came around in the 1890’s mainly as a way to describe the New York World as well as The New York Journal, papers that were exploiting the Spanish-American War.

In 1883 The World sent reporters to speak with local immigrants during an excruciating heat wave. From this, headlines such as “How babies are Baked” and “Lines of little hearses” were seen in some of the World's issues. Because of this exaggeration and the ongoing focus on crime and the imperfections of the city, the World circulation increased dramatically, and after only two years the World became the highest circulation paper in New York, helped in part by yellow journalism


Hearst is nicknamed the “father of Yellow journalism” for his articles enticing the war in Spain. He did this by printing scores of articles about the situation in Cuba and he also ran several articles blaming the Spanish for the sinking of the MAINE. This helped the sale of papers because people wanted to hear what they thought was the truth. Since the papers were printing things that were not so positive, the public was eager to read it because it was something othere than what the government was telling them. Hearst, as well as other publishers of the major newspapers were helping shape the minds and opinions about the war, this was one of the big affects that yellow journalism had on society.


Yellow journalism got its name from a comic stripe called the “yellow Kid”. R.F. Outcault created the comic strip “the yellow kid” which Pulitzer and Hearst fought over having in their newspaper. Oucault stopped working for Pulitzer and began working for Hearst in October of 1896. For a further look into the creation and history of “The Yellow Kid” you can visit this website.

For a more indepth reading on yellow journalism you can visit this website.

1830's-1860's

Subject:topics to be researched:
telegraph, cheaper printing methods, population growth leads to dramatic increase in newspapers, include civil war coverage of 1860's.




journalism & the civil war

The civil war was a revolution for what was already a huge buisiness, the newspaper. The telegraph toed in by being able to transfer news quickly from one place to another. By 1860 there was already 50,000 miles of telegraphy lines. News was expensive to tranfer, so there was usually a limit on words to be sent, but it was normal for news from a distant city to be delivered in the newspaper the next day, not a week later. The quantity of US news increased dramatically as the 1860 presidential campaign and the events at Fort Sumter seemed to presage serious trouble. The "Citizen" coverage of U.S. news during the War fell into four broad categories: First: There were reports gleaned from U.S. newspapers, usually un-named. These were received in Ottawa by mail and train. They were summarized, and the stories appeared with a date and city of origin but no other identification as to source and the name of the reporter did not appear. There were also occasional reports from the embryo Associated Press. Second: There were reports by corespondents of the better-known U.S. newspapers (New York "Herald" or the "Times"). These appear to have been reprinted in full. In the case of the "Herald" they were often sensationalist. Again the correspondents were not named. Third: In the autumn of 1860 the "Citizen" retained its own Washington and New York correspondents who provided regular reports by telegraph. The correspondents were not identified by name and could, presumably, have been several people, each reporting independently. They were probably reporting for one or more other papers as well as the "Citizen". Fourth: There were editorial assessments and opinions prepared in Ottawa by the "Citizen" editors from all the information available. These usually appeared on the left-hand side of the second page of each issue.The editiors and journalists who reported in newspapers during the civil war seemed to be extremely biased one way or the other. the writers, though impossible to identify especially now, were clearly american and clearly pro-union.The position of slaves could be viewed in issues of The "Citizen." The slaves, who had just seen The Fugitive Law Act pass, which meant that run-away slaves must be returned to the owners, had a voice that was projected every so often in the press. The "Citizen" editorialspoke out about the flow of "colored citizens" since John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry. It statedthat the white population was "inconvenienced" by the blacks though it said that in the West Indies they "fill the offices of the state with credit and efficiency". The editorial commented that maybe in later years, the blacks may "mingle up" in white society. It went on: ''there is (in Kent County) a tendency to separation without persecution" and suggested that the newcomers "rights are rigidly regarded and in courts of justice, with which they are seldom connected...their citizenship claims are scrupulously observed".But then, in a sudden change of attitude says that "they (the blacks) assume an independence of manner which, at first simply amusing, becomes in a short time offensive". And then it finishes: "We consider them (the blacks) in a transition state and believe that in no long time their principal locality, Chatham in Kent County, will be merely a receiving place from whence they will be drafted off to...the West Indies or to Siberia". This piece seems to go from acceptance through plain and simple racism with a touch of arrogance.



Civil War Coverage

Civil War Coverage 1860: The civil war was a turning point for Journalism. It was the time period where YEllow Journalism was introduced. Yellow journalism is a technique that journalist used to catch the attention of readers, they made catchy headlines to appeal to the readers emotion. Papers like the Liberator, The North Star, and the Harper Weekly are examples of newspapers that used Yellow Journalism. Different papers like the New York Journal, and New York Times published civil war information. The civil war was really the first time in history that journalists and reporters were allowed to enter the lives of not only the people in the community, but the people of war, who shared their families and stories with them.



cheaper printing methods

The cylinder press was a steam powered way to print newspaper in a more quick fashion, it was also a cheap alternative to the methods used previously. The cylinder press was first used in the USA in 1825, but Richard Hoe, an inventor, changed it several years later. Hoe imporved the speed by adding a second cylinder and a first rotary. The price of paper went down significantly with the use of the cylinder. The newspaper became known as the “penny press” because the paper was more affordable. The printing of the “penny press” changed the face of journalism. Journalists began to realize that the interests of the people who bought the “penny press” paper differed from the interests of the people who bought more extensive papers.




telegraph

in 1825, William Sturgeon showed the electromagnet. Sturgeon displayed its power by lifting nine pounds with a seven-ounce piece of iron wrapped with wires through which the current of a single cell battery was sent. in 1830, joseph henry sent an electric current over 1 mile of iron wire to activate an electromagnet to cause a bell to ring. while a professor at NYU, samuel morse found that the electromagnet would move a pen tied to it, creating dots and dashes, but it was not until 1843 that congress funded $30,000 to create an expiremental line from washington to baltimore, a distance of 40 miles. the first message was sent to the capitol, saying that the whig party had elected Henry Clay.

Inventions that aid Journalism: 1880's

The Typesetter:

Small cast metal letters and words were put together and bound by hand. The person who worked this job was called a typesetter. They would lay out letters to form words and lines, these letters were called moveable type. The moveable type was tightly bound together to make up a page image called a forme. All the letters were the same height so that the paper would look uniformed. Typesetters would then apply ink to the forme and print multiple copies of one page. This is how papers were produced before typewriters and computers came about.

The Linotype is a typesetting machine that was invented the late 1880’s. The Linotype soon became the world’s leading manufacturer of book and newspaper printing equipment. This machine was invented to replace the hard labor work that was involved with typesetting by hand. Mergenthaler, the founder of the Linotype placed type molds of letters on the sides of specially keyed matrices. These matrices would be lined up and hot lead alloy forced to fill the matrices would create the line of type. The matrices would move through the machine, where the special keying systems on one end, unique for each character [like modern day computer keyboards], would allow the matrix to drop only into the correct storage slot so they can be used again.

The Typewritter:

A typewriter is a machine with a set of keys that when pressed it transfers ink to paper to create characters that form words. In 1865, Reverend Rasmus Malling-Hansen, from Denmark, invented this machine and called it the Hansen Writing Ball. It went into commercial production in 1870. Between 1870 and about 1920 typewriters all looked different but all worked with the same concept. The keys were all pretty much the same but the position of the paper and the design of the product is what changed. The standard typewriter that is known today did not come about until the 1920’s.

This is the what one of the first typewritters looked like. The typewritter has since changed its appearence. Most that you may see all have the same form.

The Telephone:

In 1870 Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell both independently designed devices that could transmit speech electrically, this device is know as the telephone. Alexander Graham Bell got his device patented first. Bell and Gray went through a long legal battle over the invention, but in the end Bell won.

On March 10, 1876, Bell discovered that he could hear sound as it travels over a wire. This was the official birth of the first working telephone, and the death of the telegraph.
Alexander Graham Bell was only 29 when he invented the telephone. For his full biography you can visit this link.

The telephone aided in new journalism by expanding peoples’ means of communication. The telephone allowed journalist to be connected with sources and editors, helping stories move along a little faster, aiding in the production and delivery of information. They also allowed reporters to convey news to others across the the country in a shorter time.