James Gordon Bennett ca. 1851

Tribune staff ca. 1844, Greeley seated third from left

Old Mother Bank, 1832 lithograph

Amos Kendall

The Penny Press

Fred. Koenig's 2-cylinder steam press by London Times 1814 - 1100 sheets/hr.

Fourdrinier paper machine in France 1828 with new bleaching process for rags.

Richard Hoe & Co. press did 4000 sheets/hr - able to lower cost from 6 to 1 cent.

Seba Smith's Portland Daily Courier 1829 - cheaper $4 per yr., "Jack Downing"

Charles Knight's Penny Magazine 1832 in Britain - to educate the poor, grew to 20,000.

Horace Greeley's NY Morning Post Jan. 1, 1833 - 2-cent weekly, newsboys on st.

Benjamin Day's NY Sun Sep. 3, 1833 - 1-cent by newsboys, 4 pp., 10 x 11 in.

• shift away from political partisanship to human interest and variety
• 8000 by 1834, "Help Wanted" popular with unemployed, ads on back page
• "moon hoax" by Richard Adams Locke tripled circulation - UFO genre popular
• sold to Moses Y. Beach 1837 - new press 22,000 sheets 14x20 in. per hour

James Gordon Bennett's NY Herald May 6, 1835 - 77,000 by 1860 - largest in U.S.

• "Money Market" column emphasized conspiracy of Wall St. speculators
• more gossip & scandal, exaggeration & sensationalism, slang
• Ellen Jewett murdered by Richard Robinson Apr. 10, 1836 - prurient - "Most Atrocious Murder" - detail of her room - 1st interview with brothel owner Rosina Townsend Apr. 16
• Manifest Destiny, police, debtor's prison, boxing, disasters, Jenny Lind 1850
• 1st letter from Europe by steamship July 17, 1838 - foreign bureau
• "By Express" beat mail from New Orleans 1840
• pigeon express by Daniel Craig's Boston Daily Mail
• any advertising printed if paid in advance by cash - Mdm Restell abortions
• "shirts" (linen), "legs" (limbs), "Petticoats P- P-P- there, you fastidious fools"
• Jane Croly's 1st syndicated column for women 1855 - "Jennie June"

Horace Greeley's NY Tribune 1841 - serious editorials - clipped by other editors

• "Great Moral Organ" - many "-isms" - 500 articles on Karl Marx in 1850's
• 3 necessities of spiritual life: "their Bible, their Shakespeare, their Tribune"
• sent Margaret Fuller to Rome as one of the first female foreign correspondents
• printed exact words of Brigham Young Aug. 20, 1859

Andrew Jackson's Post Office was the fastest growing federal agency

• In 1829, William T. Barry of Kentucky became the first Postmaster General to sit as a member of the President's Cabinet (but would not become an official executive department until 1872).
• By 1831, 76 percent of the civilian federal workforce were postal employees, and postmasters outnumbered soldiers 8,764 to 6,332.
• In 1835, Amos Kendall became Postmaster General, began in 1836 special pony express to cities.
• In 1847 the federal government printed the first postage stamps.

Samuel F. B. Morse's telegraph contributed to a growing global network

• From 1844 Baltimore line to 1866 Atlantic cable
• Bennett founded New York Harbor News Association 1849 with 6 dailies to use telegraph.
• George W. Smalley, reporter at the battle of Gravelotte in the Franco-Prussian War 1870, arranged a telegraph pool for the N. Y. Tribune and London Daily News, spending $5000 for a telegram published in NY and London two days after the Aug. 18 battle, "the first attempt in the Old World to describe a battle over the telegraph wires." (Knightley p. 46)

Sources:

• Knightley, Phillip. The First Casualty. From the Crimea to Vietnam: The War Correspondent as hero, Propagandist, and Myth Maker. New York: Harcourt, 1975.

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