Age of Reason

Media History

From David Crisp:

What stuns me about this discussion is the notion that "citizens" had no access to media prior to the internet. Cincinnati got its first newspaper in 1793, when it had fewer than 500 citizens. Leavenworth, Kan., consisted of four tents in 1854 -- but it had a newspaper. In 1910, there were about 2,600 daily newspapers in the United States, nearly twice as many as there are now. There were six Yiddish dailies in New York City at the turn of the century, and African-Americans had founded more than 1,000 newspapers by 1900. In 1912, Appeal to Reason, a radical Kansas weekly, had a national circulation of 750,000 -- a figure most bloggers can only envy. In the 1920s, more than 500 U.S. cities had competing dailies (stats from Thomas C. Leonard). News came in all flavors, with a wide choice of biases and editorial stances.

posted by conchis @ 11:51 PM