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The printing press helped to spread literacy, civic discourse, and even political dissent in colonial America. Without paper, however, the invention of the moveable type printing press would have been insignificant. This crucial communication medium was hobbled by a critical shortage of the raw material needed for printed matter. Paper was in short supply in the colonies and in the new nation as it could only be made from rags, and there was constant difficulty in obtaining enough rags to keep the presses rolling. Pleas for this essential ingredient were constantly seen in the newspapers in early America and there were severe shortages of both paper and the rags from which it was made during the American Revolution. This article examines how desperate were the early Americans for the paper which was necessary both for firing the muskets and for spreading the rhetoric of Revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article introduces a group of articles on the history of paper and issues of scarcity in the history of newspapers and news media generally. The articles discussed share a concern with the parallels between paper scarcities in newspaper history and spectrum scarcities in broadcast history. This introductory essay comments on the similarities and differences between the two kinds of scarcity and comments more broadly on the rise and fall of bottlenecks in media systems, paying attention both to how scholars have discussed materialities of media communication and how legacy news media in the digital era have encountered a new competitive landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

During Texas's decade as a republic, its newspapers never galvanized into a truly partisan press. The newspapers of Texas were political, but rather than focusing on party principles, they opposed or supported political candidates during the republic's four presidential elections, with two-term President Sam Houston as the pivotal figure. The independence of most newspapers from party patronage and influence and their patriotic elevation of the good of the country over loyalty to any faction demonstrated that editors did not fully adopt the American style of press partisanship they experienced before moving to Texas. Elections in the republic revolved around personalities instead of policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The launch of The Australian in 1964 now appears prescient: it coincided with and contributed to the rise in national political consciousness inaugurated in the 1960s that has continued ever since. Integral to this process has been a far more powerful sense of the nation and a weakening in state consciousness. History suggests that the culture and the technology were ready for a national newspaper. This article examines several critical political events or themes, how The Australian saw them and the extent to which it shaped or failed to shape the nation's mood. This involves an assessment of how both the nation and the paper changed over half a century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early 1920s, the press faced an existential challenge. Publishers proclaimed the death of news, not because nothing was happening, but because there was insufficient paper to print newspapers. While historians of the early modern period have long investigated material constraints on the spread of information, the problem of paper in Weimar Germany shows that the economics and politics of supply chains continued to shape cultural production in the twentieth century as well. Rationing during World War I subsequently became a crisis in the 1920s, when paper shortages, which had started as an issue of prices and supply chains, ballooned into a discussion about the role of the press in political and economic life, about the relationship between the federal states and the central government, and about the responsibility of a democratic government to ensure an independent press. Paper became a litmus test for the relationship between politicians and the press. The failure to resolve the crisis not only undermined the trust of publishers in Weimar institutions, but, this article argues, also enabled greater control by right-wing media empires. The public sphere, it turned out, had a very material basis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In late nineteenth-century USA, technological developments in paper production—a shift from a reliance on scarce cotton rag to plentiful wood—drastically reduced the price of newsprint. That decline helped overturn the reigning economics of the daily newspaper and resulted in the rise of new cheap papers with vastly expanded circulation. This novel mass press encompassed almost all Americans in the public sphere as represented by its pages. Focusing on newspapers in Detroit, this study examines the manifold consequences this shift had for the press's economics, its news agenda, and the implicit identity of the audience it addressed. The rise of a mass press in the late nineteenth century, however, was not specific to Detroit or the USA. As comparative historians have highlighted, the emergence of a mass press in Europe and elsewhere was a turning point that deeply marked the historical evolution of press systems around the globe. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article explores the eighteenth-century newspaper war between journalist Mary Singleton of "The Old Maid" and Mr. Town of "The Connoisseur." Topics discussed include the documentation of the exchanges between Singleton and Mr. Town on issues such as competition and hypocrisy, the way Mr. Town published criticisms of Singleton in "The Connoisseur," and the response offered by Singleton about the involvement of single women in newspaper publishing.

In the early twentieth century, American newspapers enjoyed high circulations while presenting readers with diverse and plentiful content. After 1920, radio broadcasting made even more information available for public consumption, giving audience members an abundant range of media choices. During a time of plenty for readers and listeners, companies in the business of media struggled with the opposite problem: scarcity. As the amount of media content proliferated, the practical ability to disseminate it was determined by the access to scarce resources, and this was true for both radio broadcasting and newspaper publishing. In many respects, the history of the American mass media in the early twentieth century might best be told as a tale of two scarcities, one—the electromagnetic spectrum—defined by absolute limits and the other—the newsprint—defined by access to markets for a particular material, the supply of which often fluctuated in availability and price. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the history of the "Fifth Estate" newspaper based in Detroit, Michigan that was started by Harvey Ovshinsky in 1965.

This article analyses how British newspapers in the 1930s created a particular frame or view of radio as an international medium. This frame was created around the idea of a duality, of radio being defined by both national and foreign broadcasts. By analysing coverage provided by the main national newspapers at this time, in relation to their specific radio coverage, such as programme listing and highlights, this paper delineates the form the frame took, what was included and was absent. Such a frame provides an understanding of how the newspapers viewed and valued radio in a period when international broadcasts were seen as an important part of what radio could offer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1972, The New York Times adopted the policy of running daily corrections in a fixed part of the paper. The idea of corrections, and a call for increased accountability more generally, had been circulating for a few years. This article examines internal communication from the Times that sheds light on how the paper’s editor, A.M. Rosenthal, made the decision to turn the idea into policy. A number of factors, including an essay by Daniel Patrick Moynihan and prodding by the journalism reviews (MORE) and The Columbia Journalism Review, influenced Rosenthal. Wendy Wyatt’s discursive theory of press criticism and Daniel Hallin’s spheres of consensus, controversy, and deviance inform this article’s discussion of how outside influence works. Coming from the “paper of record,” the Times’s decision to enact the corrections policy had a snowball effect, and within a few years, running a regular corrections box became commonplace among American newspapers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how China and Japan fought for supremacy in China's treaty-port English-language press during the Jinan Incident of 1928. It argues that China's defeat in this media battle was a result of the long-term, unsettled political conditions the country was experiencing. The constant changes of government thwarted China's official and non-official efforts to establish a national news network. The threat from the northern warlords and China's intricate relations with the imperialist powers deterred the Nanjing regime from formulating decisive foreign propaganda policies. In contrast, Japan, with a strong news network in China, quickly installed its version of the event in the media. Its response was fast, consistent, and intensive. Japan also took advantage of the Nanjing Incident to justify its actions in Jinan. Press opinion in the treaty ports towards the Jinan Incident was split, with the British press supporting the Japanese and American papers favouring China's case. However, Japanese accounts, with the endorsement of the British treaty-port papers, still dominated the reports in The Times of London and influenced the views of the Manchester Guardian and The New York Times. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article considers whether there was a national press before and during the Second World War. After considering the terms used by historians to describe the UK national press, and how it is defined, it looks at aspects of the industry that made it appear national and those which did not. The question of just how national the press was between 1939 and 1945 is then addressed, followed by some concluding comments. It argues that the wartime press was characterised by a high degree of uniformity in terms of organisation, co-operation and content, throwing into relief the more diffuse nature of the industry before and after. The idea of the national press downplays the extent to which newspapers varied considerably in readership, geographical reach, political and social significance. It obscures the important role of the provincial press, abstracting mass circulation London daily morning papers, from their place within an evolving network of mass communications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines the role of Julia Griffiths, a white Englishwoman who worked closely with former slave-turned-newspaper-editor Frederick Douglass in the 1840s and the 1850s. Although historians have generally identified her as a secondary figure in the abolitionist movement, closer examination, particularly by media historians, is justified by the complexity of the relationship between the two of them and the nature of her influence on both the American and the British abolition movements. In 1849-50, Griffiths rescued Douglass' faltering North Star, and her fund-raising for him and his paper throughout the decade before the Civil War energized and empowered antislavery women on both sides of the Atlantic. Overall, she made significant contributions to the thought and actions of women envisioning a new place for themselves on two continents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting a newspaper in the nineteenth century was a risky business, and this was especially true in the Civil War South where invading armies, spiraling inflation, and conscription laws were constant threats to physical facilities, financial success, and manpower Despite this, North Carolina Governor Zebulon B. Vance and the state's Conservative political party found the money and the will to establish a new daily to support the his re-election bid in 1864. Campaign papers were common in the 1800s, but while most shut down following an election, the Conservative continued to publish after Vance won. Records and archives document how it was financed, equipped, and staffed, providing an unprecedented glimpse into what it took to start a newspaper not only in the nineteenth century but during America's bloodiest war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tale of 1939 voyage of the MS St. Louis has been retold in books, films, exhibits, and on the web. While researchers looking at U.S. newspaper coverage of the Holocaust have generally viewed its components as discrete pieces of evidence rather than as parts of a larger whole, this study reviewed coverage of the voyage in situ in the pages of thirty-nine newspapers from twenty-five American cities. The findings of the qualitative content analysis sorted those papers into four groups, based on how much coverage they gave the story and whether they supplemented wire copy with staff reporting, photographs, editorials, or cartoons. Neither a paper’s geographic proximity to the story nor the size of its city’s Jewish population appears to have been a good explanation of its coverage choices. Important distinctions were also found in how reporters, news services, and, thus, newspapers, told the refugee passengers’ story. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines two decades in the life of Barricada, established as the "official organ" of the revolutionary Sandinista Front (FSLN) in Nicaragua, from its founding in 1979 through to its demise as a daily in 1998. It is argued that, distinct from the overriding "mobilizing imperative" of support for its Sandinista sponsor, an institutionally generated "professional imperative" was also evident in Barricada's functioning from the early days of the paper's operations. After the FSLN's election defeat in 1990, this professional imperative-along with the political preference of most senior staff for "renovation" within the FSLN-resulted in the paper establishing a significant degree of day-to-day autonomy from its sponsor, and important transformations in its journalistic project. This semi-autonomy was foreclosed when the dominant ortodoxo faction of the Front engineered the dismissal of Barricada director Carlos Fernando Chamorro in 1994. Barricada then returned to its more highly mobilized role as FSLN propagandist, but lost readers and advertising revenue as a result, finally closing in February 1998. The newspaper's trajectory serves as a useful bellwether for Nicaragua's revolutionary and post-revolutionary experience as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the freethinking anarchist community known as the Mutual Home Colony Association in the community of Home, Washington state from 1898 through 1919. Particular is given to the Mutual Home Colony Association's press, including its publication of several radical newspapers. An overview of the Association's newspaper "The Syndicalist" editor, writer and activist Jay Fox, including his defense of nude bathing, is provided.

This article explores the rise and fall of Thời Luận [Current Commentary Daily], a newspaper in South Vietnam. Launched in response to the 1954–1955 transmigration, Thời Luận initially struggled to attract readers. The paper's reorganization in 1957 led to it becoming Vietnam's first national opposition newspaper, capturing the imagination of Vietnamese readers unlike any newspaper ever had. Its existence revealed the complex nature of state–press relations in the early RVN period. The government, however, shut the paper down, effectively ending a period of sustained political debate in South Vietnam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interracial marriage and relationships were illegal in much of the United States in the early twentieth century. The black press devoted a great deal of attention to this topic, often connecting it to African Americans 'encounters with racism and their struggle for civil rights. Part of this coverage in the national black weekly newspaper the Baltimore Afro-American included short and serial fictional stories on interracial romance. These stories, however, were often a contested medium among readers. Thus, a public debate occurred over the question of interracial romance stories and their place in the Baltimore Afro-American over the course of four months in 1934. This article examines this debate. Ultimately, interracial romance stories brought readers into conversation with each other and the Baltimore Afro-American to create a discourse that tied interracial romance to the African American battle for equality in the early twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chapter 4 of the book "Representing Argentinian Mothers: Medicine, Ideas and Culture in the Modern Era, 1900-1946," by Yolanda Eraso is presented. It discusses the political aspects involved in the Argentine liberal press's depiction of mothers and motherhood during the 1920s and 1930s. An overview of the Argentine liberal newspaper "La Voz del Interior," including its support of feminism, is provided.

Although seldom the subject of scholarly inquiry, the expatriate newspaper is rich in research possibilities. These papers are a laboratory for understanding the evolution of American journalism. In the interest of exploring these possibilities, our study looks at one of the most venerable expatriate newspapers, the Paris Herald, which James Gordon Bennett, Jr. created in 1887 and carries on today with a different name under the ownership of the New York Times Co. The focus of our study is articles of opinion—editorials, letters to the editor, and so forth—and the degree to which they express criticism of the United States. We find the amount and focus of criticism grew over time, a change that can be explained by the emergence of a diverse, globally-minded, English-speaking readership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise and fall of Hicky's Bengal Gazette (1780-82), India's first printed newspaper, is a narrative of prime importance to the history of Indian newspapers, and such is the context within which it has invariably been written. Previous works have approached Hicky's Gazette in a somewhat teleological and insular manner. These accounts have ignored the significance of foreign news among its content and fail to acknowledge Hicky's appropriation of political rhetoric from other parts of the British Empire. Through the contents of Hicky's Gazette we find Calcutta residents engaged in a transoceanic political discourse, criticising 'nabobs' with all the ferocity of the metropolitan British press; claiming the freedoms of Englishmen in common cause with the discontented, not only in Britain, but also in Ireland and America; and participating in discussions to regulate the governance of the East India Company through petitions of grievances. In the circulation of Hicky's paper throughout the presidencies and in the contributions of pseudonymous writers we find a platform for the politically discontented among the European community of Bengal whose voice is otherwise muted amidst the Francis-Hastings disputes and the steady stream of 'official' information between Calcutta and London. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chronicles the history of the black newspaper `Provincial Freeman' which was published between 1853-1860 in Ontario. Focus on a diverse community; Advertising as source of revenue; Functions of the newspaper; Contributions of the newspaper's founder Mary Ann Shadd on the African American press.

This article provides a new perspective on global journalism in the nineteenth century via an examination of the News of the World, a newspaper published in California in the 1870s for an international readership. Steamship newspapers like the News of the World played an important role in global news distribution in the nineteenth century. By the 1870s, however, their viability was being undermined by the growth of the international telegraph network and the development of international news agencies. This case study of the origins and demise of a particular newspaper demonstrates how press history is embedded in the history of transport and communication technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the national discussion in 1900 about press responsibility, which was sparked by the Rev. Charles Sheldon, a pastor of a Congregationalist church, serving a week-long stint as editor of the Topeka (Kansas) Daily Capital. Afterward, the general consensus of the reams of commentary, from both the press and the pastorate, was that editing a daily paper from a "Christian point of view" was a failure. Nevertheless, the debate revealed the pulpit's acknowledgment of its conferral of the role of agent of education and moral uplift upon the press, making it the new arbiter of public opinion. However, it also showed the pulpit challenging the notion of journalistic objectivity as it struggled to redefine news as interpretive and advocative in order to comport with a journalistic ideal grounded in the gospel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on the first Canadian newspaper, the Nova Scotia Gazette, on the eve of the American Revolution. It explores the means by which the paper's printer, Anthony Henry, was able to continue including both American patriot and British loyalist viewpoints long after polarization in the colonies that became the United States drove printers to solely support the Patriot cause. The analysis identifies printerly practices Henry used to continue publishing multiple perspectives. Also discussed are how differences between the economic, political and social reality of Nova Scotia and that of the American colonies contributed to Henry retaining an impartial stance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chicago Defender is one of the largest and most influential African American newspapers in the U.S. Some called it radical and dangerous. That's because as early as 1920 it demanded racial equality, particularly in the South, in jobs, housing and transportation and preached black empowerment and black self-reliance. The paper published incendiary editorials with messages such as, "When the white fiends come to the door to kill you, shoot them down. When the white mob comes, take at least one with you." But did the Defender maintain this aggressive stance some forty years later, in 1968, for instance, at a time when the civil rights movement was spreading across the country? To gain a true sense of history one must study the lion in winter as well as in spring. Thus this research examines what editorial positions the Defender took in 1968 and how readers responded through letters to the editor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By the 1844 presidential election, the United States was fully entrenched in a national two-party system that pitted Whigs against Democrats. Meanwhile, American newspapers were predominantly partisan organs that promoted their respective parties while attacking their opponents. Some special interest publications advocated for causes such as abolition. James G. Birney, a slaveholder turned abolitionist, entered the 1844 race as a third-party candidate. This article studied coverage of his race in Democratic, Whig, and Liberty papers from New York, Kentucky, Alabama, and Ohio to determine whether abolitionist newspapers acted as a party press as well as how the two major parties' newspapers treated the outsider. The two abolitionist journals became partisan organs for the Liberty candidate, advocating Birney and his platform while attacking the enemy. In the Democratic and Whig papers, coverage of the Liberty campaign consisted of linking Birney to the opposing party through rampant accusations of coalitions and forgeries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The weekly press of the nineteenth century constituted a vigorous presence in journalism history often overshadowed by the partisan and penny presses. Typically seen as an instrument of progressive social change, the weekly press was also a commercial powerhouse that attracted profit-seeking publishers and editors such as Robert Bonner and flashy sensationalist journalists such as Leon Lewis. Bonner's New-York Ledger (1855-1898), which employed Lewis, was the bestselling American weekly paper of the nineteenth century, second in the world only to the London Journal. Lewis' journalistic career-which met with fraud, extortion, and even attempted murder-reflects the underworld of weekly press business strategy, practice, and ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This historical examination of the decades-long call for a Christian daily newspaper in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries explicates the broadly felt desire for such a publication, and, in the process, it unpacks the tension between the sacred and the secular, revealing the efforts of a religious community of discourse--as it recognized the growing power of the press over public opinion and modern life--to confirm journalists as moral agents who would reconnect facts with values and to hinge the notion of social responsibility to the news ethic of daily secular journalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of a series of editorial apologies for neglecting coverage of the civil rights movement, this article examines coverage of the 1963 Birmingham campaign in five prestige dailies to explore the social construction of news and the relationship between news organizations, their subjects, and their audiences. This study considers survey data that indicated regional attitudes toward civil rights and found coverage did not always reflect the views of a paper's readers. Southern newspapers tended to discredit movement leaders and their agenda, as well as to emphasize law enforcement's preparedness, while northern and western papers were sympathetic to the movement. The study specifically considers why a midwest paper was hostile to the movement in contradiction to its readers' pro-integration attitude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK tabloid newspaper, the Daily Mirror, waged two prolonged campaigns in 1956 and 2003 against the proposed invasions of Egypt and Iraq. This paper compares and contrasts the campaigns and explores the changing character and voice of the Mirror in the context of efforts to reposition the paper within the popular market, and exert political leverage. It reflects on the meaning of sincerity and identity in relation to newspapers. It analyses and compares the deployment of established tabloid techniques during the two campaigns, including stunts, the use of celebrities, petitions. Particular attention is paid to the presence—and absence—of representations of the reader and the tension between opposing the war and maintaining a patriotic posture by supporting front-line troops. The paper concludes that, although “tabloid citizenship” merely presents the illusion of political participation, in the case of the Iraq campaign, it reinvented the carnival of the popular press in interesting ways and temporarily gave space for some radical journalism attacking neo-imperialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A satirical weekly paper called theGrub-Street Journal(GSJ1730–1737)offered an innovative approach to managing the flow of unverified and contradictory reports that accompanied the growth of newspapers in eighteenth-century London. Using the fictional persona of ‘Quidnunc’ (a contemporary term for news addicts), the editor Richard Russel compiled accounts of the same event from several newspapers and juxtaposed them on the page, thereby revealing their similarities and differences. Russel’s manual version of news ‘aggregation’ exposed errors and contradictions, but it also provided readers with details that would have otherwise required consulting several sources. Meanwhile, Quidnunc interjected ironic remarks, poking fun at the pretensions of news writers, politicians, and others. Anchored in the literary culture of its time, and drawing on learned traditions of textual editing, theGSJoffered readers an eighteenth-century version of media criticism through satire. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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A cover of the Black Panther newspaper depicting American Indian Movement leaders at Wounded Knee features Oglala elder Frank Fools Crow holding a ceremonial pipe in his uplifted fist, a gesture that resembles the Black Panther salute. The 1974 cover layers the iconographic programs of Native and Black social justice movements; it is a graphic statement of intersectional political resistance. Moreover, the paper's coverage of the 1973 Wounded Knee occupation and subsequent trials makes a radical visual argument for the ideological continuity of Red Power and Black Power. This essay proposes that the newspaper's visual director, Emory Douglas, developed an intersectional liberation aesthetics that transformed the critique of structural oppression into a sustained call for radical revolution. Reporting in the Black Panther consistently addressed "all oppressed people," a perspective that remains relevant for activists today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the first historical examination of how the Scripps-McRae League of US newspapers reported the uprising in Cuba in the 1890s and the Spanish-American War in Cuba in 1898. It is based on the E. W. Scripps papers at Ohio University and a close reading of all war news in the league's flagship Cleveland Press. Founder E. W. Scripps applied his conservative business model to limit expenses, which put his newspapers at a competitive disadvantage. News from the war zone was delayed by disease, military censorship, and limited independent transportation and was overshadowed by war coverage in Washington. The league's low-cost strategy pushed coverage toward observational narratives, including portrayals of the Cuban people that shifted from admiring and supportive before the war to racist deprecation afterward. Scripps-McRae war correspondents are identified and their contributions analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the way the nineteenth-century newspaper was oriented towards information. Despite their political differences, nineteenth-century newspapers were often discussed as if they were universal, with a paper for every segment of society. My argument is that this apparent universality, where the newspaper was figured as a print genre potentially open to all, laid the foundations for the emergence of the popular press. The paper is in two parts. The first considers the nineteenth-century newspaper as a genre, arguing that its periodicity enabled it to serve as a perfect medium, passing on content derived from elsewhere. The second explores the way information was conceived in the period. By looking at the way the newspaper drew upon, represented, and distributed information, it is possible to understand how it functioned as material media. In conclusion, I look at the way the nineteenth-century newspaper is changed through digitization today. When scholars access nineteenth-century newspapers through digital resources, they engage with a different material media that, in turn, reconfigures the source material. Such encounters foreground the importance of genre while providing new opportunities for its study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite much recent work on the British newspaper press there is still much ground to be explored about the political activities of regional journalists in their local areas – as opposed to their metropolitan counterparts. This article examines the five radical newspapers published in three midlands towns in the early 1790s. While examining the journalists' stance on the key national issues of the day the article also places their newspapers in the context of their towns' internal political rivalries. The newspapers all faced opposition: loyalist associations sought to entrap their conductors, the government supplied rival newspapers with political material to counter them, the Post Office disrupted their delivery, and local advertisers boycotted their columns. Most importantly, nearly all the journalists faced prosecution, and two of them went to prison. Finally, the article summarizes the collapse of the midlands radical press and its revival after 1808. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]