Newspapers

Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

My grandfather worked as a typesetter for a Dallas newspaper for many years. Because of my interest in writing and taking journalism in high school and college, we shared time talking about newspapers and how they were published. One of his first jobs as a young boy was delivering newspapers in Victoria, Texas where his father was a doctor. In writing a novel loosely based on his life, I did research about newspapers which I found to be interesting.

 Even though daily newspapers are dwindling today, they were once the main source of news for those who were literate and could afford the price. Printing in colonial America was expensive with small circulations. No editor could afford to put more than one or two issues a week. Because of the expense of printing and distributing the paper, many of the common folks in town were excluded. Even though Americans tended to be literate, they simply didn’t have the money to buy newspapers. Thus, the circulation remained small.

One of the early "newspaper" sheets circa 1690.

In spite of the expense, early newspapers had a profound influence on the early years of our federal government. Articles, essays, and editorials were in abundance and the organs for political faction. Many politicians became connected to specific newspapers.

Noah Webster, before publishing the first American dictionary, started the first daily newspaper in 1783 in New York City named the American Minerva. Essentially, it was an organ of the Federalist Party. Although in operation for only a few years, it influenced and inspired the establishment of later newspapers.

Eight years later, Alexander Hamilton founded the Post, and it also had some political affiliation. At the time, the newspaper became the means for politicians to communicate with their constituents. The papers carried accounts of newsworthy events as well as letters from the people who voiced their opinions concerning political matters.

John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and Andrew Jackson all had political campaigns which played out on the pages of newspapers. This type of political action continued well into the 1820’s.

As newspapers began a transformation in the 1830’s, they turned to publishing news of current events, local happenings, and non-partisan editorials and essays. The price also went down which allowed for the working class and even new immigrants to buy them. Now everyone could afford the paper and reading the news every morning became a routine in many households across the country.

Some of the great names in the industry as it grew included Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune and James Gordon Bennett, pictured above, of the New York Herald. They both possessed strong personalities and controversial opinions as expressed in their respective newspapers.

Another editor, William Cullen Bryant, edited the New York Evening Post even though people knew him better as a poet. The New York Times began publishing in 1851 with Henry J. Raymond at the helm. Raymond worked under Greeley, and the newspaper was considered an upstart without any strong political connection.

Newspaper Press Circa 1865

As the nation grew, underwent wars, and invented new technologies, the newspapers grew as well. With the invention of the linotype by Ottmar Mergenthaler, the papers could publish larger editions with more pages and more news of interest to more people such as news about sporting events.

In the late 1880s Joseph Pulitzer, a successful publisher from St. Louis, bought a paper in New York City. Pulitzer transformed the business of print news by focusing on events that would appeal to common people. He focused on crime stories and other sensational subjects in New York World. The vivid headlines, produced by a staff of specialized editors, pulled in readers.

Pulitzer met with great success in New York, but in the mid 1890’s, a competitor came into the picture. William Randolph Hearst, already the publisher of a San Francisco newspaper, moved to New York City and purchased the New York Journal.

From the competition between the two men came a circulation war, the likes of which had not been seen before. There had been competitive publishers before, of course, but nothing like this. The sensationalism of the competition became known as Yellow Journalism.

In the 19^th and early to late 20^th Century, our nation witnessed a rise in newspaper circulation. Newspapers were delivered to the home, sold at newsstands or hawked by newsboys on city streets. 

Now, in the 21^st century, we see its decline. People now depend on electronic media to give them up-to-date news about events around the world. With the news flashes available on cell phones and computers, even the news on TV may seem old.

Most Americans today are in a rush for everything, and getting the news as soon as it happens is more appealing than reading through various sections in a daily newspaper. With rising costs and smaller editions, the newspapers of today are becoming less and less a necessity of our daily lives.

How much of a part does a newspaper play in your daily life? Do you prefer a printed version or electronic?

It's getting to be rodeo time here in Houston, and my newest release features a barrel-racing heroine. 

Kylee is the youngest of the Danner clan and drops out of college to barrel race full-time and spend more time with her rodeo sweetheart, Jesse Martin. Connor Morris, known as Jesse Martin on the rodeo circuit, is in love with Kylee, but he is keeping his true identity from her for now. When her brothers discover Jesse Martin is an ex-con on parole, they jump in and decide Kylee must break off the relationship. Kylee can’t believe Jesse is what they say, but when he doesn’t show up at the rodeo where they’re both competing, she grows suspicious. When the truth of his identity as Connor Morris is revealed in a news item on television, it is even more shocking to Kylee. His retired movie queen mother has had a heart attack and is at a hospital in Denver. He is shown there with a woman claiming to be his fiancée, and she calls him Connor Morris, son of Hal Morris, who was running for U.S. Senator from Colorado. Jesse must now not only gain back Kylee’s love and trust, he must also convince her father and brothers that he loves Kylee and the TV story was a big mix-up. 

Martha Rogers is a multi-published author and writes a weekly devotional for ACFW. Martha and her husband Rex live in Houston, Texas where they are active members of First Baptist Church. They are the parents of three sons and grandparents to eleven grandchildren and great-grandparents to four, soon to be five. Martha is a retired teacher with twenty-eight years teaching Home Economics and English at the secondary level and eight years at the college level supervising student teachers and teaching freshman English. She is the Director of the Texas Christian Writers Conference held in Houston in August each year, a member of ACFW, ACFW WOTS chapter in Houston, and a member of the writers’ group, Inspirational Writers Alive.

Find Martha at:  www.marthawrogers.com, Twitter:  @martharogers2                Facebook: Martha Rogers Author

Tidbits from 1875 Advertisements

By Lynn Coleman

Below is a series of five images that represent the column from an 1875 New York newspaper. Most are of a help wanted nature but not all. These tidbits give us a look into the historical lives of women who lived in New York City in 1875.

I love searching through old newspapers to get a feel for what life was like but also to inspire me with possible situations or backgrounds for my historical characters. Can you image being the German Girl listed below placing an ad to find a job in the city or country. What brought her to America? Why is she on her own and looking for a place to live? Did something happen to her family? Did she happen upon hard times once she arrived or did she escape her own country for the hope of a better life? These are just a few of the questions that come to mind when I see an advertisement like that. What comes to your mind from these ads? Take the time to browse through these and leave a comment about where these tidbits lead you.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post.

Lynn A. Coleman is an award winning & best-selling author who makes her home in Keystone Heights, Florida, with her husband of 39 years. Check out her 19th Century Historical Tidbits Blog if you like exploring different tidbits of history.

The Boston Post Cane

 

A Small Town Tradition and a Giveaway!

by Susan Page Davis

  For more than 100 years, the Boston Post was the most popular daily newspaper in New England. Founded in 1831, it published until 1956. Its circulation peaked in the 1930s at over 600,000, when it was one of the largest daily papers in the U.S. By the time it folded, competition had cut seriously into its territory, and the Post closed out with a circulation of about 255,000.

 

Over its lifetime, the Post’s owners undertook various publicity campaigns. The most famous began in 1909, with the presentation of several hundred ornate, gold-headed canes to New England towns (sources disagree on how many there were, but I'm going with a source I trust, which says 431). In my research, I wasn’t able to discover how the towns were chosen, but not every town received one.

 

Head of the Winthrop, Mass. cane
photo by Bill McCurdy, license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en
 

Selectmen were elected officials in the local government. In the towns that received canes, they were to give them in a ceremony to each town’s oldest living man. That man would keep it until he died, when the family was to return it to the town, so that the cane could be passed to the next oldest male resident. In 1930, this custom was modified to include women.



Boston Post Cane, photo courtesy of Lane Memorial Library, Hampton, N.H.

The canes were fashioned of ebony wood. Though locals sometimes refer to them as “gold canes,” only the round head of each was 14-karat gold. The flat top of each one was inscribed with the words, “Presented by the Boston Post to the oldest citizen of,” followed by the town’s name, and the words, “To be transmitted” in parentheses. Every time a new honoree received one, the Boston Post got a new shot of publicity.

 

Many towns in New England still carry on the tradition of the Boston Post Cane with the original canes they received in 1909. When I worked for the Central Maine Morning Central in the 1980s and 1990s, I attended several of these ceremonies, as a couple of the towns in the area I covered still had their canes. The presentation was intended to show respect, and the elderly recipients always considered it an honor.

 

Certificate presented at cane ceremony by the town of Wintrhop, Mass., in 2010
photo by Bill McCurdy, license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

Some towns now keep the original cane on display and present a replica, plaque, or lapel pin. A lot of the canes disappeared over the years, as sometimes the holder’s family forgot about it, or the town officials had changed and the new ones didn’t remember to ask for it. A few are known to have been stolen or destroyed by fire. One was “lost” for three years and then found in the town’s vault, where it had been all along. A few of the canes have shown up at auctions and estate sales, but many are lost.

 More than a hundred towns have reportedly retired their canes. Hampton, New Hampshire, stopped giving theirs out in the 1970s. Some people were confused about its meaning, and some elderly residents “feared getting the cane,” a later town clerk reported. Some people reportedly thought they would soon die if they accepted it.

 

Head of the Hampton, N.H., cane
 photo courtesy of Lane Memorial Library

The Hampton selectmen also grew tired of conflicting claims of who was the eldest resident. Their cane is now on display in a glass case, as was the one in Clinton, Maine, where I used to live and photograph the recipients. Clinton's, however, was stolen from the town office in 2011.

 

In a 1983 article in Yankee Magazine, the whereabouts of 400 Boston Post Canes was accounted for after extensive research. Just for fun, and to keep the memory of this tradition alive, I wrote a short story about the passing of the cane. I call it “Cane and Mabel,” and entered it in a contest for short-short stories on Family Fiction. You can read it here: http://is.gd/iGGtV8
If you enjoy the story, please give it a “thumbs up!”

 

Also for your enjoyment, today I am giving away a copy of one of my romantic suspense books set in Maine. Leave a comment to be entered in the drawing for either the print or e-book version of On a Killer’s Trail. The winner will be drawn Feb. 28.

Susan Page Davis is the author of more than forty published novels. A history major, she’s always interested in the unusual happenings of the past. She’s a two-time winner of the Inspirational Readers’ Choice Award, and also a winner of the Carol Award and the Will Rogers Medallion, and a finalist in the WILLA Awards and the More Than Magic Contest. Visit her website at: www.susanpagedavis.com .

Historic Women in Journalism by Laurie Alice Eakes

Historic Women in Journalism by Laurie Alice Eakes

Elizabeth Timothée, wife of a French Huguenot, is acknowledged to be the first female editor and journalist in North America. In the 1730s, her husband entered into a contract with Benjamin Franklin to begin the South Carolina Gazette. Louis Timothée anglicized his name to Timothy and set about creating the soon-to-be successful Gazette in Charleston, South Carolina. Unfortunately for him, he died with a year to run on his contract and the business passed to his son.

Elizabeth Timothee as depicted from KnowItAll

 His son, Peter, was only thirteen at the time. His mother Elizabeth took over the business, providing the explanation to readers that, in Europe, women often helped with the family business, especially If the son was young. For eight years, until her son turned twenty-one, Elizabeth wrote for and edited the publication. She reported on the colonial assembly, as well as producing books and pamphlets.

Other women followed, though most have been lost in obscurity, but not all the writers of articles in such famous publications as La Belle Assemblée and The Lady’s Monthly Museum, were men. Women wrote on fashion and manners and reported on events of the day.

Eliza Nicholson was another woman who inherited editing a newspaper from her husband. 

Eliza Nicholson aka Pearl Rivers

For Nicholson, she received full control of the New Orleans Daily Picayune and created several innovations such as pages dedicated to women and children, literature, and a gossip column. For the latter, she hired Dorothy Dix, who became a legendary journalist in her own right growing into a female syndicated columnist for decades read by millions around the world.

And in this brief discussion of women journalists, we must not forget Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of Godey's Lady's Book from 1837-1877. Most issues included articles and writings by men and women; however, three special publications contained works by women only.

With these examples of some women who made their mark on the world of the written media, when I went hunting for a career for my career-minded heroine, who was also one of the first women to receive a four-year college degree from a liberal arts college along side men, journalist was a natural choice. After all, I needed a reason for her to return to her home town on that fateful train featured in

 The Professor’s Heart.

Laurie Alice Eakes is the author of over a dozen books. She writes full-time from her home in Texas, where she lives  with her husband and sundry dogs and cats. You can find her on Facebook and Twitter under @LaurieAEakes.

19th Century Newspapers - Timelines

Hi! Winnie Griggs here.

The hero of my upcoming June release, The Bride Next Door, runs a one man newspaper office in a small town in Northeast Texas. The story takes place in 1895 so I had to do quite a bit of research into what newspaper production was like at this time and when certain advancements came about so I could figure out what he would be dealing with. As I dug through various sources I developed a number of timelines and thought I would share those with you today.  (Special Note:  In honor of that upcoming release I'll be doing a giveaway in conjunction with this post so make sure to look for the details at the bottom of the post)

The first timeline is one that looks at how widespread newspapers were. Most of these numbers came from US census reports. Some of the numbers surprised me.

Spread of newspapers in the US (numbers are approximate)

• 1801       200 newspapers
• 1814       350 newspapers
• 1830       715 newspapers
• 1850    2,500 newspapers
• 1860    3,000 newspapers
• 1870    5,000 newspapers
• 1880    7,000 newspapers

The next timeline I developed from my research was one that looked at the technological developments. Some of these advancements happened much earlier than I expected, and some later.

• 1823 The steam driven printing press is invented by Jonas Booth. This makes the mechanical process of newspaper printing more efficient and less costly.
• 1844 The opening of the first telegraph line provides near-instant long distance communication. This makes it possible for local newspapers to offer timely coverage of far-off events.
• 1847 A four-cylinder rotary press is invented by Robert Hoe. Hoe's press can print up to 8000 pages per hour. This development caps off more than twenty years of improvements to the rudimentary cylinder presses developed in Europe..
• 1850’s Giant presses popped up during this decade that were able to print ten thousand complete papers every hour.
• 1875 The offset printing process for printing on tin was developed by Robert Barclay of England. It would be twenty-eight years later before Ira Rubel of the United States would take the process and rework it for printing on paper. This would become the beginning of a process still used by printing and publishing companies today.
• 1879 The benday process, an entirely mechanical procedure for production of halftone images, is developed by Benjamin Day Jr., a New York newspaper engraver.
• 1884 The Linotype method of printing is introduced. This was a process of creating movable type by machine rather than by hand and it marked a significant leap in production speed.
• 1886 Ottmar Mergenthaler set up the first successful automatic typesetting machine in the offices of The New York Tribune.

The third timeline I developed was one of milestones and significant/interesting

• 1815 Samuel Bangs established himself as the first printer in Texas when he set up a printing press on Galveston Island. Later he was captured by the Mexicans and sent to Mexico City where he became that country’s public printer.
• 1820 Many of the newspapers in America’s major cities are considered "mercantile papers", and had the words mercantile, advertiser or commercial as part of their names. They were often published on large sheets of paper and cost about six cents a copy, more than many working class folk could afford, making newspapers the province of the wealthy.
• 1833 The first edition of the New York Sun is issued. It was the first mass produced newspaper in America and was printed on four letter sized pages. Because of the innovations, it was much cheaper to produce and sold for a penny a copy, ushering in the age of the "penny press". The lower price and focus on human interest stories soon attracted a much wider audience made up of ordinary citizens. Within two years, the New York Sun was selling 15,000 copies a day.
• 1835 The first edition of the New York Herald is issued. This paper will quickly grow to become America's most widely read newspaper.
• 1849 A group of American newspaper publishers organize a group that will later become known as the Associated Press (AP). Their original purpose is to acquire news information from Europe.
• 1850’s During this decade, woodcut engravings come into use to illustrate news stories spurring the growth of "pictorial" weekly newspapers. These engravings were made either from news correspondent sketches/descriptions or from photographs.
• 1851 The Post Office starts offering a special inexpensive newspaper rate making long distance distribution more economical.
• 1856 This year saw a number of advancements. The New York Ledger publishes the first full-page newspaper ad. Machines that will mechanically fold newspapers are developed. Photographer Mathew Brady popularizes large type newspaper ads.
• 1859 The first baseball box score, very similar to today's version, appears in the New York Clipper. Devised by Henry Chadwick, the box score allows newspapers across the country to provide standardized and succinct summaries of baseball games to a growing national audience.
• 1860 The New York Herald starts the first newspaper archive (more commonly referred to as "morgue" in newspaper circles)
• 1863 Famous illustrator Thomas Nast creates a front page woodcut for Harper’s Weekly that becomes the iconic image of Santa Claus we still have with us today.
• 1867 The first double column advertising appears for the department store Lord & Taylor.
• 1873 The first illustrated daily newspaper is published in New York.
• 1880 First halftone photograph published in a newspaper. This was the famous illustration "Shantytown" by Stephen Horgan and it appeared in the New York Daily Graphic.
• 1883 Joseph Pulitzer acquires the New York World from Jay Gould for $346,000.
• 1885 It becomes common for newspapers to be delivered daily by train to outreaching areas.
• 1887 William Randolph Hearst is named as the editor of the San Francisco Examiner.
• 1890’s During this decade the first circulation figures of a million copies per issue were recorded.
• 1897 The New York Journal publishes the first color Sunday funny papers.
  1898 The term ‘yellow journalism’ is born. When the USS Maine sinks in Havana Harbor, Cuba in a mysterious explosion, The New York Journal immediately blames Spain. This helps push the US into war with Spain. Those who condemn the paper for its sensational and reckless reporting call it ‘yellow journalism’. Note: Many historians today believe the explosion was caused by an internal fire that spread to on board ammunition.

If you'd like to see pictures of the printing press and newspaper office I used as my inspiration for the one featured in this book, you can find it on the Pinterest Board I set up for this book at this link: http://pinterest.com/wdgriggs/book-the-bride-next-door-06-13/

I'd love to hear what parts of this information (if any) surprised you and what parts you found the most interesting.

And now for the giveaway.

I'll be selecting two of today's commenters to recieve a copy of The Bride Next Door (or a choice of any book from my backlist).  I'll pick the winner at 10:00 am CST on Monday and post the name in the comments of this blog.

Love Thy Neighbor? 

After years of wandering, Daisy Johnson hopes to settle in Turnabout, Texas, open a restaurant, perhaps find a husband. Of course, she'd envisioned a man who actually likes her. Not someone who offers a marriage of convenience to avoid scandal.

Turnabout is just a temporary stop for newspaper reporter Everett Fulton. Thanks to one pesky connecting door and a local gossip, he's suddenly married, but his dreams of leaving haven't changed. What Daisy wants - home, family, tenderness - he can't provide. Yet big-city plans are starting to pale beside small-town warmth...