EMPIRE OF INK

Reading all about it, way back when.

In this engaging account, Wright, author of Cataloging the World: Paul Outlet and the Birth of the Information Age (2014), writes that 18th-century European printers worked for governments and booksellers, but their colonial counterparts were not just tradespeople but writers, editors, and provocateurs; our Revolution might not have happened without them. It was less our Constitution than two obscure laws that enshrined America’s press. Until tightened in 1909, the Copyright Act of 1790 excluded newspapers, so editors happily plagiarized from rivals and any writing that might entertain readers. The Post Office Act of 1792 provided a massive subsidy. At the time, mailing personal letters cost 6 to 25 cents; a newspaper might cost a penny. During that period, newspapers constituted perhaps 95% of U.S. mail, which reached everywhere, providing an information exchange anticipating today’s social media. Wright concentrates on the 19th century, when newspapers thrived. Many were small-town, one-person operations whose editors relied on scissors and paste, cutting stories from rivals to revise and republish along with local gossip, scandal, advertising, poems, and essays. Advances included making paper from wood instead of rags, which reduced costs by more than 90%. Hand-operated presses of 1800 were replaced by rotary, steam-operated models in the 1830s, 10 times faster, and then by the spectacular 1886 linotype, which eliminated human typesetters. By 1900, journalism became capital-intensive, attracting powerful printer-publishers such as Hearst, Pulitzer, and Newhouse, who soon dominated the industry but also created professional journalism that emphasized accuracy over advocacy and opinion. The first journalism school dates from 1908. Deploring the ongoing newspaper crisis (one-third of them have closed since 2005), Wright strains to find a silver lining, suggesting that the viral dynamics of social media may revive the free-wheeling artisanal industry of the 1800s.

A fresh, often startling account of newspapers’ early years.