1. Press, Paper, and the Public Sphere.
- Author
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Kaplan, Richard L.
- Subjects
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MASS media , *HISTORY of newspapers , *TECHNOLOGICAL innovations , *SCARCITY , *NEWSPRINT , *JOURNALISTIC ethics , *HISTORY , *HISTORY of technological innovations - Abstract
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]
- Published
- 2015
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