The Spectacle of Sunday Delivery

Sunday papers regularly illustrated features about their own printing and circulation. Presented as a modern spectacle, the story of delivering the paper was supported by a complex system of circulation. The high-speed cylinder printing press was an assembly line for mass reproduction. Pulitzer's New York World pressroom had a viewing gallery for all to see the paper in production, an important parallel to its slogan, “circulation books open to all.” Other papers followed suit. Mass delivery was likewise profiled with sensational self-promotion, although the semblance of local competition over circulation masked tight monopoly control in distribution. The American News Company had a throttle on national newspaper circulation, controlling many urban carrier routes, sales aboard trains, and wholesale distribution of out-of-town papers, books and magazines. City delivery relied on fleets of wagons and trucks; the regional fast train delivered Sunday papers beyond city limits. But newsboys were the public face of these continental networks of circulation. Despite newsboys' sentimental favor, the push for technologies led to coin-operated news boxes, at first called “automatic newsboys.” The fascination with newspaper delivery reminded readers that getting physical copies of the paper into their homes required conquering the limits of time and space.