https://www.dailyhistory.org/index.php?title=News_over_the_Wires_-_Book_Review&feed=atom&action=historyNews over the Wires - Book Review - Revision history2024-03-29T08:48:22ZRevision history for this page on the wikiMediaWiki 1.30.0https://www.dailyhistory.org/index.php?title=News_over_the_Wires_-_Book_Review&diff=24034&oldid=prevAdmin at 05:47, 23 September 20212021-09-23T05:47:19Z<p></p>
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<tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>In <i>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/067462212X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=067462212X&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=442704e8ea61d8459f5ce027a668a0c4 News over the Wires: The Telegraph and the Flow of Public Information in America, 1844-1897]</i> published by the Harvard University Press, Menahem Blondheim argues that the telegraph was a <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">key </del>moment in the change from an "age of transportation" to an "age of electric communication." He quotes an 1847 poem to highlight the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">change</del>, with rhapsodizing over "the sleepless heralds [who] run along the smooth and slender wires." <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Clearly, an </del>earlier idea of communication as a messenger traveling across space has survived in the emerging nineteenth-century ways of understanding "instant" transmission. The possibility that information could be transmitted immediately to multiple points seemed wondrous to people of the time, as if it were a force of nature, like the rays of the sun. The telegraph could allow details of life and death importance to be conveyed much more quickly<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">, and its </del>utility to the financial industry (e.g. verifying checks against existing accounts, developing networks) was <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">obvious</del>.  </div></td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">[[File:Telegraph.jpeg|250px|left|thumbnail|Telegraph Wires]]</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>In <i>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/067462212X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=067462212X&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=442704e8ea61d8459f5ce027a668a0c4 News over the Wires: The Telegraph and the Flow of Public Information in America, 1844-1897]</i> published by the Harvard University Press, Menahem Blondheim argues that the telegraph was a <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">crucial </ins>moment in the change from an "age of transportation" to an "age of electric communication." He quotes an 1847 poem to highlight the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">difference</ins>, with rhapsodizing over "the sleepless heralds [who] run along the smooth and slender wires." <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">An </ins>earlier idea of communication as a messenger traveling across space has survived in the emerging nineteenth-century ways of understanding "instant" transmission. The possibility that information could be transmitted immediately to multiple points seemed wondrous to people of the time, as if it were a force of nature, like the rays of the sun. The telegraph could allow details of life and death importance to be conveyed much more quickly<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">. Its </ins>utility to the financial industry (e.g.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">, </ins>verifying checks against existing accounts, developing networks) was <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">evident</ins>.  </div></td></tr>
<tr><td class='diff-marker'> </td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"></td><td class='diff-marker'> </td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"></td></tr>
<tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>The 1840s and 50s saw a reduction in price differences between different regional markets, as information about goods could become more widely shared by people geographically separated. Some noted the potentially adverse effect of the telegraph on state sovereignties and local authority, as people's access to information grows more uniform and sources become more centralized. Blondheim is particularly interested in the role of the Associated Press, first as an oligopoly (the New York AP and the Western AP) and then as a monopoly of information when two competitors joined forces.</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>The 1840s and 50s saw a reduction in price differences between different regional markets, as information about goods could become more widely shared by people geographically separated. Some noted the potentially adverse effect of the telegraph on state sovereignties and local authority, as people's access to information grows more uniform<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">, </ins>and sources become more centralized. Blondheim is particularly interested in the role of the Associated Press, first as an oligopoly (the New York AP and the Western AP) and then as a monopoly of information when two competitors joined forces.</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class='diff-marker'> </td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"></td><td class='diff-marker'> </td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"></td></tr>
<tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Blondheim is careful to note that the telegraph only improved upon rapid and recent gains in the speed of information. Between 1790 and 1817 the time it took for messages to reach Boston from Washington went from 18 to 6.2 days, and by 1841 it took only 2.8 days. All this without the telegraph. The author says that the new device only improved the speed by a day or two, but that is also supposing that the news travels between two major cities with significant transportation infrastructure. At the start of the nineteenth century, there was <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">actually </del>a dearth of news<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">, </del>since the population was small, scattered, and locally focused, and even the party papers had not gotten fully started yet. Blondheim describes this period as the 'discovery of timeliness,' as instant transmission meant getting the scoop on a story was more important than ever. He quotes James Carey: "when information moves at unequal rates of speed, what is already the past for the privileged is still the future for the deprived." Using the mail system privileged private correspondence over the cumbersome process of editing and printing a publication, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">thus favoring insiders; </del>so newspapers invested in costly pony and locomotive express to get <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the edge of </del>new information<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">, allowing </del>the public sphere <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">could </del>compete with the private in terms of speed. By the time these accomplishments had been made, the telegraph came along (1844) to nullify their significance.</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Blondheim is careful to note that the telegraph only improved upon rapid and recent gains in the speed of information. Between 1790 and 1817<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">, </ins>the time it took for messages to reach Boston from Washington went from 18 to 6.2 days, and by 1841 it took only 2.8 days. All this without the telegraph. The author says that the new device only improved the speed by a day or two, but that is also supposing that the news travels between two major cities with significant transportation infrastructure. At the start of the nineteenth century, there was a dearth of news since the population was small, scattered, and locally focused, and even the party papers had not gotten fully started yet. Blondheim describes this period as the 'discovery of timeliness,' as instant transmission meant getting the scoop on a story was more important than ever. He quotes James Carey: "when information moves at unequal rates of speed, what is already the past for the privileged is still the future for the deprived." Using the mail system privileged private correspondence over the cumbersome process of editing and printing a publication<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">. This system favored insiders</ins>, so newspapers invested in <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">a </ins>costly pony and locomotive express to get new information <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">faster. This change allowed </ins>the public sphere <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">to </ins>compete with the private in terms of speed. By the time these accomplishments had been made, the telegraph came along (1844) to nullify their significance.</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class='diff-marker'> </td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"></td><td class='diff-marker'> </td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"></td></tr>
<tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Oddly enough, Samuel F.B. Morse's dad was the Noah Webster of teaching geography in America. And he missed his wife's funeral because of the slowness of news. "Unlike most previous technological advances applied to communications, the telegraph was not a vehicle but a channel." It was multidirectional, as evidenced in the role it played in the 1844 Democratic nominating convention when Silas Wright let the Dems know he declined <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">joining </del>the ticket with James Polk. While older systems such as the mails or private expresses favored those with connections or large capital investments, the telegraph did not destroy all such inequities - geography still played a role, even though lines proliferated rapidly in the 1840s and 50s. Nearness to the lines and points of convergence in the networks, like New York or Boston, still mattered. In this sense, the network was nearly as rigid as the railroads and perhaps even more centrally controlled.</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Oddly enough, Samuel F.B. Morse's dad was the Noah Webster of teaching geography in America. And he missed his wife's funeral because of the slowness of <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the </ins>news. "Unlike most previous technological advances applied to communications, the telegraph was not a vehicle but a channel." It was multidirectional, as evidenced in the role it played in the 1844 Democratic nominating convention when Silas Wright let the Dems know he declined <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">to join </ins>the ticket with James Polk. While older systems such as the mails or private expresses favored those with connections or large capital investments, the telegraph did not destroy all such inequities - geography still played a role, even though lines proliferated rapidly in the 1840s and 50s. Nearness to the lines and points of convergence in the networks, like New York or Boston, still mattered. In this sense, the network was nearly as rigid as the railroads and perhaps even more centrally controlled.</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class='diff-marker'> </td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"></td><td class='diff-marker'> </td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"></td></tr>
<tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Some thought instantaneous communication should have helped resolve social problems, but the author points to Lewis Mumford's ideas about communication's "paradox" - basically, that the more people talk to each other, the more they disagree. The AP had existed 15 years prior to the Civil War, but it had not fostered an adequate enough understanding of regional differences to prevent conflict. Indeed, Blondheim argues, "The change in the speed and scope of political reporting accelerated escalation of the sectional issue… Ultimately, rapid and intensive circulation of political statements nationwide made it impossible for the parties and candidates to say different things in different areas." Robert Wiebe may have described Americans as living in "island communities" at the start of the Gilded Age, in the late 19th century, but Blondheim argues that the telegraph began to expose people to more homogenized insights about the outside world once the Civil War and Reconstruction had come to pass. On one hand, we may say that the AP, being a monopoly that could easily impose a uniform slant on its reporting, meant there was very little choice available in terms of news. On the other hand, one could say that the telegraph and the AP made a greater number of political viewpoints available since the various <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">parties’ </del>actual platforms were better known throughout the country than they had been in earlier years.</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Some thought instantaneous communication should have helped resolve social problems, but the author points to Lewis Mumford's ideas about communication's "paradox" - basically, that the more people talk to each other, the more they disagree. The AP had existed 15 years prior to the Civil War, but it had not fostered an adequate enough understanding of regional differences to prevent conflict. Indeed, Blondheim argues, "The change in the speed and scope of political reporting accelerated escalation of the sectional issue… Ultimately, rapid and intensive circulation of political statements nationwide made it impossible for the parties and candidates to say different things in different areas." Robert Wiebe may have described Americans as living in "island communities" at the start of the Gilded Age, in the late 19th century, but Blondheim argues that the telegraph began to expose people to more homogenized insights about the outside world once the Civil War and Reconstruction had come to pass. On one hand, we may say that the AP, being a monopoly that could easily impose a uniform slant on its reporting, meant there was very little choice available in terms of news. On the other hand, one could say that the telegraph and the AP made a greater number of political viewpoints available since the various <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">parties' </ins>actual platforms were better known throughout the country than they had been in earlier years.</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class='diff-marker'> </td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"></td><td class='diff-marker'> </td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"></td></tr>
<tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>News over the Wires contains an argument about longer-term American political and social development. It makes a nice companion piece to Michael McGerr's The Decline of Popular Politics, which illustrates the shift from a classic nineteenth-century model of high voter turnout, intense partisanship, political machines and pageantry, to a new politics characterized by "education" (intellectual arguments about policy, widely distributed), advertising, and sensational mass journalism. Blondheim sees the AP replacing the old partisan journalism with a new, "objective," rationalized, mass-market form of knowledge, lacking in regional curiosities. "The wire service was not a local institution," he notes. AP leaders emphasized facts, unjudged, and considered information to be a commodity like any other. Blondheim acknowledges that this regime of supposed neutrality tended to favor Republicans, business, and anti-labor politics, and may have influenced key elections along the way, but he does not account for how the intensely biased media institutions of distinctive personalities like Pulitzer and Hearst grew up alongside this so-called monopoly of singular general knowledge.</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>News over the Wires contains an argument about longer-term American political and social development. It makes a nice companion piece to Michael McGerr's The Decline of Popular Politics, which illustrates the shift from a classic nineteenth-century model of high voter turnout, intense partisanship, political machines<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">, </ins>and pageantry, to a new politics characterized by "education" (intellectual arguments about policy, widely distributed), advertising, and sensational mass journalism. Blondheim sees the AP replacing the old partisan journalism with a new, "objective," rationalized, mass-market form of knowledge, lacking in regional curiosities. "The wire service was not a local institution," he notes. AP leaders emphasized facts, unjudged, and considered information to be a commodity like any other. Blondheim acknowledges that this regime of supposed neutrality tended to favor Republicans, business, and anti-labor politics, and may have influenced key elections along the way, but he does not account for how the intensely biased media institutions of distinctive personalities like Pulitzer and Hearst grew up alongside this so-called monopoly of singular general knowledge.</div></td></tr>
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</table>Adminhttps://www.dailyhistory.org/index.php?title=News_over_the_Wires_-_Book_Review&diff=24032&oldid=prevAdmin at 05:40, 23 September 20212021-09-23T05:40:43Z<p></p>
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<tr><td class='diff-marker'> </td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>News over the Wires contains an argument about longer-term American political and social development. It makes a nice companion piece to Michael McGerr's The Decline of Popular Politics, which illustrates the shift from a classic nineteenth-century model of high voter turnout, intense partisanship, political machines and pageantry, to a new politics characterized by "education" (intellectual arguments about policy, widely distributed), advertising, and sensational mass journalism. Blondheim sees the AP replacing the old partisan journalism with a new, "objective," rationalized, mass-market form of knowledge, lacking in regional curiosities. "The wire service was not a local institution," he notes. AP leaders emphasized facts, unjudged, and considered information to be a commodity like any other. Blondheim acknowledges that this regime of supposed neutrality tended to favor Republicans, business, and anti-labor politics, and may have influenced key elections along the way, but he does not account for how the intensely biased media institutions of distinctive personalities like Pulitzer and Hearst grew up alongside this so-called monopoly of singular general knowledge.</div></td><td class='diff-marker'> </td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>News over the Wires contains an argument about longer-term American political and social development. It makes a nice companion piece to Michael McGerr's The Decline of Popular Politics, which illustrates the shift from a classic nineteenth-century model of high voter turnout, intense partisanship, political machines and pageantry, to a new politics characterized by "education" (intellectual arguments about policy, widely distributed), advertising, and sensational mass journalism. Blondheim sees the AP replacing the old partisan journalism with a new, "objective," rationalized, mass-market form of knowledge, lacking in regional curiosities. "The wire service was not a local institution," he notes. AP leaders emphasized facts, unjudged, and considered information to be a commodity like any other. Blondheim acknowledges that this regime of supposed neutrality tended to favor Republicans, business, and anti-labor politics, and may have influenced key elections along the way, but he does not account for how the intensely biased media institutions of distinctive personalities like Pulitzer and Hearst grew up alongside this so-called monopoly of singular general knowledge.</div></td></tr>
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</table>Adminhttps://www.dailyhistory.org/index.php?title=News_over_the_Wires_-_Book_Review&diff=20481&oldid=prevAdmin at 23:49, 27 April 20202020-04-27T23:49:22Z<p></p>
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<tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>In <i>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/067462212X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=067462212X&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=442704e8ea61d8459f5ce027a668a0c4 News over the Wires: The Telegraph and the Flow of Public Information in America, 1844-1897]</i> published by the Harvard University Press, Menahem Blondheim argues that the telegraph was a key moment in the change from an "age of transportation" to an "age of electric communication." He quotes an 1847 poem to highlight the change, with rhapsodizing over "the sleepless heralds [who] run along the smooth and slender wires." Clearly, an earlier idea of communication as a messenger traveling across space has survived in the emerging nineteenth century ways of understanding "instant" transmission. The possibility that information could be transmitted immediately to multiple points seemed wondrous to people of the time, as if it were a force of nature, like the rays of the sun. The telegraph could allow details of life and death importance to be conveyed much more quickly, and its utility to the financial industry (e.g. verifying checks against existing accounts, developing networks) was obvious<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">. The 1840s and 50s saw a reduction in price differences between different regional markets, as information about goods could become more widely shared by people geographically separated. Some noted the potentially adverse effect of the telegraph on state sovereignties and local authority, as people's access to information grows more uniform and sources become more centralized. Blondheim is particularly interested in the role of the Associated Press, first as an oligopoly (the New York AP and the Western AP) and then as a monopoly of information when two competitors joined forces</del>.</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>In <i>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/067462212X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=067462212X&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=442704e8ea61d8459f5ce027a668a0c4 News over the Wires: The Telegraph and the Flow of Public Information in America, 1844-1897]</i> published by the Harvard University Press, Menahem Blondheim argues that the telegraph was a key moment in the change from an "age of transportation" to an "age of electric communication." He quotes an 1847 poem to highlight the change, with rhapsodizing over "the sleepless heralds [who] run along the smooth and slender wires." Clearly, an earlier idea of communication as a messenger traveling across space has survived in the emerging nineteenth<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">-</ins>century ways of understanding "instant" transmission. The possibility that information could be transmitted immediately to multiple points seemed wondrous to people of the time, as if it were a force of nature, like the rays of the sun. The telegraph could allow details of life and death importance to be conveyed much more quickly, and its utility to the financial industry (e.g. verifying checks against existing accounts, developing networks) was obvious.  </div></td></tr>
<tr><td class='diff-marker'> </td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"></td><td class='diff-marker'> </td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"></td></tr>
<tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Blondheim is careful to note that the telegraph only improved upon rapid </del>and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">recent gains </del>in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the speed of </del>information<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">. Between 1790 and 1817 the time it took for messages to reach Boston from Washington went from 18 to 6.2 days, and </del>by <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">1841 it took only 2.8 days</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">All this without </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">telegraph. The author says that the new device only improved the speed by a day or two, but that is also supposing that the news travels between two major cities with significant transportation infrastructure. At the start </del>of the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">nineteenth century, there was actually a dearth of news, since the population was small, scattered, </del>and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">locally focused</del>, and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">even the party papers had not gotten fully started yet</del>. Blondheim <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">describes this period as </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">'discovery </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">timeliness</del>,<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">' </del>as <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">instant transmission meant getting </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">scoop on a story was more important than ever. He quotes James Carey: "when information moves at unequal rates of speed, what is already </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">past for the privileged is still the future for the deprived." Using the mail system privileged private correspondence over the cumbersome process of editing </del>and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">printing </del>a <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">publication, thus favoring insiders; so newspapers invested in costly pony and locomotive expresses to get the edge </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">new </del>information<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">, allowing the public sphere could compete with the private in terms of speed. By the time these accomplishments had been made, the telegraph came along (1844) to nullify their significance</del>.</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">The 1840s </ins>and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">50s saw a reduction </ins>in <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">price differences between different regional markets, as </ins>information <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">about goods could become more widely shared </ins>by <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">people geographically separated</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Some noted </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">potentially adverse effect </ins>of the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">telegraph on state sovereignties </ins>and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">local authority</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">as people's access to information grows more uniform </ins>and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">sources become more centralized</ins>. Blondheim <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">is particularly interested in </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">role </ins>of <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the Associated Press</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">first </ins>as <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">an oligopoly (</ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">New York AP and </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Western AP) </ins>and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">then as </ins>a <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">monopoly </ins>of information <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">when two competitors joined forces</ins>.</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class='diff-marker'> </td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"></td><td class='diff-marker'> </td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"></td></tr>
<tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Oddly enough</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Samuel F</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">B</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Morse's dad was </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Noah Webster of teaching geography in America</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">And he missed his wife's funeral because </del>of the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">slowness </del>of news<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">. "Unlike most previous technological advances applied to communications</del>, the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">telegraph </del>was not a <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">vehicle but a channel</del>." <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">It was multidirectional</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">as evidenced in </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">role it played in </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">1844 Democratic nominating convention, when Silas Wright let </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Dems know he declined joining </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">ticket with James Polk</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">While older systems such as </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">mails or </del>private <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">expresses favored those with connections or large capital investments, </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">telegraph did not destroy all such inequities - geography still played </del>a <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">role</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">even though lines proliferated rapidly </del>in <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the 1840s </del>and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">50s. Nearness </del>to the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">lines and points </del>of <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">convergence </del>in the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">networks, like New York or Boston, still mattered. In this sense</del>, the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">network was nearly as rigid as the railroads and perhaps even more centrally controlled</del>.</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Blondheim is careful to note that the telegraph only improved upon rapid and recent gains in the speed of information. Between 1790 and 1817 the time it took for messages to reach Boston from Washington went from 18 to 6.2 days</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">and by 1841 it took only 2</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">8 days</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">All this without the telegraph. The author says that the new device only improved the speed by a day or two, but that is also supposing that </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">news travels between two major cities with significant transportation infrastructure</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">At the start </ins>of the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">nineteenth century, there was actually a dearth </ins>of news, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">since </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">population </ins>was <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">small, scattered, and locally focused, and even the party papers had </ins>not <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">gotten fully started yet. Blondheim describes this period as the 'discovery of timeliness,' as instant transmission meant getting the scoop on </ins>a <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">story was more important than ever</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">He quotes James Carey: </ins>"<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">when information moves at unequal rates of speed</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">what is already </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">past for </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">privileged is still </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">future for </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">deprived</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">" Using </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">mail system privileged </ins>private <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">correspondence over </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">cumbersome process of editing and printing </ins>a <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">publication</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">thus favoring insiders; so newspapers invested </ins>in <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">costly pony </ins>and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">locomotive express </ins>to <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">get </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">edge </ins>of <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">new information, allowing the public sphere could compete with the private </ins>in <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">terms of speed. By </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">time these accomplishments had been made</ins>, the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">telegraph came along (1844) to nullify their significance</ins>.</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class='diff-marker'> </td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"></td><td class='diff-marker'> </td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"></td></tr>
<tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Some thought instantaneous communication should have helped resolve social problems</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">but the author points to Lewis Mumford</del>'s <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">ideas about communication</del>'s "<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">paradox" - basically, that the more people talk </del>to <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">each other</del>, the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">more they disagree</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">The AP had existed 15 years prior to </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Civil War, but </del>it <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">had not fostered an adequate enough understanding of regional differences to prevent conflict. Indeed, Blondheim argues, "The change </del>in the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">speed and scope of political reporting accelerated escalation of </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">sectional issue… Ultimately, rapid and intensive circulation of political statements nationwide made it impossible for </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">parties and candidates to say different things in different areas</del>.<del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">" Robert Wiebe may have described Americans </del>as <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">living in "island communities" at </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">start of </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Gilded Age</del>, in the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">late 19th century, but Blondheim argues that the telegraph began to expose people </del>to <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">more homogenized insights about </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">outside world once the Civil War </del>and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Reconstruction had come to pass. On one hand, we may say that </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">AP</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">being a monopoly that could easily impose a uniform slant on its reporting</del>, <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">meant there was very little choice available in terms of news</del>. <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">On </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">other hand, one could say that </del>the <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">telegraph </del>and <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">the AP made a greater number of political viewpoints available, since the various parties’ actual platforms were better known throughout the country than they had been in earlier years</del>.</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Oddly enough</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Samuel F.B. Morse</ins>'s <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">dad was the Noah Webster of teaching geography in America. And he missed his wife</ins>'s <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">funeral because of the slowness of news. </ins>"<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Unlike most previous technological advances applied </ins>to <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">communications</ins>, the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">telegraph was not a vehicle but a channel</ins>.<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">" It was multidirectional, as evidenced in </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">role </ins>it <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">played </ins>in the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">1844 Democratic nominating convention when Silas Wright let </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Dems know he declined joining </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">ticket with James Polk</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">While older systems such </ins>as the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">mails or private expresses favored those with connections or large capital investments, </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">telegraph did not destroy all such inequities - geography still played a role</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">even though lines proliferated rapidly </ins>in the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">1840s and 50s. Nearness </ins>to the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">lines </ins>and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">points of convergence in </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">networks</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">like New York or Boston</ins>, <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">still mattered</ins>. <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">In this sense, </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">network was nearly as rigid as </ins>the <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">railroads </ins>and <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">perhaps even more centrally controlled</ins>.</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class='diff-marker'> </td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"></td><td class='diff-marker'> </td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"></td></tr>
<tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>News over the Wires contains an argument about longer-term American political and social development. It makes a nice companion piece to Michael McGerr's The Decline of Popular Politics, which illustrates the shift from a classic nineteenth century model of high voter turnout, intense partisanship, political machines and pageantry, to a new politics characterized by "education" (intellectual arguments about policy, widely distributed), advertising, and sensational mass journalism. Blondheim sees the AP replacing the old partisan journalism with a new, "objective," rationalized, mass-market form of knowledge, lacking in regional curiosities. "The wire service was not a local institution," he notes. AP leaders emphasized facts, unjudged, and considered information to be a commodity like any other. Blondheim acknowledges that this regime of supposed neutrality tended to favor Republicans, business, and anti-labor politics, and may have influenced key elections along the way, but he does not account for how the intensely biased media institutions of distinctive personalities like Pulitzer and Hearst grew up alongside this so-called monopoly of singular general knowledge.</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">Some thought instantaneous communication should have helped resolve social problems, but the author points to Lewis Mumford's ideas about communication's "paradox" - basically, that the more people talk to each other, the more they disagree. The AP had existed 15 years prior to the Civil War, but it had not fostered an adequate enough understanding of regional differences to prevent conflict. Indeed, Blondheim argues, "The change in the speed and scope of political reporting accelerated escalation of the sectional issue… Ultimately, rapid and intensive circulation of political statements nationwide made it impossible for the parties and candidates to say different things in different areas." Robert Wiebe may have described Americans as living in "island communities" at the start of the Gilded Age, in the late 19th century, but Blondheim argues that the telegraph began to expose people to more homogenized insights about the outside world once the Civil War and Reconstruction had come to pass. On one hand, we may say that the AP, being a monopoly that could easily impose a uniform slant on its reporting, meant there was very little choice available in terms of news. On the other hand, one could say that the telegraph and the AP made a greater number of political viewpoints available since the various parties’ actual platforms were better known throughout the country than they had been in earlier years.</ins></div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div> </div></td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"> </td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>News over the Wires contains an argument about longer-term American political and social development. It makes a nice companion piece to Michael McGerr's The Decline of Popular Politics, which illustrates the shift from a classic nineteenth<ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">-</ins>century model of high voter turnout, intense partisanship, political machines and pageantry, to a new politics characterized by "education" (intellectual arguments about policy, widely distributed), advertising, and sensational mass journalism. Blondheim sees the AP replacing the old partisan journalism with a new, "objective," rationalized, mass-market form of knowledge, lacking in regional curiosities. "The wire service was not a local institution," he notes. AP leaders emphasized facts, unjudged, and considered information to be a commodity like any other. Blondheim acknowledges that this regime of supposed neutrality tended to favor Republicans, business, and anti-labor politics, and may have influenced key elections along the way, but he does not account for how the intensely biased media institutions of distinctive personalities like Pulitzer and Hearst grew up alongside this so-called monopoly of singular general knowledge.</div></td></tr>
</table>Adminhttps://www.dailyhistory.org/index.php?title=News_over_the_Wires_-_Book_Review&diff=20480&oldid=prevAdmin at 23:03, 27 April 20202020-04-27T23:03:14Z<p></p>
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<td colspan="2" style="background-color: white; color:black; text-align: center;">← Older revision</td>
<td colspan="2" style="background-color: white; color:black; text-align: center;">Revision as of 23:03, 27 April 2020</td>
</tr><tr><td colspan="2" class="diff-lineno" id="mw-diff-left-l1" >Line 1:</td>
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<tr><td class='diff-marker'>−</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #ffe49c; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Blondheim <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">sees </del>the telegraph <del class="diffchange diffchange-inline">as </del>a key moment in the change from an "age of transportation" to an "age of electric communication." He quotes an 1847 poem to highlight the change, with rhapsodizing over "the sleepless heralds [who] run along the smooth and slender wires." Clearly, an earlier idea of communication as a messenger traveling across space has survived in the emerging nineteenth century ways of understanding "instant" transmission. The possibility that information could be transmitted immediately to multiple points seemed wondrous to people of the time, as if it were a force of nature, like the rays of the sun. The telegraph could allow details of life and death importance to be conveyed much more quickly, and its utility to the financial industry (e.g. verifying checks against existing accounts, developing networks) was obvious. The 1840s and 50s saw a reduction in price differences between different regional markets, as information about goods could become more widely shared by people geographically separated. Some noted the potentially adverse effect of the telegraph on state sovereignties and local authority, as people's access to information grows more uniform and sources become more centralized. Blondheim is particularly interested in the role of the Associated Press, first as an oligopoly (the New York AP and the Western AP) and then as a monopoly of information when two competitors joined forces.</div></td><td class='diff-marker'>+</td><td style="color:black; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #a3d3ff; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div><ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">In <i>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/067462212X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=067462212X&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=442704e8ea61d8459f5ce027a668a0c4 News over the Wires: The Telegraph and the Flow of Public Information in America, 1844-1897]</i> published by the Harvard University Press, Menahem </ins>Blondheim <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">argues that </ins>the telegraph <ins class="diffchange diffchange-inline">was </ins>a key moment in the change from an "age of transportation" to an "age of electric communication." He quotes an 1847 poem to highlight the change, with rhapsodizing over "the sleepless heralds [who] run along the smooth and slender wires." Clearly, an earlier idea of communication as a messenger traveling across space has survived in the emerging nineteenth century ways of understanding "instant" transmission. The possibility that information could be transmitted immediately to multiple points seemed wondrous to people of the time, as if it were a force of nature, like the rays of the sun. The telegraph could allow details of life and death importance to be conveyed much more quickly, and its utility to the financial industry (e.g. verifying checks against existing accounts, developing networks) was obvious. The 1840s and 50s saw a reduction in price differences between different regional markets, as information about goods could become more widely shared by people geographically separated. Some noted the potentially adverse effect of the telegraph on state sovereignties and local authority, as people's access to information grows more uniform and sources become more centralized. Blondheim is particularly interested in the role of the Associated Press, first as an oligopoly (the New York AP and the Western AP) and then as a monopoly of information when two competitors joined forces.</div></td></tr>
<tr><td class='diff-marker'> </td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"></td><td class='diff-marker'> </td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"></td></tr>
<tr><td class='diff-marker'> </td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Blondheim is careful to note that the telegraph only improved upon rapid and recent gains in the speed of information. Between 1790 and 1817 the time it took for messages to reach Boston from Washington went from 18 to 6.2 days, and by 1841 it took only 2.8 days. All this without the telegraph. The author says that the new device only improved the speed by a day or two, but that is also supposing that the news travels between two major cities with significant transportation infrastructure. At the start of the nineteenth century, there was actually a dearth of news, since the population was small, scattered, and locally focused, and even the party papers had not gotten fully started yet. Blondheim describes this period as the 'discovery of timeliness,' as instant transmission meant getting the scoop on a story was more important than ever. He quotes James Carey: "when information moves at unequal rates of speed, what is already the past for the privileged is still the future for the deprived." Using the mail system privileged private correspondence over the cumbersome process of editing and printing a publication, thus favoring insiders; so newspapers invested in costly pony and locomotive expresses to get the edge of new information, allowing the public sphere could compete with the private in terms of speed. By the time these accomplishments had been made, the telegraph came along (1844) to nullify their significance.</div></td><td class='diff-marker'> </td><td style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #333333; font-size: 88%; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 1px 1px 4px; border-radius: 0.33em; border-color: #e6e6e6; vertical-align: top; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div>Blondheim is careful to note that the telegraph only improved upon rapid and recent gains in the speed of information. Between 1790 and 1817 the time it took for messages to reach Boston from Washington went from 18 to 6.2 days, and by 1841 it took only 2.8 days. All this without the telegraph. The author says that the new device only improved the speed by a day or two, but that is also supposing that the news travels between two major cities with significant transportation infrastructure. At the start of the nineteenth century, there was actually a dearth of news, since the population was small, scattered, and locally focused, and even the party papers had not gotten fully started yet. Blondheim describes this period as the 'discovery of timeliness,' as instant transmission meant getting the scoop on a story was more important than ever. He quotes James Carey: "when information moves at unequal rates of speed, what is already the past for the privileged is still the future for the deprived." Using the mail system privileged private correspondence over the cumbersome process of editing and printing a publication, thus favoring insiders; so newspapers invested in costly pony and locomotive expresses to get the edge of new information, allowing the public sphere could compete with the private in terms of speed. By the time these accomplishments had been made, the telegraph came along (1844) to nullify their significance.</div></td></tr>
</table>Adminhttps://www.dailyhistory.org/index.php?title=News_over_the_Wires_-_Book_Review&diff=19843&oldid=prevAdmin: Created page with "Blondheim sees the telegraph as a key moment in the change from an "age of transportation" to an "age of electric communication." He quotes an 1847 poem to highlight the chang..."2020-02-28T00:16:20Z<p>Created page with "Blondheim sees the telegraph as a key moment in the change from an "age of transportation" to an "age of electric communication." He quotes an 1847 poem to highlight the chang..."</p>
<p><b>New page</b></p><div>Blondheim sees the telegraph as a key moment in the change from an "age of transportation" to an "age of electric communication." He quotes an 1847 poem to highlight the change, with rhapsodizing over "the sleepless heralds [who] run along the smooth and slender wires." Clearly, an earlier idea of communication as a messenger traveling across space has survived in the emerging nineteenth century ways of understanding "instant" transmission. The possibility that information could be transmitted immediately to multiple points seemed wondrous to people of the time, as if it were a force of nature, like the rays of the sun. The telegraph could allow details of life and death importance to be conveyed much more quickly, and its utility to the financial industry (e.g. verifying checks against existing accounts, developing networks) was obvious. The 1840s and 50s saw a reduction in price differences between different regional markets, as information about goods could become more widely shared by people geographically separated. Some noted the potentially adverse effect of the telegraph on state sovereignties and local authority, as people's access to information grows more uniform and sources become more centralized. Blondheim is particularly interested in the role of the Associated Press, first as an oligopoly (the New York AP and the Western AP) and then as a monopoly of information when two competitors joined forces.<br />
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Blondheim is careful to note that the telegraph only improved upon rapid and recent gains in the speed of information. Between 1790 and 1817 the time it took for messages to reach Boston from Washington went from 18 to 6.2 days, and by 1841 it took only 2.8 days. All this without the telegraph. The author says that the new device only improved the speed by a day or two, but that is also supposing that the news travels between two major cities with significant transportation infrastructure. At the start of the nineteenth century, there was actually a dearth of news, since the population was small, scattered, and locally focused, and even the party papers had not gotten fully started yet. Blondheim describes this period as the 'discovery of timeliness,' as instant transmission meant getting the scoop on a story was more important than ever. He quotes James Carey: "when information moves at unequal rates of speed, what is already the past for the privileged is still the future for the deprived." Using the mail system privileged private correspondence over the cumbersome process of editing and printing a publication, thus favoring insiders; so newspapers invested in costly pony and locomotive expresses to get the edge of new information, allowing the public sphere could compete with the private in terms of speed. By the time these accomplishments had been made, the telegraph came along (1844) to nullify their significance.<br />
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Oddly enough, Samuel F.B. Morse's dad was the Noah Webster of teaching geography in America. And he missed his wife's funeral because of the slowness of news. "Unlike most previous technological advances applied to communications, the telegraph was not a vehicle but a channel." It was multidirectional, as evidenced in the role it played in the 1844 Democratic nominating convention, when Silas Wright let the Dems know he declined joining the ticket with James Polk. While older systems such as the mails or private expresses favored those with connections or large capital investments, the telegraph did not destroy all such inequities - geography still played a role, even though lines proliferated rapidly in the 1840s and 50s. Nearness to the lines and points of convergence in the networks, like New York or Boston, still mattered. In this sense, the network was nearly as rigid as the railroads and perhaps even more centrally controlled.<br />
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Some thought instantaneous communication should have helped resolve social problems, but the author points to Lewis Mumford's ideas about communication's "paradox" - basically, that the more people talk to each other, the more they disagree. The AP had existed 15 years prior to the Civil War, but it had not fostered an adequate enough understanding of regional differences to prevent conflict. Indeed, Blondheim argues, "The change in the speed and scope of political reporting accelerated escalation of the sectional issue… Ultimately, rapid and intensive circulation of political statements nationwide made it impossible for the parties and candidates to say different things in different areas." Robert Wiebe may have described Americans as living in "island communities" at the start of the Gilded Age, in the late 19th century, but Blondheim argues that the telegraph began to expose people to more homogenized insights about the outside world once the Civil War and Reconstruction had come to pass. On one hand, we may say that the AP, being a monopoly that could easily impose a uniform slant on its reporting, meant there was very little choice available in terms of news. On the other hand, one could say that the telegraph and the AP made a greater number of political viewpoints available, since the various parties’ actual platforms were better known throughout the country than they had been in earlier years.<br />
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News over the Wires contains an argument about longer-term American political and social development. It makes a nice companion piece to Michael McGerr's The Decline of Popular Politics, which illustrates the shift from a classic nineteenth century model of high voter turnout, intense partisanship, political machines and pageantry, to a new politics characterized by "education" (intellectual arguments about policy, widely distributed), advertising, and sensational mass journalism. Blondheim sees the AP replacing the old partisan journalism with a new, "objective," rationalized, mass-market form of knowledge, lacking in regional curiosities. "The wire service was not a local institution," he notes. AP leaders emphasized facts, unjudged, and considered information to be a commodity like any other. Blondheim acknowledges that this regime of supposed neutrality tended to favor Republicans, business, and anti-labor politics, and may have influenced key elections along the way, but he does not account for how the intensely biased media institutions of distinctive personalities like Pulitzer and Hearst grew up alongside this so-called monopoly of singular general knowledge.</div>Admin