The Commercialization of News in the Nineteenth Century traces the major transformation of newspapers from a politically based press to a commercially based press in the nineteenth century. Gerald J. Baldasty argues that broad changes in American society, the national economy, and the newspaper industry brought about this dramatic shift. Increasingly in the nineteenth century, news became a commodity valued more for its profitablility than for its role in informing or persuading the public on political issues. Newspapers started out as highly partisan adjuncts of political parties. As advertisers replaced political parties as the chief financial support of the press, they influenced newspapers in directing their content toward consumers, especially women. The results were recipes, fiction, contests, and features on everything from sports to fashion alongside more standard news about politics. Baldasty makes use of nineteenth-century materials—newspapers from throughout the era, manuscript letters from journalists and politicians, journalism and advertising trade publications, government reports—to document the changing role of the press during the period. He identifies three important phases: the partisan newspapers of the Jacksonian era (1825-1835), the transition of the press in the middle of the century, and the influence of commercialization of the news in the last two decades of the century.

Proceedings of the ... convention.

Pullout sections, poster supplements, contests, puzzles, and the funny pages--the Sunday newspaper once delivered a parade of information, entertainment, and spectacle for just a few pennies each weekend. Paul Moore and Sandra Gabriele return to an era of experimentation in early twentieth-century news publishing to chart how the Sunday paper became an essential part of American leisure. Transcending the constraints of newsprint while facing competition from other media, Sunday editions borrowed forms from and eventually partnered with magazines, film, and radio, inviting people to not only read but watch and listen. This drive for mass circulation transformed metropolitan news reading into a national pastime, a change that encouraged newspapers to bundle Sunday supplements into a panorama of popular culture that offered something for everyone.