TEXT & CONTEXT
Ajax the newsboy (1863)
Local Views
It’s Saturday, January 4. The year is 1800. You purchase your copy of the Ulster County Gazette, settling in to read a series of political letters and speeches. News travels slowly. You catch up on politics from early December. You read a commentary on a military dispatch from London in mid-October. You’re not reading about the events themselves. You’re reading peoples’ discussions of events. These are “viewspapers,” not “news-papers”—they appeal to you as an abstract, rational thinker and knower. Yet even in this text-dense, visually unappealing, mediated discussion of concepts, you are still called to be a body. “Strayed” and “Lost” postings on the back page remind you that the community of readers is also a physical community.
“Strayed” and “Lost” postings on the back page of this Jan. 4, 1800 issue of the Ulster County Gazette remind you that the community of readers is also a physical community.
Commercial News
This 3-coach train from 1832 (pictured in a 1916 trade card) reflects the imagery in the newspaper advertisements seen in the Herald below.
On September 3, 1833, the modern newspaper was born. Benjamin Day, a 23-year-old publisher, released the first “penny press” paper. Sold for one cent per copy, the Sun made its profits from advertisements, not subscription fees.
The Herald quickly followed suit. The massive, attention-grabbing spread from February 18, 1844 seen below sold for “Price Two Cents.” Its graphics are designed to catch your eye. Boats with sails billowing. Train cars with smoke blowing. Hats. Boots. Shiny shoes. The material world clamors, grabbing your body.
Attention spans shorten. The eye flicks from one bit of text to another. This paper segments reality into clipped instants, into the bodily “now.”
Trains, boots, and boats catch the eye on the front page of the NY Herald (Feb. 18, 1844)
Territorial Pursuits
It’s 1890. Though you’re reading in New York City, the magazine shown below dumps you, head over heels, into a canoe in Alaska. You find yourself careening through a canyon. White water rapids churn over sharp boulders, birds caw overhead, your cheeks sting from the cold, and your hair whips back in a fierce wind…
“Exploration of Alaska - Descending the Alseck River” from a drawing by E.J. Glite (Dec. 13, 1890)
Inventors’ Guide and Advertiser (May 8, 1856)
The 1890 gold rush brings thousands of miners and settlers to Alaska. The territory of the United States is expanding. At the same time, the territory of the reader’s body is expanding. The reader’s body is mapped, charted, and mined for profit. Newspapers make money by getting people’s attention. New print technology allows for unprecedented sensations.
“The Telegraph! ... the idea of the poet is now a living reality, and men breathe ‘thoughts of fire and words that burn.’”
…they think in New York and speak in New Orleans, and while the brain still trembles with the thought, the electric wires have printed the words five thousand miles off.”