Newspapers History

By the 1970s, the country’s oldest continuously published newspaper had fallen on hard times, just like its nearly bankrupt hometown. When the New York Post was sold to a largely unknown Australian named Rupert Murdoch in 1976, staffers hoped it would be the start of a new golden age for the paper. Now, after the nearly fifty years Murdoch has owned the tabloid, American culture reflects what Murdoch first started in the 1970s: a celebrity-focused, noisy, one-sided media empire that reached its zenith with Fox News.

"Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" So goes the signature introduction of New York Herald star journalist Henry Morton Stanley to renowned explorer Dr. David Livingstone, who had been missing for six years in the wilds of Africa. Into Africa ushers us into the meeting of these remarkable men. In 1866, when Livingstone journeyed into the heart of the African continent in search of the Nile's source, the land was rough, unknown to Europeans, and inhabited by man-eating tribes.

Known to historians as "the First American," Benjamin Franklin is without a doubt the most accessible of America's founding fathers. His writings have inspired millions of Americans, and even now, more than 200 years after his death, his wit and humor still brighten lives all across the world. But what was this great man's view on faith? Was he really a Deist as so many historians have proposed? Was he a humanist like so many of his French friends? Is there any possibility that he could have been a Christian? In this unique volume, Bill Fortenberry has collected everything that Franklin ...

Travel to the 1950’s with Tom Barker as he takes you on his Rollfast Bicycle for a ride back in time when the minimum wage was $1 an hour, a stamp cost 3 cents and a newspaper was a nickel. Tom takes you on a visit to the lost world of delivery of the mighty newspaper by an army of teens. Learn how hundreds of newspaper carriers got the latest news, fashion, sports, and advertising out to the masses. Understand the importance of the newspaper boy institution and the famous people it has influenced and were once among its ranks. Tom will tell you how he got his paper route, overcame ...

We take a look into the legend of Bigfoot. From native American to modern times This is Gigantopithecus is an extinct genus of ape that existed from two million years to 300,000 years ago, at the same period as the Homo erectus would have been dispersed, in what is now Vietnam, China and Indonesia placing Gigantopithecus in the same time frame and geographical location as several hominin species.

At the dawn of the 20th century, French newspapers used bicycle races as promotions to build readership. Until 1903 these were one-day events. Looking to deliver a coup de grâce in a vicious circulation war, Henri Desgrange - editor of the Parisian sports magazine L’Auto - took the suggestion of one of his writers to organize a race that would last several days longer than anything else, like the six-day races on the track, but on the road. The race was an electrifying success. Held annually (suspended only during the two World Wars), the Tour grew longer and more complex.

In March of 1827 the nation's first black newspaper appeared in New York City - to counter attacks on blacks by the city's other papers. From this signal event, The African American Newspaper traces the evolution of the black newspaper - and its ultimate decline - for more than 160 years until the end of the 20th century.

Giving voice to the voiceless, the Chicago Defender condemned Jim Crow, catalyzed the Great Migration, and focused the electoral power of black America. Robert S. Abbott founded the Defender in 1905, smuggled hundreds of thousands of copies into the most isolated communities in the segregated South, and was dubbed a "Modern Moses", becoming one of the first black millionaires in the process.

The question is not whether monsters walk among us. They do. They have. For thousands of years. On the borders of humdrummia and every day reality, be it the forest’s edge or a moonlit graveyard draped in gossamer spiders’ webs, the macabre is all about. For our souls, our sanity, the vital question to answer is: Just WHERE are all these blankety-blank monsters? Santa Clarita is a riparian bedroom community, an hour’s drive north of Los Angeles. It’s been home to giant, man-eating grizzly bears, ghosts, serial killers, devil cults, more ghosts, Bigfoot, werewolf encounters, UFO ...

In Lincoln and the Power of the Press, Harold Holzer shows us an activist Lincoln through journalists who covered him from his start to the night of his assassination. In a wholly original way, Holzer shows us politicized newspaper editors battling for power and a masterly president who used the press to speak directly to the people and shape the nation.

Hicky's Bengal Gazette is the story of India's first newspaper and its pivotal role in exposing the corruption of the British imperialist project. The story opens in late-eighteenth century Calcutta. The British are well-ensconced in Bengal, but the Raj has yet to emerge. Irishman, James August Hicky, arrives in Calcutta as a surgeon's mate, seeking his fame and fortune. He soon finds himself in debtors' prison, however, and it's while in jail that he first acquires the printing press that sets him on a collision course with the British East India Company.

In The Hearsts: Father and Son, William Randolph Hearst, Jr., and co-author Jack Casserly tell the extraordinary story of an American family from the gold-diggings of California to the present Hearst media empire. They also profile a cavalcade of reporters and columnists who became the stars of the Hearst newspapers, and portray the colorful New York nightlife of the 1930s and 1940s.

Volume one of The Story of the Tour de France concluded with Bernard Thévenet’s dramatic victory over Eddy Merckx in the 1975 Tour. Volume two opens with super-climber Lucien van Impe’s taking advantage of a course made for the riders with wings. His win was followed by the dominating presence of Bernard Hinault, who became the third rider to win the Tour five times.

Listen as Dee Brown weaves humorous, richly detailed stories of his early years as a youthful entrepreneur and teenaged newspaperman.

Using his famed on-the-nose commentary, Twitter legend James Felton has dissected 99 of the most outlandish stories The Sun (for a long time the biggest-selling British newspaper) has run since it became a tabloid in 1969, hoping to answer once and for all whether the press has reflected - or manipulated - the British people over the last 50 years.

1973 Miss Congeniality is a deeply personal and inspiring memoir by award-winning author Carol Denise Mitchell, whose unforgettable story began in her groundbreaking debut, What Happened to Suzy. In this new work, Mitchell returns to the pivotal moment she was crowned Miss Congeniality at the Miss Pomona Valley Pageant—a title that marked the beginning of her transformation from a girl silenced by abuse to a woman celebrated for her grace, strength, and voice. Set in Southern California during the vibrant yet turbulent 1970s, this book explores the cultural and emotional landscape of a ...

The story of the Spanish Flu of 1918 is best told and understood from the newspaper reports of publications large and small from every corner of the United States. The news reports have been picked at random, with an emphasis on selecting news articles that told of effects in the rural, small towns, cities, army camps, navy yards, with armed forces deployed at sea and in France as well as on Indian Reservations.

There was abundant life before television, cell phones, internet, and even light bulbs. History was recorded in the newspapers, warts and all, before it was cleaned up and published in history books. Privacy was of much less concern so if you were slowly going mad, for example, every stage of that madness was reported in the paper. The language, the personalities, the humor, ( especially the humor) and the horror still have the power to grab us and pull us back to another time and place. Never been to San Antonio? No problem because people are people wherever they are. And there is news, ...

How did people in our country, North and South, East and West, come to share a remarkably durable and consistent common vision of what it meant to be an American in the first 50 years after the Revolution? How did the nation respond to the problem of slavery in a republic?

Recounts the story of America’s last great newspaper war between the New York Daily News and the New York Post, as both papers’ long rivalry turned existential amid the rise of digital news. The story is told through the eyes of the reporters, or “runners”, and photographers who fought the war on the ground in cities across America.