Abstract
The passion for war news was a leading feature of the 1850s and 1860s, and it further transformed the nature of transatlantic journalism. War correspondents (“specials”) dominated these decades, with military news taking precedence over more commonplace kinds of information. In the United States the Civil War marked a decisive turning point in the history of journalism. It propelled the American press into new areas, including the regular use of wired news, the beginnings of the front-page news spread and the introduction of the inverted pyramid. At the same time, war correspondents injected an aura of romance into the “sensational” side of journalism, in a seeming challenge to the increased tendency towards “objective” press writing. These twin poles of diversity and sameness were to become complementary integuments of journalism in both Britain and America during these crucial years of transition.
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Notes
Alexander Andrews, The History of British Journalism: From the Foundation of the Newspaper Press in England to the Repeal of the Stamp Act in 1855 (London: Richard Bentley, 1859), II, 329
Ray Boston, The Essential Fleet Street: Its History and Influence ( London: Blandford, 1990 ), 84.
W. H. Russell, The War: From the Landing at Gallipoli to the Death of Lord Raglan (London: George Routledge, 1855 ), 228. Rupert Furneaux, one of Russell’s biographers, stated that his readers could “hear the thunder of battle and see the details of every tent and bivouac as they read.” The First War Correspondent: William Howard Russell of “The Times” ( London: Cassell, 1944 ), 11.
Rollo Ogden (ed.), Life and Letters of Edwin Lawrence Godkin (New York: Macmillan, 1907), I, 101. For Godkin’s Crimean War exploits, see William M. Armstrong, E.L. Godkin: A Biography (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1978), chapter 2.
Franc B. Wilkie, Pen and Powder ( Boston: Ticknor and Company, 1888 ), 82.
Laura Stedman and George M. Gould, Life and Letters of Edmund Clarence Stedman (New York: Moffat, Yard and Company, 1910 ), I, 236.
Louis M. Starr, Bohemian Brigade: Civil War Newsmen in Action (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1954), 136. The estimate for Bennett is in Richard Kluger, The Paper: The Life and Death of the “New York Herald Tribune” (New York:
Archibald Forbes, Memories and Studies of War and Peace ( London: Cassell, 1895 ), 220.
Dale L. Walker, Januarius MacGahan: The Life and Campaigns of an American War Correspondent (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1988), 175. MacGahan’s dispatches from the Balkans inflamed public opinion in Britain, as is evident from a reading of R. T. Shannon, Gladstone and the Bulgarian Agitation 1876 (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1963).
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© 2011 Joel H. Wiener
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Wiener, J.H. (2011). The Stimulus of War. In: The Americanization of the British Press, 1830s–1914. Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230347953_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230347953_5
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