Newspaper Trends in the 1870s: Proliferation,Popularization,and Political Independence

Abstract

The 1870s was a decade of dramatic growth and change for American journalism. This article examines several specific aspects of those changes, including changes in newspaper size, cost, and political affiliation. In general, newspapers were expanding in size (from four to eight pages), decreasing in cost, and moving away from the long-standing tradition of party identification toward political independence and nonaffiliation. By the end of the 1870s, partisan papers were smaller, fewer, and more expensive than their independent and nonaffiliated counterparts, suggesting a transformation in the social, political, and economic relationships embodied in American newspapers.