ABSTRACT
The penny newspapers—notably Benjamin Day's New York Sun, James Gordon Bennett's New York Herald, Horace Greeley's New York Tribune, and Henry J. Raymond's New York Daily Times—which used boys and unemployed men to hawk the most sensational stories their editors and publishers could provide. Some of the same vendors sold less respectable "sporting men's publications" or "flash papers", challenging the limits of propriety. If the penny newspapers became more sensational and carried occasional pictures through the 1830s, the flash press pushed the boundaries in the 1840s. Broadening the news market, the penny newspapers were cheap—although they seldom sold for a penny—and they covered ordinary people, provided useful knowledge, conveyed popular mythology, and based advertising rates on sales and readership. Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper and Harper's Weekly sought to make illustrations of exotic people and places a routine part of mainstream consumer media.
