ABSTRACT
Research on developments in nineteenth-century transnational and transatlantic media relations has been given impetus in recent years by new digital resources. This chapter draws upon a number of the research techniques Jane Chapman and Bob Nicholson mentioned in the Routledge Handbook, including comparative analysis of the same reported events and attention to the widespread culture of reprinting. It examines the transnational and transatlantic connections entailed in the movement of the Victorian special correspondent and the writing he produced. The chapter employs close reading as a fundamental critical method for engagement with the primary text, together with relevant approaches derived from literary, media, and cultural studies. It analyzes the aesthetic and rhetorical qualities that made special correspondence so culturally resonant in order to provide a "thick description" of the genre. The chapter further identifies seven broad topics typically covered by "specials": war, exhibitions, pageantry, crime, transport, investigative journalism, and technology.
