ABSTRACT
“The Penny Press: Sensationalism, Populism, and Progress” describes the penny newspapers of New York in the 1830s as a democratizing agent, explaining how sensational content contributed to sales and expanded readership. It profiles leading editors of the penny press era as instrumental in building long-standing notions about citizen involvement in government and the developing economy. It also describes how the new sales model of low-priced newspapers, combined with high circulation and a reliance on advertising, helped produce mass movements and political formations during the era. Using materials from this chapter, students should be able to interpret how individual personalities helped contribute to the development of what became the modern press. They should also be able to identify the particular publishing strategies of the major penny press newspapers, and they should be able to explain how sensationalism to this day plays a role (for better or worse) in raising the interest levels of news audiences. Key words, names, and phrases associated with Chapter 3 include: Horatio David Shepard and hotcakes; the New York Sun (Benjamin Day), the New York Herald (James Gordon Bennett), the New York Tribune (Horace Greeley); Margaret Fuller and the Seneca Falls Convention; and The Liberator (William Lloyd Garrison) and Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.
