News for All

the long version

In News for All, Leonard provides a fascinating account of the love-hate relationship we have always had with the news, from the early nineteenth century to the present. Reading the news was once a central social function, as citizens eagerly gathered in taverns, inns, post offices, and elsewhere to hear the latest reports. During an era when travel was slow and when geography, religion, class, race, and language divided the nation, all shared the universal habit of taking a favorite paper. Readers formed an alliance with publishers, declaring their politics by what they read in an age of highly partisan editorial policies: there were papers for the women's movement, antislavery, temperance reform, political parties large and small.