The Birth of National Sports Coverage: An Examination of the New York Herald’s Use of the Telegraph to Report America’s First “Championship” Boxing Match in 1849

When “Uncle Joe” Elliott of the New York Herald filed his story on Tom Hyer’s victory over Yankee Sullivan in the first American championship prizefight in 1849, he not only was recording history, he also was making it. Elliott’s story was the first telegraphic transmission of a major sporting event. This article is an examination of how the Herald’s use of the telegraph marked the birth of national sports coverage in the United States