The Americanization of the British Press, 1830s–1914: Speed in the Age of Transatlantic Journalism (review)

In the mid- to late nineteenth century, journalists, particularly British journalists, regularly characterized the period in which they were living as an age of speed. Speed manifested itself in several ways that could be both disturbing and rewarding. To some, the terrifying speed of the railroads threatened to shorten people’s lives and seemed to be a manifestation of changes in culture, politics, and society. In The Age of Equipoise, W. L. Burn commented that the “country was[,] . . . in the opinion of many contemporaries[,] engaged in dangerously feverish activities” (25). Many believed the constant rushing about that was a hallmark of life in the 1860s was resulting in an increasing incidence of nervous exhaustion among the upper classes. Others might have agreed with Disraeli, who wrote in 1862, “It is a privilege to live in this age of brilliant and rapid events.” Railroads meant that goods and services could be distributed more rapidly than in the old age of horse carts, and steamships could deliver fresh goods in less than half the time (and with more dependability) than the clippers could. The Victorian period has been characterized rightly or wrongly as an age of many things (empire, doubt, cant, equipoise); clearly, to society on both sides of the Atlantic, it was very much an age of speed.

Joel Wiener has grounded his Colby Prize–winning study, The Americanization of the British Press, 1830s–1914, in the context of the nineteenth century’s fascination with speed. Indeed, the subtitle of his volume is “Speed in the Age of Transatlantic Journalism.” Throughout his discussion of mechanical advances, newspaper content, style, and economics runs a clear subtext that the cause of much of the revolution in the press of both countries that spurred the change from the old journalism to the new was speed. Wiener tells us that his purpose in this study is to provide a history of the press on both sides of the Atlantic and to describe the interactions that led to changes in both national enterprises. In doing so, he strives “to demonstrate in concrete ways that changes in journalism are long-range and do not rest on the innovations of a few key individuals, or . . . the contributions of a single nation” (6). In fact, one of his most important contributions to the field of periodical study is that he manages to present a cast of hundreds of characters, from the giants like Harmsworth, Stead, Pulitzer, and Hearst to the likes of Murat Halstead of the Cincinnati Journal and Alexander Russell of the Scotsman. He shows how rather minor personalities—for example, Edward C. Mitchell, cricket reporter for the Star, and George Smalley, war reporter for the Tribune—affected journalistic content and discourse because of the public’s increasing demand for timely information on sports and battles.

The eighty years or so under discussion demonstrate the birth of the modern newspaper and its growth to its current form. Wiener walks us through that development on a variety of fronts: the professionalization of journalism; the role of the reading public; the contribution of appearance to sensationalism and vice versa; the effect of illustrations (and later photographs) on the presentation of news; and the role of the mechanization of printing presses in the development of the mass press. Throughout this discussion, he returns to the fundamental influence of speed because it was speed that really created the news in newspapers. Before the telegraph, before pony expresses, trains, and steamships, newspapers were basically political discussion sheets with an occasional description of an important or interesting event that might have occurred anywhere from a few days to a few months previously. Reports of battles, disasters, disorders, and crime were of more interest to many readers than political debate. Thus, the ability to obtain and publish early accounts of interesting events eventually began to determine the economic success or failure of newspapers...