Newspapers

Stop the Presses!

During the 1920s, now-legendary writers worked on papers that aggressively competed for news and readers. The Front Page, the 1928 hit play by exreporters Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht, established the public's idea of how newspapers operated. In 1920 there were 2,042 English-language dailies in 1,295 American cities; their total circulation was 27.8 million. Americans habitually read newspapers, which cost two cents; many households took morning and evening papers. Most cities had papers with different ownerships and editorial policies—usually, Republican and Democrat.

Tabloids.

The most influential innovation in Jazz Age journalism was the successful introduction of tabloid or sensationalized journalism by Joseph Medill Patterson's The New York Daily News in 1919. It was followed by William Randolph Hearst's The New York Daily Mirror and Bernarr Macfadden's New York...

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