Page 68 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

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The Rise of Majoritarianism
many Americans, especially those outside cities, had no way to send and
receive messages regularly, aside from word of mouth and the hand deliv-
ery of letters, and therefore no systematic way to receive news or political
information.
In the half-century after the founding, all this would change as a
result of a massive project of institution building in connection with
the mail – a kind of Manhattan Project of communication. By 1840,
the United States had created more than 13,000 new post offices, one for
everythousandpeople,andthesehandled40millionlettersannually.The
postal service had grown by two orders of magnitude in half a century,
and was now substantially larger and more sophisticated than that of
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any other nation. It was the first American governmental institution to
surpass unequivocally those of the major European powers in scope and
capability, and it meant that information of all kinds could move reliably
around the country in new ways.
Atroughlythesametime,anorganizationaltransformationwasunder
way in the news media. The American newspaper business changed dra-
matically in the 1830s, just as the postal service was coming into its
own, and for reasons that are not unconnected, as Richard John has
shown. One important change involved the content of the news, which
through the 1820s had been very circumscribed. What papers existed had
been a mix of mercantile and political papers, but most catered chiefly
to the interests of merchants and other elites. They were, in Michael
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Schudson’s words, “bulletin boards for the business community.” The
average paper of the postcolonial period resembled more closely a
brief modern trade journal than a contemporary newspaper. Schudson
describes:
The typical daily was four pages long. Its front page was almost
exclusively devoted to advertising, and the fourth page likewise
was strictly advertising. These outside pages were like the cover of
a book or magazine – one turned to the inside to find the content
of the paper. Page two carried editorial columns. Much of page two
and page three detailed the arrival of ships in the harbor and the
contents of their cargoes, as well as other marine news. 42
40
All figures reported by Richard R. John, Spreading the News, from various sources.
41
Michael Schudson, Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers
(New York: Basic Books, 1978), p. 16. This excellent volume provides a very useful
account of the emergence of the newspaper business in the United States, and I rely
heavily on Schudson’s interpretation and data.
42
Ibid., p. 14.
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