| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Gilded Age Press, 1865–1900. By Ted Curtis Smythe. (Westport: Praeger, 2003. xii, 240 pp. $79.95, ISBN 0-313-30080-1.)
The late nineteenth century was pivotal for journalism in the United States. It was a time of experimentation, innovation, and the commercialization of the mainstream American press. Ted Curtis Smythe reviews the sweep and significance of those years in The Gilded Age Press, 1865–1900, the research for which, he says, was "conducted over twenty years" (p. xi).	1
Such commitment often shows. Smythe demonstrates thorough familiarity with the period's technological developments—the linotype, the typewriter, the halftone, pulp-based newsprint, and high-speed web presses, all of which were vital in transforming the field.	2
Smythe, however, is on less certain ground in arguing that a "New Journalism" (p. 71) emerged in the American Midwest during the 1870s and early 1880s. It was, he says, a movement built on low per-issue prices, nonpartisan content, and a healthy respect for advertising revenues. Practitioners of the New Journalism were reform-minded editors including E. W. Scripps, Melville E. Stone, Charles H. Taylor, and Joseph Pulitzer.	. . .

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