Journalism in the Civil War Era (Second Edition)

"David W. Bulla and Gregory A. Borchard explore ties between journalism and politics and between New York and the Midwest (then known as the West) before the Civil War. Newspapers shared an increasing emphasis on information over opinion. Facts often tended to fit the editors' agendas with winners overplaying their triumphs and losers becoming more restrained. Major newspapers, particularly the New York Herald with the largest investment in correspondents, placed news on the front page and interpretation inside, even while publisher James Gordon Bennett initially blamed Lincoln for the war. Major dailies increasingly reported news from the front and smaller papers relied more on opinion and local angles."-William E. Huntzicker, Minneapolis writer and author of The Popular Press 1833-1865





"Bulla and Borchard have produced what has been long needed in the study of U.S. Civil War journalism: a social and cultural history of the American press that goes beyond anecdotal accounts of war news. They explore the nature of the Civil War-era press itself in all its strengths and weaknesses, ranging from political and economic grandstanding and over-the-top verbal grandiloquence to the sheer bravery and determination of a number of editors, publishers, and journalists who viewed their tasks as interpreters and informers of the day's news. Using a mix of carefully selected case studies as well as an extensive study of newspapers both large and small, this highly readable work places the Civil War press squarely where it belongs-as a part of the larger social and cultural experience of mid-nineteenth century America."-Mary M. Cronin, Department of Journalism, New Mexico State University





"The study of Civil War journalism has traditionally been treated as a facet of the history of war correspondence, but war reporting does not exist in a vacuum, as David Bulla and Gregory Borchard skillfully show readers in their latest edition of Journalism in the Civil War Era. This new edition freshens the book's original version by expanding on their insightful examination of the way the American Civil War ushered in the greater reliance on the information model of journalism, which would exist side-by-side with the existing partisan model. Few scholars have attempted the sort of holistic study that examines not only the nature of Civil War journalism but,