Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The telegraph enabled rapid, continuous, and simultaneous diffusion of public information across space. Its application to news reporting transformed journalistic practices, institutional arrangements, and audience experiences. The advent of telegraphic news further affected political, socio-economic, and cultural processes internationally. Introduced in the US in 1844, the telegraph helped sustain the press for nearly a century as the fastest, most alluring and useful news medium (→  Telegraph, History of ). Discovering the →  news – the provision of timely information on recent events – helped launch major increases in daily circulations beginning in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Readers found timely news functionally useful for operating in the rapidly changing economic, political, and social world. Fast news also provided emotional gratification, by connecting audiences to major events across time, if not space. Speeding news by telegraph increased the potential usefulness and popularity of newspapers on both accounts. At the same time, news transmission proved the most successful application of the early telegraph and would remain a major source of income and influence for the telegraph industry (→  Newspaper, History of ). This synergy gave rise to an institution mediating between the press and telegraphy: the news wire service . Although newspapers at the ... log in or subscribe to read full text