Change on Tap for Nashville:
The Telegraph and News Content, 1860
by
Frank E. Fee Jr., Doctoral Student
School of Journalism & Mass Communication
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Correspondence to:
Frank E. Fee Jr.
4700 Highgate Drive
Durham, NC 27713-9489
(919) 493-7932
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
FAX: (919) 962-0620
A paper submitted to the History Division, Association for Education in
Journalism and Mass Communication annual convention, Chicago, IL
July 30-Aug. 2, 1997
The telegraph is widely believed to have brought significant changes in
newspaper journalism in the nineteenth century but relatively few studies have
explored the nature of that change. Economies in the face of expensive
transmission costs are generally held to have spawned the summary lead and
inverted pyramid style for organizing a news story as Civil War reporters filed
dispatches from the battlefields.[1] Historian Richard A. Schwarzlose has
described how telegraph technology led to the development of news collectives,
such as the Associated Press.[2] In terms of content, historian Donald L. Shaw
demonstrated how in the later nineteenth century the need to be marketable to
newspapers of different political persuasions led to a more-neutral presentation
of telegraph news and the reduction of bias in presidential political news in
Wisconsin.[3] These studies of how the telegraph changed story forms, the
dissemination of news, and content suggest further opportunities to enrich
understanding of how the technology altered journalism in the nineteenth
century.
This study examines news coverage in the Nashville (Tennessee) Daily Gazette in
1860 to expand analysis of how the telegraph affected news coverage and
presentation. It offers insights into how, on the eve of the Civil War, editors
were experimenting with a technology less than twenty years old.[4] The study
further posits a reciprocal action between interest in important far-away events
creating demand for news, and technology that could produce news or the
ingredients of news stories faster than traditional means increasing interest in
distant news events. This helped fuel significant changes in news enactment and
presentation in a relatively short span. Content for the first six months of
1860 was examined, and all Gazette stories in January and June 1860 were studied
in detail to determine the paper's use of news reports identifiable as arriving
by telegraph, in contrast with those derived from local production or reprinting
from exchange papers.
Nashville's Newspaper Heritage
Nashville in 1860 had a lively and long-standing newspaper heritage. In 1799,
the city's first newspaper, the Rights of Man, or The Nashville Intelligencer,
began publication,[5] to be joined a year later by the Tennessee Gazette, whose
editor, Benjamin Bradford, was at one time mayor of Nashville.[6] Although
relatively scant, the secondary literature mentioning Nashville newspapers does
hint at the variety and political leaning of the various newspapers and also how
Nashville's newspapers rose, fell, and combined over the years. Mentioned are
The Clarion and Tennessee State Gazette, April 18, 1815;[7] Nashville Whig and
Tennessee Advertiser, March 13, 1819;[8] Nashville Whig, October 17, 1828;[9]
Nashville True Whig, December 28, 1850;[10] Republican Banner, 1852;[11]
Nashville Daily Union, 1852;[12] and Republican Daily Banner and Nashville Whig,
August 24, 1852.[13]
Sharing the News
It is interesting to speculate on the nature of competition and interdependence
among several newspapers operating at the same time and place in this era.
Besides publishing items found in exchange papers from elsewhere in the country,
the Gazette's editors used stories from their fellow Nashville journalists as
well. Said the Gazette on June 27:
Our estimable friend, Jno. C. Burch, of the Union and American,
who was in Baltimore during the Democratic Convention, was certainly not
an inactive observer of the enthusiasm attending the nomination of the
Breckinridge ticket. We guess so at least from the despatches (sic) he
sent his paper. Here they are.[14]
There followed a pickup from the Union and American, although the reprinting's
intent seems likely to have been to tweak the rival for its frequent use of the
phrases "greatest enthusiasm prevails" and "wildest enthusiasm prevails" toward
the Breckinridge ticket.[15] The Gazette's comment on the Union and American
item was, "Relying implicitly on the integrity of Mr. Burch, we can but conclude
that the nomination of Breckinridge and Lane was made in a perfect storm of all
sorts of enthusiasm."[16]
In January, however, the Gazette was in earnest when it told readers, "We copy
this morning from the Nashville Union and American an account of the proceedings
of the Democratic State Convention held in this city on Wednesday night."[17] It
added:
Our obliging contemporaries of the paper from which we copy,
kindly furnished us in compliance with a request, with the copy on
Wednesday night, and our inability to get it in type for yesterday's
issue of the Gazette is our only excuse for its non-appearance at that
time.[18]
A full report of the convention followed, attributed again to the Union and
American.
Moreover, the local news business was news to the Nashville papers. In its news
columns on June 3, 1860, the Gazette reported the demise of the Nashville News
and its purchase by A.S. Camp & Co. of the Patriot office."[19] An apparent
redesign of the Nashville Banner D "dressed up in a new and beautiful suit,
which fits it with all the ease and grace imaginable"[20] D also drew favorable
notice that day. The year began with a Gazette item calling attention to the
start of the National Pathfinder, "a new Nashville paper. ... A good sized
sheet, filled with interesting matter and well worth the price of
subscription."[21]
As editors George Adams and Ralph Christian note, "Newspaper publishing was an
unstable business in early Nashville. Between 1800 and 1840, newspapers appeared
under more than two dozen mastheads and between 1820 and 1860 there were always
four or five papers competing for readers."[22] The Civil War and Union
occupation of the city brought closings and new newspapers as well, including
the Daily Press and the Daily Journal[23] and a possibly reborn Daily Union.[24]
Five newspapers were publishing during one part of 1864.[25]
The Nashville Daily Gazette was relatively long lived on the Nashville scene
but no less subject to the vicissitudes encountered by its competitors. By April
15, 1856, the newspaper's masthead was proclaiming "Largest Circulation in the
City"[26] and that claim D never backed up with published circulation figures D
would remain atop Page One of the Gazette in 1860, under the proprietorship of
James T. Bell & Co.[27] However, the 1860 masthead's circulation boast finds
support in the paper's other masthead claim as the city's "Official
Journal,"[28] in which municipal legal advertising would appear from time to
time.[29] Adams and Christian point out that "James T. Bell's Nashville Daily
Gazette was the third newspaper to bear that name. Established in 1844, it went
through fourteen changes of ownership before ceasing publication during the
Civil War."[30]
Throughout the first six months of 1860, the Nashville Daily Gazette was
published Tuesday through Sunday mornings, a four-page broadsheet in which the
front and back covers were exclusively for advertising. News items, sometimes
with comment that in these days would be called editorializing and sometimes
fairly straight recitations of facts, appeared on the second and third pages,
although these items shared space with additional advertising that in modern
terms might be described as display and classified advertising. The news columns
also contained locally written commentary.
Entrepreneurial Editor
The publisher was James T. Bell & Co., with James T. Bell and "M. V.B. Haile"
the apparent principals in the company. However, James R. Bruce was listed as
editor on the Page Two masthead, while James T. Bell was listed in the Page
Three masthead as "local and commercial editor."
Although he appears only occasionally in the secondary literature, the
references suggest Bell held an important but somewhat ambiguous position in
Nashville civic life. Historian Walter Durham reports that in 1862 Bell, an
alderman, was among city officials dismissed by military Governor Andrew Johnson
for disloyalty to the Union.[31] On April 15, 1862, Bell, described by this time
as former editor of the Gazette, and Banner editor E.E. Jones were jailed by
Johnson for treasonable conduct.[32] Bell is identified as owner and editor of
the Gazette in 1860,[33] and the Gazette is mentioned as publishing at least as
late as December 1861.[34] However, the Gazette was seized under the
Confiscation Act early in the occupation years[35] and would resume publication,
"James T. Bell & Co., editors and proprietors ... on November 10, [1863] after a
long hiatus."[36] In the interim, Bell apparently became editor of the new Daily
Journal, "another Union newspaper in the city."[37] That Bell could edit
pro-Union and secessionist papers in such a short span of years raises
interesting questions about the man, but the Gazette apparently remained a thorn
in the Union side. Early in July 1864, the provost marshal in Nashville
determined that Gazette employees were distributing a New York City newspaper
supporting the Confederacy. The Gazette staff members were warned "This practice
will not be tolerated and a continuance of the same will subject any and all
parties engaged in the same to imprisonment and will cause suppression of your
paper."[38] In the end, however, military censorship was only one of the threats
to newspapers. Advertisers with nothing to sell stopped advertising, adding to
the obstacles to publication, and the Gazette ceased publication July 3,
1864,[39]
Printers' Exchanges
Like many papers in this period, the Gazette appears to have subscribed to a
large number of newspapers from around the country,[40] including those of the
North, and it frequently reprinted news items from these other newspapers.
Occasional news items thanking individuals for bringing "late papers in advance
of the mails"[41] suggest that postal exchanges were less expeditious and
reliable conduits for these exchange papers than individuals bringing out of
town papers by railroad to Nashville.
Occasionally a reprint was preceded or followed by a comment from the Nashville
editor, underscoring that the gatekeeping was not perfunctory. For instance,
when the Louisville Courier reported, "A dead dog has been laying on Second
street, between main (sic) and Market for several days," the Gazette quipped,
"You would hardly expect a live one to lie there that long, would you?"[42]
Similarly, a shooting reported in an item clipped from the Springfield,
Missouri, Mirror[43] was blamed on one John Owen. The Gazette appended the
information that "John Owen will be remembered by some of our readers as the man
who some years since killed his brother, Richard Owen, in Williamson county,
Tenn. He then fled from the State and was never tried for that crime."[44] Thus,
it might be reasonable to see in the selection of articles gleaned from
out-of-town newspapers the exercise of editorial discretion and mindset,
predisposition, or bias. A general reading of the Gazette for this period fails
to show a particular pattern in what news items were picked up from other
papers, although politics, calamity, unusual occurrences, and social notes
predominate.
Telegraph News
A review of the Gazette's news columns suggests that the telegraph was becoming
increasingly important in delivering news to the newspaper throughout the first
six months of 1860. A fixture on Page Three each day was a column at times
labeled "Latest News By Telegraph!"[45] but more often simply "Telegraphic."[46]
These telegraph news columns varied in length but whether because of available
telegraph news or available space on the page is speculative. Each item in the
column carried a line identifying a city and a date, and examination of the
datelines suggests that these identify the city and date of telegraph
transmission and not necessarily where and when the event occurred.[47]
Except for the placement of advertising on pages One and Four and generally
putting non-local news on Page Two and local, state and regional[48] news on
Page Three, the greatest formatting of the paper is apparent in the telegraph
column. Staple headlines and topics in the column included "From Washington,"
"River News," "Steamer Arrived,"[49] "Foreign," "Pony Express,"[50] "Arrival of
the Overland Mail," and "New Orleans (or, New York) Markets." Other items
entered the telegraph column episodically and their selection often suggests
early influences of the modern journalistic news typologies (conflict,
unusualness, proximity, prominence, impact, and, increasingly, timeliness). For
other items, the rationale for news enactment is less clear. For instance, it
remains for further social history research to determine what Nashville readers
made of the one-sentence telegraph report, "The Cricket match between the St.
George, New York and a Philadelphia club was won by the former with 6 crickets
to spare."[51]
Growing Telegraph Influence
In a comparison of the January and June editions of the Gazette for 1860, the
growing influence of the telegraph on the paper's news coverage is seen in at
least two ways. The telegraph report appears to have been an agenda-builder for
the newspaper. It also seems to have to have enabled a shift toward more
complete and more timely coverage of non-local events. As such, the telegraph
report's influence in creating greater awareness of other regions through the
immediacy of its news may merit further scholarly attention.
The agenda-building influence of the telegraph may be seen anecdotally in the
frequency of references outside the telegraph news column to information
supplied by telegraph. In the first month of the year, only two locally produced
stories or comments in the general columns of pages Two and Three specifically
referred to the telegraph as their source. Most of the non-local stories are
attributed to other newspapers throughout the country, attesting to the
complexity of the editors' exchange network. Even when no source was identified,
the nature of the news item and the comparative fullness of even a one- or
two-paragraph report suggest its origin in the editors' exchange rather than the
telegraph, where the typical report gives no more than a single cryptic sentence
to each subject.
Although its use was confined chiefly to the "Telegraphic" column in the
Gazette, the telegraph was beginning to influence news judgment and
presentation. While in January only two locally prepared items refer to the
telegraph, three of the exchange paper items attributed their information to
telegraph dispatches.[52] Also, a subscription advertisement carried several
times for the Louisville Journal boasted that its "network of telegraph all over
the Union enables them to report all events of public interest almost
simultaneously with their occurrence."[53] Of the two locally produced items
mentioning the telegraph, one on January 8 reported, in its entirety, "We learn
by a telegraph dispatch received in this city yesterday, that a large and
destructive fire occurred in Hickman, Ky., on Wednesday night last, which
destroyed the Commercial Hotel and several storehouses."[54]
The other story on the telegraph that drew local attention in the Gazette that
month may offer insight into the editors' criteria for news in the South of
1860, dealing, as it did, with disaster, great loss of life, and a New England
textile mill purported to have been shoddily constructed. On January 12, the
lead item on Page Two began, "Our readers were yesterday informed by a brief
telegraphic despatch (sic), of the falling of the Pemberton Mills, at Lawrence,
Mass., and the consequent destruction of human life."[55] The information in
this comparatively long (135 words) item was further updated by an item in the
telegraph column on that page reporting that fire had broken out as rescuers
sought survivors in the in the rubble of the collapsed mill.[56] The next day,
the Gazette devoted more than a column of news space to an extensive report on
the mill disaster.[57] The source of that story, datelined "Lawrence, Mass, Jan
10," was not identified, but although after a summary lead it was assembled in
consecutive dispatches, the length, vivid prose, and use of the first-person are
uncharacteristic of telegraph stories in the Gazette at this time. It seems
likely this was picked up from one of the exchange papers, some of which had
wire reporters at this time.[58]
In general, items found in the Gazette's telegraph column are short in length
and detail, and rely on reader knowledge for context and meaning. For instance,
an item datelined Independence (Missouri), June 8, reported simply, "Six
companies are on the Red Riquer (sic)[59] after the Indians. The Navajoes (sic)
attacked Fort Defiance and were repulsed."[60] Under the "Washington" headline
that day, the column reported, in its entirety, "Senate D Green reported
adversely to the Utah petition asking admission as a State."[61]
Examination of succeeding days' papers shows that generally the telegraph news
items were not followed up with larger stories taken either from the telegraph
or the exchange papers. Exceptions to that finding, however, include the
continuing telegraph and exchange coverage of Garibaldi's revolt in Italy,
Indian wars in the West, tornadoes in the Midwest, a bloody insurrection in
Japan, and the United States' national political contests, which in late spring
were a growing staple in the news columns. At first glance, the predictive
capacity of this analysis suggests conflict or disaster as the salient news
values shared by the spartan telegraph reports and fuller accounts from other
sources. On closer inspection, however, it might be argued that aside from the
weather there was a preoccupation with struggles for legitimacy and
self-determination that framed news selection in this period, at least in the
South. It is a question that merits further scholarly study.
Telegraph News at Midyear
The number of news stories in June 1860 that relied upon the telegraph (e.g.,
"The telegraph announces the failure of A.T. Wells, a heavy dealer in dry goods
at Memphis. He went in for $250,000"[62]) exceeds those of January of that year
(See Table 1).
Table - Telegraph Use, January/June 1860
Stories Using Telegraph
Items Mentioning Telegraph
January
2
4
June
8
4
Table shows increased use of the telegraph for news gathering between January
and June 1860. Column One includes all stories obtained by information
telegraphed to Nashville, except those items appearing in the 'By Telegraph!'
column. Since the unit of analysis is the whole story or topic, the June figure
tends to mask the use of successive telegraph dispatches to update a single
running story. In Column Two, January total includes two advertisements for
other papers using the telegraph.
Moreover, in June there appear stories that, in contrast to January, combined
individual telegraph reports to produce a separate, fully developed news
story.[63] A June 4 telegraph item datelined Louisville reported, "There was a
violent but brief storm of wind and rain this afternoon."[64] The next day, the
telegraph column was marked by a considerably longer-than-average report on the
weather, using the Louisville area storms as an organizing point:
The storm North and South of here did great damage, Louisville
comparatively escaped. There was a terrible tornado in Eastern Iowa and
Northwestern Illinois on the night of the 3d. Camarche, Iowa, and
Albany, Illinois, on the opposite side of the river were completely
demolished. In the former place, thirty-two dead bodies have been
recovered and in the latter some twenty. In Alton, Illinois, the loss by
the storm Saturday night exceeded $100,000, Northern Missouri also
suffered extensively.[65]
This coverage retained the style of the telegraph column in giving one sentence
to a summary of a single news event, but it was exceptional in collecting a
number related events under a single, unifying theme: the violent weather. Two
days later, however, a relatively unusual approach to news coverage was taken
when the Gazette appeared to write its own story from telegraph accounts.
Datelined "Chicago, June 5," the story began, "From telegraphic dispatches
received last night and this morning, we learn the following further particulars
of the tornado of Sunday evening."[66] There followed, in ten paragraphs, an
account of the tornado's destruction, organized chronologically and
geographically following the line of the storm.
Another change in the approach to the telegraph news occurred later in covering
a "Democratic Constitutional Convention," dubbed a "seceder's convention," that
met in Richmond, Virginia, in mid-June prior to the Democratic presidential
nominating convention in Baltimore later that month. Here there is no suggestion
of re-writing telegraph accounts, in fact, earlier items appear relatively
intact even when newer developments are appended to them. Thus, on June 14 the
Gazette's telegraph column carried an item datelined "Richmond, June 11" that
summarized the "program for tomorrow in the Seceder's Convention."[67] This
story was followed immediately by one datelined "Richmond, June 12" that
reported, in the order of the agenda, what took place that day.[68]
In the Baltimore convention coverage, the telegraph was used to update
developments, although whether the telegraph dispatches were incorporated in the
full news stories is difficult to determine. For instance, on June 22 the
Gazette began its coverage with an unattributed story datelined Baltimore, June
20,[69] that in its flowing prose is not at all like the telegraph copy. This
fourteen paragraph story was immediately followed in the news columns by one
paragraph dated June 19 and attributed to "Special Despatch (sic)."[70] In form
and approach, this story is much closer to the telegraph style of summarizing
rather than chronological development. However, it is not known whether this was
indeed a report sent by telegraph. In the sequence of news stories the Gazette
compiled that day, the next item was a one-paragraph story taken from the New
York Tribune of June 19,[71] followed by another "Special Dispatch" dated June
20,[72] followed by two more short items, both dated June 20 but whose source or
authorship was not mentioned.[73]
Besides the news columns' coverage of the parliamentary maneuvering that had
gone on at least two days earlier in the convention, the telegraph wire for June
22 provided readers updated information under a June 21 dateline, including the
latest on a credentials fight.[74] The telegraph report on the convention led
with:
The reading of the Journal was dispensed with when the flooring
over the Orchester (sic) gave way letting a portion of the New York and
Pennsylvania delegation into the orchestra box. Nobody was hurt but
great excitement. A recess of one hour was taken to repair.[75]
The Gazette continued to give the convention dual treatment. Traditional
coverage came from exchange papers, such as an extensive collection of
"exclusive dispatches to the Cincinnati Daily Commercial"[76] published June 23
but whose datelines read June 20. As the convention drama grew, however, so did
apparent use of the telegraph. In the telegraph column next to the Cincinnati
exchange stories were two full-fledged convention updates datelined June 22.[77]
From the customary single summary sentence, telegraph items had grown to four
and five paragraphs each.
As the telegraph stories became more expansive, however, they still retained an
economy not necessarily found in the exchange papers' accounts. For instance,
the Cincinnati Daily Commercial's reporter, identified only as "H.M.," provided
this colorful rendering of the convention:
The city swarms like a bee hive. All parties know that the fight
comes in the morning. Immense crowds fill Monument square. The usual
rival mass meetings are simultaneously roaring. Two sets of speakers are
ding-donging and playing the same old rub-a-dub tune for and against
Douglas D a thousand voices keep incessantly crying "Yancey! Yancey!
Yancey! D bands playing D Roman candles exploding D side-walks thronged
everywhere.[78]
By comparison, the voice of this telegraph story, in its entirety, is
constrained:
Baltimore, June 21 D The New York delegation have resolved to
sustain the majority report of the Committee on Credentials. An exciting
and acrimonous (sic) discussion occurred principally between Montgomery
and Randall, of Penn., resulting in a street fight between Randall's son
and Montgomery. A duel is anticipated.[79]
This and other examples suggest that the telegraph news was more immediate but
also, even when liberated from the single-sentence reports, remained truncated
and drier than exchange paper copy. A tornado and the convention give only
limited opportunities to assess news by telegraph compared with the paper's
traditional newsgathering and presentation. Nevertheless, some of the trade-offs
between immediacy and expanded sense of proximity on the one hand, and color and
style on the other are apparent in these early examples. However, the
telegraph's looming transcendence was attested by the Gazette's lead story on
Sunday, June 24, 1860, in which appeared the only "today" story detected in this
research:
The telegraph this morning announces the termination of the
National Democratic Convention at Baltimore. The Convention proper
nominated Mr. Douglas for the Presidency, and Mr. Fitzpatrick, of
Alabama, for the Vice Presidency. The Seceders subsequently met in
Convention and nominated Mr. Breckenridge, of Kentucky, for the
Presidency, and Mr. Lane, of Oregon, for the Vice Presidency. Our
Democratic friends, therefore, have two tickets to choose from. We
congratulate them on their good fortune (emphasis added).[80]
Summary and Conclusion
Examination of Nashville's Daily Gazette for January and June 1860 suggest that
the telegraph had a growing importance in the paper's newsgathering throughout
the first six months of the year. In this relatively short time, the telegraph
appears to have become more central to the news budget, going from the role of a
cryptic, "headline service," to an indexer of the news, to a supplement to the
stories copied from exchange papers, and finally to a sole-provider of news
stories. With that change, came a greater sense of immediacy that began to yield
news items written from telegraph reports rather than exchange paper reprints.
Such coverage was given greater prominence in the paper when the pivotal debates
and decisions of the presidential nominations were taking place. The Gazette and
presumably its competitors apparently could not wait on the customary channels
of the exchange papers or make do with the skeleton briefs of the traditional
telegraph news columns when momentous events were occurring in far off Baltimore
that summer. And with that capability there is a suggestion in reading the news
columns that a greater sense of connectedness with other communities outside the
local area may have been taking place.[81] Whether the apparent changes in news
philosophy and practices seen in comparing January and June marked a turning
point in coverage and perspective requires further analysis of previous and
subsequent publication years and across a wider sample of newspapers.
As exploratory research, this case study yields a number of questions for
further research but nonetheless offers a glimpse of the change in the use,
importance, and influence of the telegraph in reporting news in the telegraph's
infancy. Although the study's scope is limited, it is important in the questions
it raises about the effect of the technologies of the day on newsgathering. Also
raised in the examination are questions of relationships among competing
journalists in a more rough and tumble era, how journalists used the expanding
flow of information reaching their offices, how the typology of news may have
been changing at this time as a consequence of the technology, and what themes
may have been early, albeit unattended, harbingers of the Civil War in the next
year.
[1] Bruce D. Itule and Douglas A. Anderson, News Writing and Reporting for
Today's Media, 3rd ed. (New York: McGraw Hill, 1994), 58.
[2] Richard A. Schwarzlose, "Early Telegraphic News Dispatches: Forerunner of
the AP," Journalism Quarterly 51 (Summer 1974):595-601.
[3] Donald L. Shaw, "News Bias and the Telegraph: A Study of Historical
Change," Journalism Quarterly 44 (Spring 1967): 3-12.
[4] Use of the telegraph to transmit news has been identified as occurring soon
after 1845-1846. Schwarzlose, 596. In Nashville, TN, the first telegraphic
message was received in 1848. Nashville/Davidson County Time Line, Nashville
Historical Commission and the Public Library of Nashville and Davidson County,
January 1996.
[5] John Egerton, ed. Nashville: The Faces of Two Centuries, 1780-1980
(Nashville, TN: PlusMedia, 1979).
[6] Ibid., 52.
[7] Ibid., 57.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid., 89.
[10] Ibid.
[11] F. Garvin Davenport, Cultural Life in Nashville: On the Eve of the Civil
War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1941), 197.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Egerton, 107.
[14] "Various Sorts of Enthusiasm," Nashville Daily Gazette, 27 June, 1860, p.
2. (In notes hereafter, Gazette. Since all citations to the Gazette are for the
year 1860, the year will be omitted in subsequent footnotes.)
[15] Ibid.
[16] Ibid.
[17] "Democratic State Convention," Gazette, 20 January, p. 2.
[18] Ibid.
[19] "One Newspaper Less," Gazette, 3 June, p. 3.
[20] "A New Banner to the Breeze," Ibid.
[21] "The National Pathfinder," Gazette, 1 January, p. 3. The Gazette's
apparent cordiality to competitors suggests grounds for further research about
relations among editors and their newspapers in an era in which editors'
political passions not infrequently led to bloodshed (see, for instance,
reference to a shoot-out between Nashville editors John Leake Marling of the
Daily Union and Felix Kirk Zollicoffer of the Republican Banner in Davenport,
197. A shoot-out between the two editors of the Lynchburg, Va., Virginian and
two editors of the Lynchburg Republican was reported in the Gazette, "Two
Editors Shot," 26 June, p. 2, and amplified a few days later with a reprint from
the Baltimore Sun, "The Lynchburg, Va., Affray, Gazette, 30 June, p. 2.). That
these "affrays" frequently ended with wounds rather than deaths suggests
research into whether the pen was not only mightier than the sword but more
accurate in these editors hands than their firearms.
[22] George Rollie Adams and Ralph Jerry Christian. Nashville: A Pictorial
History (Norfolk, VA: Denning Co., 1988), 26.
[23] Walter T. Durham, Reluctant Partners: Nashville and the Union, July 1,
1863, to June 30, 1865 (Nashville: Tennessee Historical Society, 1987), 66.
[24] Publication of the Daily Union on April 13, 1862 has been called the
"birth" of that newspaper without accounting for the reference to a newspaper
by that name in 1852. Walter T. Durham, Nashville: The Occupied City. The First
Seventeen Months - February 16, 1862, to June 30, 1863 (Nashville: Tennessee
Historical Society, 1985), 75.
[25] Durham, Reluctant Partners, 171.
[26] Egerton, 106.
[27] Gazette, 1 January, p. 1.
[28] Ibid.
[29] An example is the list of addressees of letters not picked up from the
Nashville Post Office, appearing 1 June, p. 2.
[30] Adams and Christian, 26.
[31] Durham, Occupied City, 73.
[32] Ibid., 75.
[33] Gazette, 1 January. Throughout the first six months of 1860, the paper
listed Bell as an owner (p. 2) and as local and commercial editor (p. 3).
[34] Durham, Occupied City, 95.
[35] Ibid., 181.
[36] Durham, Reluctant Partners, 67.
[37] Ibid., 66.
[38] Ibid., 151.
[39] Ibid., 171.
[40] Richard B. Kielbowicz, "Newsgathering by Printers' Exchanges Before the
Telegraph," Journalism History 9 (Summer 1982): 47.
[41] Gazette, 8 June, p. 3.
[42] Gazette, 5 January, p. 2.
[43] "Shooting Affray," Ibid., 13 January, p. 2.
[44] Ibid. Such comment, not uncommon for the period, shows how libel laws have
changed the language of police reporting since the mid-nineteenth century.
[45] Gazette, 1 June, p. 2.
[46] Gazette, 2 June, p. 2.
[47] An example is the continuing news interest in Garibaldi's fight for
Italian independence. Most often this telegraph coverage featured dates the
items were transmitted from New York City, with the city identified in the
dateline. It appears that virtually all of the Garibaldi coverage initially came
to the United States via trans-Atlantic steamers arriving in New York from
Europe. See, for instance, Gazette, 12 June 1860, p. 2. The practice of
datelining material where the information was obtained rather than where the
action occurred remains an Associated Press convention today. See, Norman
Goldstein, ed., The Associated Press Stylebook 31st ed. (New York: The
Associated Press, 1996), 57.
[48] This is an impressionistic observation, since further study would be
necessary before one could reliably identify what in 1860 was a Nashville
reader's idea of his or her "region." The principal criterion used here is the
frequency of mention of non-Nashville municipalities. Hence, Louisville, KY,
appears to be within Nashville's "region" by virtue of the Louisville and
Nashville Railroad link, although they are more than 150 miles apart. By
comparison, Chattanooga, less than 75 miles distant, received considerably less
mention in the Gazette during the 1860 months studied, although it, too, was
linked by rail.
[49] Often this headline was rendered more specific with the name of the
vessel, e.g., "Arrival of the Great Eastern," Gazette, 29 June, p. 2.
[50] Somewhat paradoxically, news in this period alternately moved no faster
than a horse or a steamship until it reached a telegraph office, from which it
sped to newspapers throughout the country. See, for instance, Arthur C. Carey,
"Effects of the Pony Express and the Transcontinental Telegraph Upon Selected
California Newspapers," Journalism Quarterly 51 (Summer 1974): 320-322.
[51] "Cricket Match," Gazette, 8 June, p. 2.
[52] Huntsville Independent item in Gazette, 3 January, p. 3; Louisville
Journal item in Gazette, 5 January, p. 3; "Cincinnati Gazette telegraphic
correspondent," Gazette, 27 January, p. 3.
[53] "The Louisville Journal," Gazette, 3 January, p. 3.
[54] "Fire at Hickman, Ky.," Gazette, 8 January, p. 3. In this instance, the
telegraph's ability to speed news is moot because the Sunday story's reference
to "Wednesday night last" would date the fire less than 150 miles from Nashville
to January 4.
[55] "Heart-Sickening Calamity," Gazette, 12 January, p. 2.
[56] "Ruins of Pemberton Mill," Ibid.
[57] "The Lawrence Calamity," Gazette, 13 January, p. 3. Interestingly, a
subheadline said "Two Hundred Operatives Burned in the Ruins," although in the
last paragraph of the successive dispatches compiled to create the story the
anonymous reporter said, "I think it is much over estimated in the number
killed," and placed the number of dead or missing at 115.
[58] See, for instance, "Louisville Journal," Gazette, 3 January, p. 3.
[59] Although typographical and fact errors were not uncommon in the Gazette
during the period studied, the telegraph column appeared to have more typos than
were found in other news columns.
[60] Gazette, 9 June, p. 2.
[61] "From Washington," ibid.
[62] Gazette, 8 June, p. 3.
[63] As near as could be determined from examining other issues of the paper
from February through May, this was the first actual combining of separate
telegraph reports to form a news narrative.
[64] Gazette, 5 June, p. 2.
[65] Gazette, 6 June, p. 2.
[66] "Further Particulars of the Great Tornado," Gazette, 8 June, p. 2. The
authorship of this story is, of course, conjectural. The analysis here is based
on assuming the "we" is an editorial "we" representing the Gazette. Using a
Chicago dateline could suggest the compilation was done in that city, but the
dateline style of the telegraph column would not preclude using an out-of-town
dateline on a locally written story. In any event, whether written in Nashville
or elsewhere, the compiling of telegraph news to create a separate story appears
to have been a relatively novel approach in the Gazette in early 1860.
[67] "Democratic Constitutional Convention," Gazette, 14 June, p. 2.
[68] Ibid.
[69] Gazette, 22 June, p. 2.
[70] Ibid.
[71] Ibid.
[72] Ibid.
[73] Ibid.
[74] "Baltimore Convention," Ibid.
[75] Ibid.
[76] "Aspects of the Third Day," Gazette, 23 June, p. 2.
[77] "Democratic Convention," Gazette, 3 June, p. 3
[78] "Aspects of the Third Day," Gazette, 23 June, p. 2.
[79] "Democratic Convention," Gazette, 23 June, p. 2.
[80] "The Baltimore Convention," Gazette, 24 June, p. 2.
[81] As noted above, the Gazette carried extensive exchange paper items from
throughout the United States. Closer textual analysis might suggest, however,
that with timeliness a factor the news stories suggested greater relevance of
non-local news in readers' lives.
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