In researching this play, I’ve been looking at newspapers from the Civil War era and thinking just how much you could get away with as a purveyor of media when Americans faced such a limited choice. Just as the big networks would have their heyday in the latter half of the 20th century, in the same period of the 19th, newspapers were king.

Like today, advertising revenue and circulation (viewership) were the twin sources of power because of revenue and influence. In fact, much of the 19th century paper’s front page consisted of fine-prints ads, and most of the important content for many papers did not show up until page 2. Every page had as many words crammed onto it as could possibly fit, page space being the equivalent of aisles and shelves in a retail store.

I don’t want to make too much of these causal observations, as the point of my research only tangentially touches on newspapers, and experts in print history would put my superficial impressions in their proper place. Nonetheless, in looking at these crude instruments, I thought how powerful they were at the time when citizens had no other source for news and opinion. At all. Well, except for their genuine community, but I suspect even then people were more open and expressive when not face-to-face with their audience.

So powerful was the influence of the monopoly that newspaper men could aspire to be President based completely on their print empire–from Horace Greeley to William Randolph Hearst. From about 1850 to 1870, William Brownlow rose to dominate Tennessee purely on the basis of his newspaper. It’s not surprising our Constitution had enshrined freedom of the press right along with speech.

Good progress on the play today, and this, I think, is the hook to tie my theme to the historical events of the period.