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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).
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.
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...