Foreign Correspondence in the Early Telegraphic Era: The Herald, the Tribune, and the 1848 Revolutions

Abstract

In 1848, political revolutions were breaking out all over Europe simultaneously while new technological advancements were having significant and profound impacts on news gathering practices abroad. New forms of communication and transportation, including the telegraph, the railroad, and the ocean-going steamship, meant the faster transmission of news and a wider spirit of cooperation between competing, penny press newspapers that resulted in shared telegraphic dispatches. This study examines the foreign correspondence published in the New York Tribune and the New York Herald, and how the breaking news came in telegraphic dispatches that the two papers shared. This study reveals how correspondence became a way for both of publications to provide readers with unique material because both James Gordon Bennett of the Herald and Horace Greeley of the Tribune thought European letters were valuable sources of an American perspective on world events that gave readers an eyewitness account.