Friend, Foe, or Freeloader? Cooperation and Competition between Newspapers and Radio in the Early 1920s

Abstract

In the 1920s, the newspaper industry had to adjust to an upstart medium, radio. Initially, newspapers saw natural synergies with radio and became radio's primary booster. However, the newspaper industry's enthusiasm for radio quickly peaked, and for the latter half of the decade, newspapers resisted the encroachment of broadcasting. This cooperation-competition dialectic predates the so-called “press-radio war” of the 1930s and provides a pretext for that later conflict, in which newspapers and radio battled over the right to deliver news and sell advertising.