“Saucepan Journalism” in an Age of Indifference

Abstract

This article analyzes how the popular press in Gilded Age America helped to create a celebrity culture in religious reporting designed to stimulate circulation at a time of economic panic. Coverage of the era's two leading evangelists, Henry Ward Beecher and D.L.Moody, by Brooklyn's “saucepan press” demonstrated the entertainment value of religious news in modernizing America. Just as a sauce contains many ingredients designed to tickle the palate, so, too, did modern newspaper reporting. Reeling from the Panic of 1873, it needed to be part news and part entertainment if it was to find and keep an audience. Beecher's adultery trial and Moody's tram-Atlantic revival success had made each a star by the fall of 1875, when they filled the pages of Brooklyn's press with tall tales designed to titillate and excite readers, who had wearied of traditional religious reporting. If Moody's mass meetings showed that religion as a civic spectacle worked well, the Beecher story showed that religion as a civic scandal worked equally well.