The “Sound of an Extra”: Representing Civil War Newsboys by Pen and in Print

Abstract

By the time the Civil War began, newsboys had become fixtures of America’s urban landscape. Many people who bought their daily newspaper on the street wrote about newsboys in their diaries and letters. Their writings shed light on the lived experience of wartime journalism. Newsboys were the only representative of newspapers that most readers encountered in person. With their shouts about the latest news, newsboys created a collective listening/reading experience. This meant that the popular urban reception of war news was generated not only individually but in public as well. Reception of the news was greatly influenced by the newsboys who put their own spin on events and generated mass reaction from street crowds.