Media History: Newspapers and the Mass Press

Hand printed through a mechanical printing press, early newspapers were limited in how many people they could reach. Yet the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s created a steam-driven press that could produce tens or even hundreds of thousands of copies of a daily newspaper. With falling costs of production, the “mass press“ became the daily information source of everyday people--not just the elite. And just in time--will millions of immigrants coming to work in the new Industrial urban centers, cheap mass newspapers provided news and entertainment for the masses.