The Press Gang - by Mark Wahlgren Summers (Paperback)

About the Book

Press Gang: Newspapers and Politics, 1865-1878

Book Synopsis

Relations between the press and politicians in modern America have always been contentious. In The Press Gang, Mark Summers tells the story of the first skirmishes in this ongoing battle. Following the Civil War, independent newspapers began to separate themselves from partisan control and assert direct political influence. The first investigative journalists uncovered genuine scandals such as those involving the Tweed Ring, but their standard practices were often sensational, as editors and reporters made their reputations by destroying political figures, not by carefully uncovering the facts. Objectivity as a professional standard scarcely existed. Considering more than ninety different papers, Summers analyzes not only what the press wrote but also what they chose not to write, and he details both how they got the stories and what mistakes they made in reporting them. He exposes the peculiarly ambivalent relationship of dependence and distaste among reporters and politicians. In exploring the shifting ground between writing the stories and making the news, Summers offers an important contribution to the history of journalism and mid-nineteenth-century politics and uncovers a story that has come to dominate our understanding of government and the media.

From the Back Cover

Here is the story of the uneasy shift from partisan reporting to a professional press in the years just after the Civil War and of the first professional skirmishes in an ongoing battle between the press and politicians.

Review Quotes

"The Press Gang" is a fresh narrative of party strife of the Gilded Age. . . . Persuasive and wonderfully readable.

"Reviews in American History"

By far the best book yet produced on the 19th-century press.

"Virginia Quarterly Review"

Exceptionally well written. The narrative is fast-paced and absorbing.

"Journal of American History"

Mark Summers's work commands that we never think of nineteenth-century newspaper sources in quite the same way again.

"Journal of Southern History"

This extremely readable account . . . strengthens the belief that history does "not" repeat itself.

"Illinois Historical Journal"