In the late 19th century, the American news landscape was a wilderness of distortion. While modern readers might romanticize the era of the "lone frontiersman" or the "isolated farmstead," the reality was that 19th-century Americans were inundated with information. The problem was not a lack of news, but its fundamental rot. Newspapers were openly partisan, […]

In the annals of American political history, few figures have been described with as much backhanded reverence as Lincoln Steffens. To the corrupt political bosses of the late 19th and early 20th centuries—men who treated city treasuries as personal bank accounts—Steffens was a "born crook that’s gone straight." This peculiar endorsement from the underworld of […]

If you have ever checked your smartphone to see if you have earned enough digital "stars" for a free latte, or scanned a plastic key fob at the grocery store to unlock a discount on milk, you are participating in a consumer ritual that traces its lineage back to a nearly forgotten paper empire. Long […]