This paper is a case study of the reporting of the 1831-32 cholera pandemic by four Virginia newspapers. The pandemic was a major event of these years in which this disease, almost unknown in Europe and the United States before that time, killed about 100,000 people in the two continents, at times killing 5 to 10 percent of the population of large cities in a few weeks. This study examines the breadth, quality, timeliness and sources of the cholera coverage, as an example of the communications network that informed people about the world outside their local communities. The case study details how these newspapers used the newspaper exchange, letters from correspondents, direct reports from health offices around the country, advise from physicians, and the editors’ own reporting to inform their readers of the approaching catastrophe, and to provide public services to help their communities and individuals prepare for the disease. These "modern" newspaper functions occurred after the expansion of the Post Office in carrying newspapers but before the communications revolutions of railroads and the telegraph. These newspapers were what I have termed the "pre-penny press," i.e. relatively expensive, small, semi-weekly newspapers that had changed little in style and format since the early National period.
The four sample newspapers are the Richmond Enquirer, the Norfolk American Beacon (the Beacon), the Lynchburg Virginian and the Fredericksburg Virginia Herald (the Herald). The Enquirer and its editor, Thomas Ritchie, were well known nationally, and the paper was considered an example of the political party press (representing Jackson’s Democracy). The Beacon was a commercial paper in the only port of the state–Norfolk–and it explicitly eschewed partisan coverage. The Virginian was also a political paper (representing Whigs) whose editor, Richard Toler, was an important Whig booster and later politician, in the relatively new, small, and expanding town of Lynchburg. The Herald was the oldest paper of the group in a town that was long settled and losing population. These four towns represent a cross-section of the settled parts of mid-Atlantic states in terms of size, economy, political status, and growth, and their newspapers’ approach to covering the pandemic was similar to other newspapers outside the four major Eastern cities.
Dr. Kittrell Rushing or Dr. David Sachsman 311 Frist Hall Communication Department The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Chattanooga, Tennessee 37403-2598 http://www.utc.edu/commdept/conference/
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