Abstract
Money Matters: Financial Structure in the Civil War Era and the Dominance of the Big City Daily
By Thorin Tritter
The Civil War profoundly changed American newspapers. On the one hand, shortages of both supplies and workers, with the related increase in costs, forced many newspapers to shrink editions or close up entirely. On the other hand, the war created an unprecedented demand for news and those owners who found a way to continue publishing often realized great financial rewards. But which newspapers benefited the most and what was the key to their success? This paper looks particularly at New York City, the center of America's newspaper industry, and argues that the largest dailies, because of the financial structures they developed in the years leading up to the war, were able to dominate the industry like never before. Significantly, their access to capital during this key period helped make dailies, rather than weekly or monthly papers, the main source for news.
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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