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? asked in News & EventsMedia & Journalism · 7 months ago

Why were USA newspapers in about 1890 about little things the people were doing ?

In working on ancestry.com, searching the newspapers for around 1890, they report who went for a carriage ride, who left town to visit relatives, when they came back and all kinds of " little stuff".  So different from today. Is that just what they reported back then ?  And not big city newspapers .

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  • Anonymous
    7 months ago
    Favorite Answer

    That was the way to sell newspapers - print stories about people locally and they run out and buy lots of copies to show all their friends.

  • 7 months ago

    When you stop and give this deeper thought, how is this any different than the celebrity-obsessed population we have today and the myriad of media sources that feed it?

    The only differences are the means of transmission, and the scale. 

  • 7 months ago

    Because that is all that was happening.  There was no rioting, no plane crashes or anything like that. People were more civilised then and the things people use to kill themselves and each other had not been invented yet. 

  • Anonymous
    7 months ago

    Because they didn't have long distance communication abilities so they had only local events to report. 

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