0 commentsTHE TRANSMISSION OF NEWS
The general use of the magnetic telegraph for the transmission of news to the daily press has eliminated from the business much of the exciting and characteristic enterprise which marked the career of the daily journals in existence just previous to the successful introduction of telegraphy. Many and ingenious were the devices of rival journals to anticipate their neighbors in the publication of important intelligence, and when the event was one expected and prearranged this enterprise at first took shape in the flying of carrier-pigeons, the equipment of pony expresses, with relays of spirited horses, and afterward in the chartering of special locomotives and steamboats from distant points. The achievement of Mr. Henry J. Raymond, then a reporter of the New York Tribune, in th first publication of a speech of Daniel Webster's, delivered in Boston, is a fair illustration of the methods adopted by one journal to surpass its rivals. He wrote out his notes of the speech while journeying back to New York on the boat, and as fast as he transcribed them the copy was passed over to printers, whose type and cases had been brough on board for that purpose. When the vessel arrived in New York the speech was in type and ready for instant publicatoin. It was in order to anticipate its rivals that the New York Herald first became possessed of a swift sailing yacht in New York harbor for the prompt collection of the shipping news.
With the advent of the telegraph all the journals which were able to pay the expenses of transmission were placed on precisely the same footing, with respect to priority, in the recipt and publication of news, and the ingenuity and expense formerly incurred to outstrip each other became a matter of the past.