Nation's Newsbrokers Volume 1: The Formative Years: From Pretelegraph to 1865

In a highly specialized work, the first of a projected two-volume study, Schwarzlose defines a newsbroker as an agent or agency involved in collecting and distributing general news among journalists in several communities. As described, this suggests an organization much like the Associated Pressand indeed much of the book is devoted to the development and eventual triumph of AP and the role played in its rise by the telegraph. Despite Schwarzlose's stiffly academic prose, his tales of AP's battles with its competitors and the telegraphy companies make interesting reading. Not the story of one firm only, the volume traces the sharing of news from the 18th century, when the postal service carried newspapers from one city to another and editors adapted copy from those papers for their own editions, through the joint efforts of various New York City newspapers to seize news fresh upon arrival by ship from Europe. Schwarzlose is a professor of journalism at Northwestern. (Mar.)