How did newspapers in the 1700s-1800s get up-to-date stories from all over the world?

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How could a newspaper in the Britain report on something that happened in the Americas?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Newspaper could only print news as fast as they could get it.

However since nobody else could hear about it before hand it was still “new” to the locals when it was published.

Once telegraphs were a thing news could spread faster than people could carry information, but before that news travels as letters and in the heads of people.

One weird thing about the situation in the Americas was that news didn’t spread evenly or linearly. Just because a place was closer to some event did not mean it happened about it first. Before the railroads the fastest wail to travel from the east coast to the west coast was by boat down the coast to panama, over land in a horse cart and back up the coast by ship again.

Apparently in 1841, the news of the death of President William Henry Harrison had taken 110 days to reach Los Angeles according to Wikipedia.

Also daily newspapers weren’t a thing for most of the 1700s. the first daily newspaper in the new world was published in 1783.

News were not quite as fresh as we are used to today.

By the time the transcontinental telegraph was completed in 1861 news could travel a lot faster and was a lot fresher when it reached its destination.

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