Civil War Newspapers -- Background and Book Review

Selected Reviews:

Michael Hedges, national correspondent for Scripps-Howard News Service. From the Washington Times (October 2, 1999)

Good Stories, Hack Writing from the front! --

"Mr. Harris' book is a compelling account of how the Civil War led to the emergence of the press as a power on the national scene. It gives fresh insight into how a cast of visionaries and tough reporters -- along with some rogues and crackpots -- used that power to shape the way the nation viewed the war then and for all time . . . .This book is the first full treatment of the subject of press coverage of the Civil War since a pair of books by J. Cutler Andrews nearly two generations ago . . . Readers may be distracted by some of the author's digressions . . . [but] the value of "Blue and Gray in Black and White" outweighs any quibbles. . . . Journalism is viewed as the disposable first draft of history. What Mr. Harris' book makes clear is that taken as a whole, the work of combat correspondents created a record of the war that has formed our perceptions and fueled our imaginations ever since." --

George Hebert, a former editor of the Norfolk Ledger-Star, writing in the Virginian-Pilot, October 24, 1999:

"Author Harris . . . apologizes because he had to leave so much out of his book. But what he has packed into these pages -- in details of press conduct, policy and individual performance -- is brain-boggling and thoroughly readable. Even more important is what he tells about the tortures and stresses that the nation itself went through in its great -- but fortunately temporary -- splitting apart. Looking at the war from the viewpoint of those who produced and spread the news, even with all the journalistic gaps and miscues exposed, makes the picture of the conflict much more complete. This aspect of the war has been written about before, largely piecemeal. Now Harris has done it as fully, as clearly and as even-handedly as anyone could ask."

Ward Triplett, Kansas City STAR from Kansas City , October 16, 1999

How the Civil War helped make newspapers what they are today
-- From the Kansas City Star Magazine, (October 10, 1999)

"The love-hate relationship between the newspapers and the men who fought in the Civil War is just one of the subjects of Brayton Harris' Blue & Gray in Black & White: Newspapers in the Civil War . . . [In an interview, Harris said] "Before the Civil War, the newspapers in the United States were primarily opinion sheets for their editors. By the end of the war, they had actually become newspapers in the way we know them today. . . .One thing that came through is that nothing really has changed except technology . . . the media works the same way today that they did in 1860. Reporters do the same dumb, or brilliant things. Publishers sometimes put profits above ethics then and they do now."

Newspapers in the Civil War, 1861-1865