First Tabloids Alexander Saxton, in American Quarterly

(Summer 1984), 307 College Hall, Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa.
19104.
In 1830, the United States could claim only 65 daily newspapers, all of them published and for the urban gentry. Within just a few years, says Saxton, a University of California, Los Angeles, historian, a "favor- able coincidence of technology, flush times, and politics" paved the way for a new breed of popular mass-circulation tabloids.
The pre...