For most of the nineteenth century, the biggest daily newspapers carried nothing but densely-packed adverts on their front page. Here are some examples from around the time this film is set...pic.twitter.com/vl6wY4midg
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For most of the nineteenth century, the biggest daily newspapers carried nothing but densely-packed adverts on their front page. Here are some examples from around the time this film is set...pic.twitter.com/vl6wY4midg
To put this is further perspective, this relatively modest 24-point headline from W. T. Stead's Pall Mall Gazette was considered innovative (and rather radical) in 1885... nearly thirty years after Dickens died.pic.twitter.com/RvKzT1gpGV
Meanwhile, the front page of papers like The Times still looked like this in 1965!pic.twitter.com/6om15lybkM
SURELY a sensationalist, populist paper like the Daily Mail would have news and headlines on its front page, right? Not until the 1940s!pic.twitter.com/QaXR0J33iL
Welcome to the smallest hill that I'm willing to die on.
I know these props serve a convenient narrative purpose, but media history matters too! The ‘newspaper’ as we know it evolved, piece-by-piece, over many centuries and went through countless transformations on the way.
If we imagine the ‘newspaper’ as an unchanging institution that looked much the same in 1843 as it does today, then the imminent death of print journalism looks apocalyptic; but the migration to digital isn’t an ending, just another chapter in a long story.
While we're here, I should point out that not *all* Victorian newspapers looked like a wall of text. Some weeklies like the Illustrated Police News (low-brow, crime, sensation) and the Illustrated London News (high-brow, news, culture, etc) looked rather different...pic.twitter.com/fwtLY6kvG7
You might also be surprised to learn that interviews - something we now think of as being so central to the practice of journalism - were uncommon in British papers until the 1880s. They were regarded as an invasion of privacy & condemned as an uncouth American import! (DNCJ)pic.twitter.com/JjuUhZkdDj
Thanks for humouring this (admittedly *very* petty) rant about the cinematic misrepresentation historical newspapers. Join me next time as I try to sit through the trailer for the forthcoming P. T. Barnum movie without having an aneurysm.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXCTMGYUg9A …
...aaaaaand we're back! The Greatest Showman features quite a few newspapers. The New York Herald *did* occasionally feature news on its front page as well as the usual adverts, but not headlines like this in the 1840s.pic.twitter.com/GopVFsytoe
However, unlike the British papers I posted before, the New York Herald *did* print news-related images on its front page from time to time. So this prop from the film isn't totally anachronistic.pic.twitter.com/iqVnPPRxGt
This enormous internal headline and cross-column article is a bit weird though, as is the by-line portrait. The vast majority of articles in nineteenth-century newspapers were unsigned, so it would be rare for a journalist's *name* to appear, never mind a picture of them!pic.twitter.com/w9pUxKN4Go
The keen-eyed historians among you might have noticed that all of these props have had the date removed, which would normally appear centred under the masthead. One has 'New York', one 'Saturday', and the other is just blank. Real masthead in the 4th image.pic.twitter.com/ktn2W8mhyp
I suspect that this is because the film (which, to my surprise, I actually rather enjoyed!) condenses, rejigs, and omits large parts of Barnum's career. They avoided pinning moments to specific dates, and generally kept the passage of time fairly vague.
The New York Tribune also makes a brief appearance. As is often the case, they get details like the masthead right - including the Tribune's taller left & right columns. We don't get a closer look though so, as far as I can tell, it's just the headline that's wrong here.pic.twitter.com/CvTZELrBUG
Finally, I also spotted a copy of The New York Times! The formatting is weird for all the usual reasons. Also: the NYT wasn't founded until 1851, a decade after Barnum opened his 'American Museum.' AND it was known as the 'New York Daily Times' until 1857.pic.twitter.com/dT3gWyk8Bp
In sum: still out here dying on that hill.
"But Bob," I hear you all cry, "what about the on-screen representation of Victorian newspapers in 2016's The Limehouse Golem?" Well...pic.twitter.com/qu687Oee5S
... they did a pretty good job! Here's their reproduction of the Penny Illustrated Paper, plus a trial-related front page from the real periodical published in the 1880s when the film was set. The caption should be below the image, but aside from that it looks okay to me.pic.twitter.com/zCXNJMlmqR
Our old friend The Illustrated Police News also makes a welcome appearance, but there are some peculiar errors here. The paper only carried illustrations on its cover at this point, so those text-heavy side column's under Dan Leno's fingers are out of place. Why add them?!pic.twitter.com/lsvTezyiN4
Let's take a closer look. Like the props in The Greatest Showman, the date has been omitted. Ackroyd's novel is set in 1880, which means that the film used the wrong masthead for the IPN. It didn't look that until May 1882. But this isn't a deal breaker, even for me!pic.twitter.com/mZcCiaatIi
Similarly, they were right to put adverts on the back page of the Penny Illustrated Paper. In 1880 these adverts were plainer and more densely-packed, but later in the decade they did start to look quite like the move prop. So maybe the film is set slightly later than the novel?pic.twitter.com/6QIGCMWTL1
Bonus points: the Penny Illustrated Paper *did* actually carry adverts for Isaac Walton & Co!pic.twitter.com/nw4gJ0wS6r
I also liked the incidental use of print culture in the film. The Pall Mall Gazette was (usually) a respectable gentleman's evening paper, which seems appropriate for the reading rooms of the British Museum.pic.twitter.com/s6FLBn04Ku
In one scene they also depicted a poor character's lodgings with pages from newspapers and periodicals pasted onto the walls, which was reportedly quite a common practice.
pic.twitter.com/lLp8h4jsjc
In summary: I thought The Limehouse Golem's tone was misjudged, the plot was too predictable, key performances were wooden, and the casting of Dan Leno was CATASTROPHICALLY bad. But the newspapers are mostly on-point, so it's a solid 4/5 stars from me.
Welcome back to this ridiculous thread. I've been playing Red Dead Redemption 2 this weekend. Earlier today I encountered a newspaper vendor. You can probably guess where this is going...pic.twitter.com/2jMJc8zSIU
I bought this newspaper in a small, mid-western livestock town called Valentine. I know what you're probably thinking: "headlines and news on the front page again?! He's going to have a heart attack!" But actually...pic.twitter.com/J3OKpTyydq
... American newspapers in this period (the game is set in 1899) often had news on their front page. Here's a broadly comparable paper from the town of Corinth, Mississipi. As you can see, the game's mixture of display adverts & news on the front page isn't anachronistic at all!pic.twitter.com/mZ8ew0juZG
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