What’s Short, Salacious, And Is Killing Journalism?

Is it Twitter or some other T-word?

I do not know whether the great commercial and social advantages of the telegraph are not counterbalanced by its political evils. No one can judge of this so well as myself. The public mind throughout the interior is kept in a constant state of excitement by what are called “telegrams.” They are short and spicy and can easily be inserted in the country newspapers. In the city journals they can be contradicted the next day.. —President James Buchanan, December 1860*

The more things change, the more things stay the same, eh?

*Found in Blue & Gray In Black & White: Newspapers In The Civil War, by Brayton Harris.

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