Pony express (newspapers)

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In newspapers, a pony express were express delivery systems that newspapers used in the 19th century to obtain news faster or publish it prior to rival publications. As with the celebrated Pony Express of 1860–61, these systems were eventually supplanted by telegraph lines.

Pony express systems

In December 1830, three New York concerns competed to be the first to publish President Andrew Jackson's

James Gordon Bennett of the Courier and Enquirer arranged for a horseback express from Washington to Baltimore, followed by a ship to Philadelphia and second horseback leg to New York City. The run took six hours and costed almost $300, but the Courier and Enquirer prevailed over its competitors.[1][2]

The Journal of Commerce initiated a regular eight-relay express from Philadelphia to New York in January 1833.[1] After its rivals sought federal government's help through the establishment of an express government delivery system, the Journal expanded its line directly to Washington, D.C., giving it a news advantage of one to three days.[1]

The telegraph defeats the horse

By the 1840s, the New York Herald (founded by Bennett in 1835) had developed an express route from Albany, New York (the capital of the state of New York) to New York City. Bennett knew that telegraph lines were being built, but had rebuffed attempts to sell him on its merits, as he favored his established methods and the advantage it gave him over his competition. But in January 1847, the New York Evening Express accepted the offer of Ezra Cornell to use his new telegraph line from Albany to New York to get legislative news, and the Express was able to publish a new message from the governor in advance of the Herald pony express line.[3][4] Beaten badly to press, the Herald was forced to abandon its opposition to the telegraph.[1][5][6]

Pony express systems, however, continued to be developed when and where telegraph lines did not exist, though the systems would always dissolve once telegraph lines went into service. Thus, in 1846, during the

Baltimore Sun and Philadelphia Public Ledger established a sixty-pony express route to New Orleans. This provided Americans with their first taste of close to real-time coverage of warfare.[1] And in 1861, The Oregonian newspaper organized a pony express and stagecoach replay to obtain dispatches and Civil War news days ahead of rival papers in Portland, Oregon, who relied on reports to arrive by steamer from San Francisco.[citation needed
]

Nova Scotia Pony Express (1849)

Getting news from Europe fostered a Pony Express service across

National Historic Event in 1950, and a federal plaque was erected at its western terminus at Victoria Beach on the Digby Gut.[8]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Schwarzlose, Richard Allen. The Nation's Newsbrokers, Vol. 1: The formative years, from pretelegraph to 1865, p. 40 (1989)
  2. ISBN 978-0-19-514049-1.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link
    )
  3. ^ (26 November 1886). A veteran editor gone: Erastus Brooks dead at his Staten Island Home, The New York Times
  4. ^ (15 June 1872). James Gordon Bennett Versus The Telegraph, Journal of the Telegraph, p. 166
  5. ^ Grondahl, Paul. Ink stains led to a white collar Archived 2013-10-09 at the Wayback Machine, Times Union (Albany), Retrieved 6 October 2014
  6. ^ Reid, James D. The Telegraph in America: Its Founders, Promoters, and Noted Men, p. 307 (1879)
  7. ^ Nova Scotia Pony Express 1849 (news clippings), Retrieved 10 October 2014
  8. ^ Pony Express National Historic Event, Directory of Federal Heritage Designations, Parks Canada, 2012
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