Newspapers on the Television on the Web

Yesterday evening C-SPAN’s BookTV aired its recording of the Reporting the Revolutionary War event at the Old State House early this month.

First, main author Todd Andrlik talked about Revolutionary-era newspapers and collecting them, as he also discusses at Rag Linen and BeforeHistory.com. One story he didn’t tell in this presentation, but which I heard at dinner afterward, was about coming across a one-page supplement to a newspaper that hadn’t been documented before. Todd arranged for that to go into the Library of Congress collection so it will be available to scholars.

After Todd’s talk, he sat down with me and Prof. Robert Allison of Suffolk University for a discussion of colonial news reporting and questions from the audience. Good questions and a lively interchange.

It doesn’t look possible to download this video or watch it on the C-SPAN site yet. There are only snatches of an automated transcript that says things like: “INTERESTEDLY IN THE MIDDLE MINOLTA WERE SOLD UPON A FEW LONDON, POOLS TO REPORT GEORGE WASHINGTON HAD DIED IN BATTLE. NORMALLY THESE ARE ALSO KIND OF...” I think that was Todd talking.

This show appears to be scheduled to run again on 1 January at 1:00 A.M.

(Benjamin Park had nice things to say about Reporting the Revolutionary War on the new Junto blog.)