Pop Culture Text - St. Dominic High School

26 With Amusement for Allcommunities of readers embraced. At stake were varying popular mythswith which individuals shaped their understandings of the world. TheJewett murder case served as a prime example. Benjamin Day and JamesGordon Bennett each claimed to have the facts on his side and warnedreaders not to trust the rival editor. According to Day, Bennett’s “onlychance of dying an upright man will be that of hanging perpendicularlyupon a rope.” In turn, the volatile and fiery Bennett was quick to bringlawsuits or engage in fisticuffs; three times, he lost badly in fights to anothereditor, James Watson Webb. 47In their coverage of the Jewett case, Day and Bennett summoned upcontrasting mythologies about fallen women—that of “the Poor Unfortunate,”a “victim, a trusting innocent from the country” (in the media scholarAndie Tucher’s words), versus that of “the Siren,” the predatory Eve withher apple of sin. As Tucher has observed: “The real ‘news’ about Jewett’sdeath [had] more to do with these traditions than with facts.” At stakewere opposing perspectives about what was happening in the United Statesgenerally. When Day (as well as the Transcript) portrayed Jewett as the exploitedvictim of privileged middle- or upper-class men, he advanced anargument with which many working-class readers could identify. Bennett,on the other hand, did not wish to offend respectable middle-class readerswho might expand his base of customers. He thus placed Jewett in the“Siren” category and blamed New York City’s deviant groups for her fate.Meanwhile, publishers of small country weeklies confirmed suspicionsamong rural readers that New York City, like all metropolises, was a sinfulplace. In such ways, the spreading print revolution reflected as well asshaped public thinking. 48Although different print mythologies resonated among different groups,the penny press nevertheless touched a powerful grassroots desire to makesense of the rapidly changing urban environment. Swelling city populationscreated a setting of increasing anonymity in which it was difficult to identifywhether strangers were friends or foes. Against that nervous backdrop,the penny press performed a number of functions that boosted its popularity.It helped mark boundaries between “us” and “them,” thereby buildingfeelings of belonging to a shared community. In the words of one historian,“daily papers reinforced emerging modes of anonymous, market-oriented,urban sociability” whereby strangers coalesced within a world of print.News stories that illuminated previously private lives (such as Jewett’s orRobinson’s) could, thus, serve as substitutes for human contact, allowing asense of familiarity through human-interest tales. On this level, the pennypress fulfilled the traditional cohesive role of village gossip, supplying asense of order, control, and democratic empowerment. And, just as significantly,the penny dailies moved the expanding urban discourse from elite