Froth and Scum

Two notorious antebellum New York murder cases — a prostitute slashed in an elegant brothel and a tradesman bludgeoned by the brother of inventor Samuel Colt — set off journalistic scrambles over the meanings of truth, objectivity, and the duty of the press that reverberate to this day. In 1833 an entirely new kind of newspaper — cheap, feisty, and politically independent — introduced American readers to the novel concept of what has come to be called objectivity in news coverage. The penny pres