Froth & scum (1994)

Park Row in the age of the penny press, seen through two sensational New York killings: the murder of Helen Jewett in 1836 and of Samuel Adams in 1841. Tucher shows James Gordon Bennett's Herald and its rivals printing reams about the Jewett case, much of it made up, and asks how a city decides what counts as the truth. Witty and readable for an academic book, and the best way into the moment cheap papers found a mass audience.