Book Review: Crying the News: A History of America’s Newsboys by DiGirolamo Vincent

Abstract

Vincent DiGirolamo’s Crying the News is a monumental achievement–a beautifully written, richly illustrated, exhaustively researched book that should stand as the definitive history of its subject for years to come. This volume covers the experiences of “newsies”: thousands of newsboys, and the small minority of newsgirls, throughout most of American history. There was no commercial electronic media in the United States until about 1920, when radio broadcasts began to reach numerous listeners. Until then, most Americans received their information about war, peace, politics, economics, sports, and other entertainment from printed newspapers. DiGirolamo shows that over time, the country’s newsies became the foundation upon which America’s modern newspaper industry was built. Although he does not neglect the Early National Period, DiGirolamo focuses mainly on the years between the 1830s and the 1940s, when the newspaper business’s street sales and home deliveries were at their height. Thus, his volume is divided into three main chronological sections: Children of the Penny, 1833–1865; Children of the Breach, 1866–1899; and Children of the State, 1900–1940. DiGirolamo consistently uses stories about individuals to illuminate important topics, ranging from racial discrimination, sexism, crime, and violence to newsboys’ living and working conditions. Thus, Crying the News is at once social, cultural, and labor history, as well as a children’s history since most newsboys and newsgirls were between the ages of 5 and 16. Most were poor children of Irish, Jewish, and Italian immigrants; some were the descendants of former Black slaves. During the 19th century, these young workers developed their own youth culture as loud, brash, often bedraggled, sometimes rakish news criers. Child labor reformers protested on behalf of young news peddlers, especially during the Progressive Era (1890–1917). The reformers’ demands, usually offered from a middle-class perspective, did not always please the newsies themselves. In any case, through most of the years under study, reform efforts met with little long-term success. Newspaper owners worked tirelessly throughout the 19th century to deny their news sellers any rights as workers by framing them as little entrepreneurs, incipient capitalists, or independent contractors. Today this labor would be called “gig work.” Book Reviews