A fabricated moon story made the New York Sun the world’s most read newspaper.

Evidence

The depiction of the moon, and one with life on it (not just life, but unicorns and flying man-bats with insistent libidos), was, apparently, widely accepted, in part thanks to the scientific style of the correspondent, the pretense that the story was reprinted from a respectable Edinburgh journal, and the impossibility of replicating with the naked eye the findings of the world’s largest telescope. The series was, understandably, a sensation, and the initial runs of the newspaper sold out, with crowds surrounding its offices, hungrily awaiting the next installment. When the dust settled, the New York Sun, founded just two years prior, had driven its circulation to a very precise-sounding 19,360, sailing past not only the other New York dailies but even the London dailies founded decades earlier, to take its place as the most widely read newspaper in the world. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 53

Categorization

• SEED: The Great Moon Hoax of 1835 is a ready-made case study for a piece on early viral media and the birth of fabricated content as a circulation strategy.
• XREF: Precursor to modern clickbait and fake-news scandals, and connects to Bernays-era PR manipulation of mass credibility. — connects to: The New York Sun launched the penny-press model of cheap news funded by advertising — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 30