The 1830s penny press sensationalized connections between crime, Blackness, and poverty

Evidence

In the early 1830s, the new urban penny press turned away from the “good” news and printed more eye-catching “bad” news, sensationalizing and connecting crime and Blackness and poverty. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 451

Categorization

• XREF: Shows commercial media logic (selling ‘bad’ news) producing racist frames — a mechanism that resonates with modern cable news critique and the reader’s interest in how ideas get produced to serve interests. — connects to: Attention competition by the late 1950s rivaled the penny-press frenzy of the 1830s — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 487