The Newspaper: Its Place in the Community [excerpt]

     Now, on September 6th last, at a little after four o’clock in the afternoon, President McKinley was shot at the Exhibition Grounds at Buffalo. Within forty minutes every newspaper office in the United States taking any of the press services had a fairly clear account of the whole tragedy, so that, before the dreadful deed was sixty minutes old, newspapers containing the first statement of the main facts were being sold in most of the large cities on this continent. In Chicago the news arrived so that the papers were selling on the street at practically the same [360][361] hour, Chicago time, as that when the President was shot, according to Eastern time. In San Francisco the news far outstripped the sun, for before three o’clock, Pacific time, people could read what had happened after four o’clock, Eastern time. At all events, within two hours of the tragedy, people living in all the larger cities throughout the United States were told by the newspapers what had happened.