The Newspaper Exchange System.

In the early nineteenth century, editors developed an informal but useful system of newspaper exchanges to share news and information both regionally and nationally. To do so they relied, at least in part, on the postal service. Newspaper exchanges developed in part because they were free, a concession the press received over a sometimes reluctant post office. The press rationale was simple: the exchange of news promoted national identity and a sense of unity in the expanding nation. The exchange system allowed the news to travel both east and west. Frontier papers informed the urban dailies about events in the West, and the city papers gave rural editors news from Washington. Even after the spread of the telegraph, in the 1850s, the exchange system remained useful. It was cheaper than the telegraph, and it was not restricted...