newspapers

In the early years of the 20th century, the medium of choice for large-scale conversations was the newspaper — at least, it was something newspaper-like, in some form or another. You saw this in the various ideological struggles of the time period, from fascism to communism to anarchism to republicanism. Of course, the nature of the printing press (speaking very broadly here) was such that you had to have some sort of resources to print a paper. It was theoretically possible to do it on a shoestring budget, yes, but you wouldn't get far. Your reach was proportionate to your funding, because each copy cost a certain amount to print, to mail, to ship. The "potential field of newspapers" was important, since it was broadly "the nation" or the people who could read it. Within each distribution base the newspaper could cultivate a bit of an internal culture, shaped by the editorial groups that controlled the newspaper. This allowed for discourse to be shaped not just by the readerbase (a…