A. Pre-Telegraph News Gathering and Dissemination: The Dominance of the
Exchange System and the Partisan Press. Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century,
newspapers gathered out-of-town news primarily by means of exchanging copies of their papers
with newspapers from other cities. Well-established newspapers in large cities would have
exchange relationships with dozens and even hundreds of other newspapers. Thus, for example,
the Washington, D.C.-based Daily National Intelligencer boasted in 1820: “We receive at our
office about three hundred papers, printed in all parts of the United States, from Mobile and New
Orleans south, to Detroit north; and from Eastport in the east, to Arkansaw in the west. . . From
Upper and Lower Canada, we receive several newspapers