Told

Small businesses enjoy an iconic status in modern capitalism, but what do they really contribute to the economy?

The disclosure of Billy Graham's recommendation of war crimes did not exicte any commotion.

How printers in the 1770s assembled the news for their papers, how they used the postal system, and how they may have approached Twitter.

Japanese-American internment camp newspapers.

Here's how they were able to do their jobs long before the Internet.

An interactive feature that displays the new words that were used in print each year, going back centuries.

By the time the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, did colonial Americans still sound like their British counterparts?

On July 2, 1881, less than a year after President James Garfield was elected the 20th president of the United States, he was shot by Charles Guiteau.

Noah Webster, author of An American Dictionary of the English Language published in 1828, invented the word "immigration."

A network of "morale wardens" tracked down the latest scuttlebutt.

Before the German zeppelin met its fiery demise, it was an object of fascination for U.S. radio listeners.

In 1985, Neil Postman observed an America imprisoned by its own need for amusement. He was, it turns out, extremely prescient.

The government's suppression of press freedom was a major component of its attempts to build support for the war effort

All climate change deniers needed was one article to cast doubt on the science of global warming.

A smooth forehead suggests a hard heart.

The South couldn't stop the rumors. Can we?

Peddling lies goes back to antiquity, but during the Tabloid Wars of the 19th-century it reached the widespread outcry and fever pitch of scandal familiar today.

When a term signifies something that does not exist, we need to examine our use of it.

The children’s author’s early works have been finding a new audience among those opposed to the "America First" policies of President Trump.

The origins of the more passive view of the freedom of the press can be traced back to Benjamin Franklin.

Did you drink the Kool-Aid? The phrase has become such a part of the vocabulary that for many its origins have been obscured.

Robert Benjamin Smith inaugurated murder for the media age.

A former systems operator logs back in to the original computer-based social network.

A web dictionary devoted to historical English slang—five hundred years of the vulgar tongue.

Ever since Kennedy-Nixon, televised debates have given viewers an insight into candidates' policies—and their personalities, too.

James Callender spread scurrilous rumors about Alexander Hamilton and John Adams. Then he turned on Thomas Jefferson, too.

To inform its readers of a cholera epidemic, The New York Tribune published an ancestor to our current infographics.

On John Winthrop’s oft-misunderstood use of the phrase “a city upon a hill” to describe the New World.

Originally, the term referred to a specific kind of foreign political violence.

If a Pulitzer-nominated 34-part series of investigative journalism can vanish from the web, anything can.