# Empire of Ink: How the American newspaper was born

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/mountain-money-11581/empire-of-ink-how-the-american-newspaper-was-born
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/mountain-money-11581/empire-of-ink-how-the-american-newspaper-was-born.md
Podcast: [Mountain Money](https://stenobird.com/podcast/mountain-money-11581)
Published: 2026-07-20T17:54:59+00:00
Episode link: https://www.kpcw.org/podcast/mountain-money/2026-07-20/empire-of-ink-how-the-american-newspaper-was-born
Audio file: https://cpa.ds.npr.org/s146/audio/2026/07/mm-alex-wright-07-20-26.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/mountain-money-11581/episodes/empire-of-ink-how-the-american-newspaper-was-born
Duration seconds: 3045

## Resource

How did a nation with less than 5% of the world's population come to publish over half of all the newspapers? This week Author Alex Wright discusses his new book, Empire of Ink: The Printers, Rogues, and Radicals Who Invented the American Newspaper. Wright takes us on a journey through the explosive, footloose growth of 19th-century American print media. From the early "gift economy" of open-source story sharing and the lucrative media empire of Benjamin Franklin, to the dangerous world of gunslinging editors and Mark Twain's disastrous tech investments, Wright details how an unruly young democracy leveraged bold public policies and a distinct mania for news to forge its national identity.

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