News Gathering by Mail in the Age of the Telegraph: Adapting to a New Technology

With the question "What hath God wrought?" Samuel F. B. Morse signaled the beginning of a communications revolution that eventually altered the basis for gathering and relaying news. Until Morse demonstrated the practicability of the telegraph on May 24, 1844, most transmission of news depended on one or more modes of transportation. The mails, from which editors obtained most of their news before the invention of the telegraph, moved by foot, horse, boat, and rail.' Even in the face of instantaneous communication by telegraph, the comparatively primitive postal service continued to be of great value as a news relayer. The mails adapted to the technological challenge by finding a new niche in the larger, more complex communications system.2 For one striving to explain how technologies survive the challenge of competing innovations, the concept of a niche may prove to be an analytical tool with more than metaphorical value. Ecologists developed the theory of the niche to explain the dynamics of competition and coexistence among organisms in an environment with limited resources. Of special relevance here is the theory's power to explain how a changing environment affects populations in a community.