Believe it or not, news reporting is better today

“By allowing the general public unprecedented access to the original papers, this book lets us learn firsthand what many modern historians claim: Without newspapers, there would have been no American Revolution.”

That claim was made by writer Todd Andrlik during a February 2015 interview about his then latest book: “Reporting the Revolutionary War: Before it was History, it was News.” The role of newspapers, and by extension the news media, in history is sometimes overlooked. Yet newspapers, and the ability to publish, played a large part in the founding of our nation, and its subsequent devel...