Carl Sandburg became a regular reader of newspapers at a very young age. He delivered papers on North Prairie Street as a lad. If he had a newspaper left after completing his route, he could take it home to read.

At that time, in addition to its local newspapers, Galesburg received a number of Chicago papers delivered daily by the trains running between the two cities. The Republicans in Galesburg subscribed to the Chicago Tribune; the Democrats the Chicago Times. The Record was a populist sheet which cost a penny, half the price of the other two. Other Chicago newspapers were The Herald, The Chronicle and The Inter-Ocean. The last named was directed at businessmen and provided more international news. Sandburg enjoyed reading Eugene Field's column, “Sharps and Flats,” in The Daily News. Field  who had attended Knox College, was well known in Galesburg.

Newspapers of the nineteenth century were a key source of information for the public. They provided a wide variety of articles about local people and events as well as national and international news. They provided space for  businesses to advertise their wares at a reasonable cost. Articles were printed about social events, wedding and deaths in the community. They were a way for people to  become acquainted with the community and to build social cohesion among the residents.

The first newspaper in Knox County was the Knox Intelligencer. It began publication in Knoxville, the county seat, in 1849. It survived for two years. In 1850 W.S. Gale, Dr. James Bunce and G.C. Lanpher started the Newsletter in Galesburg and it eventually absorbed the Intelligencer. The Newsletter had a wide circulation and supported the building of the Central Military Track Railroad.

In those days, a newspaper contained many narrow columns of print. The pages looked gray because of the small letters filling the pages. There were advertisements on the first page and news received by telegraph. The advertisements were set in a variety of type faces and many ran for months at a time without changes. Readers could easily skip over them. Long speeches by politicians and public officials were often reprinted. They may or may not have been of interest to the readers. The most interesting and current local news was usually on the third page.

In the 1880s the invention of the linotype machine made the work of newspaper printers much easier and less time consuming. They did not have to set type by hand and break it down after the print run. With the faster steam presses, newspapers could be printed by the thousands. All the effort made to create the daily newspaper was then handed over to a ten-year-old boy  to deliver.

The heyday of United States newspapers was in the 1940s. World War II created a need for people to know what was happening in the world. Afterward, increased listening to the radio and the advent of television cut into the number of newspaper readers, and of newspapers published. As of 2011 there were only 1,382 daily newspapers in the United States. The inches of advertising have continued to decline even more drastically.

Today, the computer and cell phones provide second-by-second news in much more colorful ways, but often not as accurately.