Froth and Scum: Truth, Beauty, Goodness, and the Ax Murder in America's First Mass MediumTwo notorious antebellum New York murder cases a prostitute slashed in an elegant brothel and a tradesman bludgeoned by the brother of inventor Samuel Colt set off journalistic scrambles over the meanings of truth, objectivity, and the duty of the press that reverberate to this day. In 1833 an entirely new kind of newspaper cheap, feisty, and politically independent introduced American readers to the novel concept of what has come to be called