Mass media dominates Brian Lebel’s Old West Auction in Mesa, Arizona.
When the legend becomes fact, print the legend,” a newspaperman famously said in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance The most critical word in that sentence is “print.” It was mass media that made legends into facts and facts into legends in the Old West. The settlement of the American West coincided with a publishing explosion. Newspapers, weeklies and dime novels sprang up everywhere, and their readers loved stories

True West May 2023