February 20th at The Montauk Club: The history of New York Newspapers with a Former Journalist
Bowery Boys Talks at the Montauk Club presented by Bowery Boys Walks
It is impossible to tell the story of New York City without telling the story of its newspapers, which have been chronicling and shaping the rise of Gotham almost from the city’s founding. Newspaper publishing dates back to 1725, 60 years after New York became a British Colony, and 64 years before the First Amendment guaranteed the right to a free press.
Thursday, February 20th at 7 pm
The Montauk Club in Park Slope, Brooklyn
Michael Morgenthal 
Montauk Club
This talk will be given by licensed New York City tour guide Michael Morgenthal, a former reporter and editor who has been fascinated by the New York Newspaper scene from the time of his first job, assembling the Sunday New York Times in his uncle’s store — he often says the ink seeped into his blood and never left! We will see New York through the eyes of the legendary reporters, editors and publishers who shaped New York and the United States through their words, cartoons and photographs.
This talk will take place at the historic and beautiful Montauk Club, a Gilded Age gem established as a private club in 1889.
Talk Highlights:
- Alexander Hamilton, the New York Post, and the overt politics and “Fake News” of post-Revolution New York City’s newspapers
- The newspaper was between Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal, which ushered in the age of mass media thanks to “Yellow Journalism.”
- The New York Times’ rise from a second-rate rag to the preeminent newspaper in the United States.
- Legendary newspaper figures such as William Cullen Bryant, Horace Greeley, Benjamin Day, the Bennetts, Dorothy Schiff, Nellie Bly, Jimmy Breslin, Norman Mailer and Pete Hamill.
- The stories behind some of the most famous newspaper articles in New York’s history, such as “Ford to City: Drop Dead” and “Headless Body in Topless Bar.”
- The decline of the daily newspaper in New York City.
Tickets
$30 per person
Duration
Talk: Approximately 90 minutes including a Q&A and slide presentation
(Doors open at 6:30 pm, talk starts at 7 pm)
Location
Venue: Montauk Club, 25 8th Ave, Brooklyn
A lifelong New Yorker born and raised in Greenwich Village, Michael Morgenthal has been leading tours in his hometown since 2011. A licensed sightseeing guide in both New York City and Washington, DC.