•August 8, 2018•

By Steve Tarter
Of the Journal Star of Peoria

FDR used the radio, JFK scored on TV and Donald Trump expouses on Twitter. But the first president to make effective use of electronic communications was Abraham Lincoln.
His use of the telegraph, a tool used extensively during the Civil War, was one of the things that made Lincoln a unique communicator in tumultuous times.
“Two things set Lincoln apart in terms of his relationship with, and mastery of, the press,” said Harold Holzer, author of “Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion,” published in 2015. “His language was simple and direct enough to make press reprints of his speeches especially compelling. Second, he courted journalists from the beginning of his career.”
Holzer, director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College in New York City, added two more things: “(Lincoln) drafted editorials for his Whig and Republican newspapers and owned a newspaper, himself (as did his arch-rival, Stephen A. Douglas),” he said.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.