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Picturing a World

Clipping services

A minor plot turn early in ANONYMITY could be most easily handled if clipping services existed in 1908. They did! A Londoner named Henry Romeike seems to have begun the first one ca. 1880, and the idea rapidly spread. At first, they tended to be cottage industries; but soon companies were hiring readers, mostly women, to scan newspapers daily and mark stories of interest from memorized lists of keywords. These were cut by a different crew, glued to coded slips, then sorted and mailed to clients (Encyclopedia of Journalism, Christopher H. Sterling, gen. ed., Sage Publications, 2009, p. 316). For a brief on-line history of one company, click here.
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