In reading about Horace Greeley, I read this Wikipedia entry on the penny press and was struck by how similar blogs are with the penny press of the early 1800s.

In the 1830s, as the East Coast’s middle and working classes grew, so did the new public’s desire for news. Penny papers emerged as a cheap alternative to the standard dailies. They replaced dry political conversation with coverage of crime, tragedy, adventure, and gossip. The penny papers represented the crudest form of journalism because of the sensational gossip that was reported [7].

The Penny Press was most noted for its extremely low price of only one cent per paper. It became well known to the American public because while other papers were priced about six cents, they were able to well their papers for just one penny. The exceptionally low price made the news available to more than just upper class citizens. With the penny press, newspaper made the news and journalism more important. The newspapers also began to pay more attention to the public that they served. They realized that the same information that interested the upper class did not interest the penny public. The “new public” enjoyed information about police and criminal cases. The main revenue of the penny press was advertising while other newspapers relied heavily on high priced subscriptions.

Here’s a link to the Encyclopedia of American Journalism on Google Books. It’s a passage on Horace Greeley’s view of the penny press.