Advertising and journalistic modernization: The case of La Llumanera de Nova York (1874–1881)

Advertising was a key element in the capitalist structures of newspapers in the second half of the nineteenth century. It was the time of urban concentration, mechanization, new forms of transport and the widespread promotion of consumption, the development of civil society, a rising level of culture, the birth of show-business society, the cult to modernity and newness, and cosmopolitanism. And it is within this context that a new Catalan journalistic project began: La Llumanera de Nova York (1874–1881). Advertising represented the main source of income for the press during this period, a press perceived more than ever as a business. The analysis of advertisements appearing in La Llumanera allows us to interpret the implications of the newspaper’s location in New York and witness the commercial strategy of the American businessman, far more advanced than that of the Catalan.