The Boston Globe and 'live-blogging' in the 1920s

Live-blogging is the flavour of the moment among some news organisations: the idea is that fast-moving events can be covered by running a 'live blog' or a Twitter stream or any kind of quick-changing web page.

Interestingly, a blog post from the Boston Globe shows that the idea isn't at all new:

Long before the Web, The Boston Globe had a "homepage" of sorts - its old storefront downtown. Taking advantage of its location in a heavily trafficked block of Newspaper Row, the young daily brought the news to Bostonians in a whole new way: handwritten signs.

The picture above, from the Globe, shows the display board in action. The blog post continues:

From at least the turn of the century until the 1950s, Globe staff shuttled back and forth throughout the day from the newsroom to the street. There they wrote breaking news headlines and sports scores on four blackboards and two enormous sheets of newsprint. Behind the Globe's windows? Ads.

It wasn't just written headlines, either - before people had radio sets they would crowd around the newspaper's office in Washington Street to see the scores being written up as they happened. The Globe then progressed to a two-line display, and then added loudspeakers. The blog post, linked above, has some great pictures of the huge mass of people gathered to watch and listen.