Founding Son: John Quincy's America

The Real Story of Disney's "Newsies" [from American History Hotline]

May 4, 2026·32 min
Episode Description from the Publisher

You may have seen it on Broadway ... or maybe your high school gym. The Tony Award-winning musical Newsies is a favorite for school productions because the story centers around newspaper-hawking kids who stand up to titan-of-industry Joseph Pulitzer.  Of course, we've learned that we shouldn't take our history lessons from Disney. So we've called up Vincent DiGirolamo (Crying the News: A History of America's Newsboys) to give us the REAL story of the famous 1899 newsboys strike that inspired the Disney film.  You can find DiGirolamo's newest essay in the collection Newsies, Newsies — Read All About It!: Essays on the Film and Broadway Productions. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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