The development of the electric telegraph, which often travelled along railroad lines, enabled news to travel faster, over longer distances.
(Days before Morse's Baltimore–Washington line transmitted the famous question, “What hath God wrought?”, it transmitted the news that Henry Clay and Theodore Frelinghuysen had been chosen by the Whig nominating party.)
Telegraph networks enabled a new centralization of the news, in the hands of wire services concentrated in major cities. The modern form of these originated with Charles-Louis Havas, who founded Bureau Havas (later Agence France Press) in Paris. Havas began in 1832, using the French government's optical telegraph network. In 1840 he began using pigeons for communications to Paris, London, and Brussels. Havas began to use the electric telegraph when it became available.