In the era before the internet, newspapers and magazines were how the folks at home learned about what the troops were doing. From the Civil War through the present day, men and women joined the troops, sometime putting themselves in harm’s way to report on the condition at the front for newspapers and magazines back home.
During World War I, Boston Globe reporter Frank Sibley was embedded with the 26th (Yankee) Division and reported back home on their service. This video from the Massachusetts National Guard tells his story: Frank Sibley.
In World War I, for example, daily newspaper reporters like the Boston Globe’s Frank Sibley wrote short dispatches from the front where they were embedded with the troops. Magazine writers like Edith Wharton, who had recently moved to Paris from Lenox, Massachusetts, were able to write longer, in-depth essays focusing on their experiences.
Source: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service