Journalism of the 1830s tilted more toward entertainment than accuracy. The journalist was expected to hold the reader's attention with florid writing, suspense-filled stories, and dramatic beginnings and endings. If the facts of a story did not make the best reading, the journalist had some license to alter them. In the 1830s, especially among members of the newly minted penny press, editors wanted readers--not reputations for truth.

That is why Richard Adams Locke is famous: he wrote one of the most fantastic and entertaining tales of the decade. He said that British astronomers, working with a large telescope in South Africa, had seen the moon as it had never been seen before. They had discovered mountains and valleys, trees and other vegetation; they had seen wildlife, animals similar to many seen on earth. And they had even seen men-like creatures moving about very much as men on earth...