With the campaign roaring to a climax and newspapers focusing on it, news coverage of the candidates in newspapers was now fairly equal; but newspaper advertising was overwhelmingly Johnson’s—and in many weekly newspapers, this space was as influential with readers as the articles, because the newspapers did not differentiate much between the two, and many unsophisticated readers couldn’t tell the difference, anyway. As for direct mailings, Stevenson had few if any. Rural mailboxes were filled daily not only with the Johnson Journal but with mailing after mailing of letters and postcards.
