Paris has long stood at the center of French social and political life, but its redesign in the middle of the nineteenth century also made it the capital of European modernization. It was the focal point of dramatic cultural change, yet its largest circulating media continued to emphasize the same kind of news it had since the dawn of printing: murder. The most important of France's news genres, for both its immediate popularity and long-term influence, was the canard. The canards were cheap broadsheets and booklets that most often reported sensations, particularly murders. Made by members of the working and lower-middle classes and sold with great success to a vast and diverse audience, the canards deeply influenced and appealed to popular understandings of crime and punishment. Despite their importance in their day and their value to cultural studies, historians have paid them scant attention.