Around the turn of the twentieth century, politicians operated within an increasingly hybrid system of media politics. Media became a mass phenomenon, gained commercial and journalistic independence, and assertively claimed to represent public opinion. This chapter sets the scene by describing this diversifying media environment in which politicians operated. It highlights the technological advances that enabled ‘mass’ media; censorship and freedom of the press; media landscapes including political and religious newspapers, as well as regional, national, and transnational news flows; the commercialization of media; and changing journalistic cultures. These developments interconnected with social changes such as increasing literacy and urbanization; democratization and a bolstered notion of public opinion; and a reflexive modernity. Media became increasingly hybrid in terms of interacting media technologies and formats, political and commercial newspapers, and their social and political functions. This media hybridity defined the new transnational system of media politics that political figures inhabited around 1900.