Newspapers were one of the most effective ways to disseminate news about war to the general population. Even illiterate citizens had access to information because newspapers were often read aloud to any interested listener at taverns or other gathering places. The first war that the Western Citizen reported was the War of 1812 in which many Kentuckians participated. Letters and dispatches from the war front spread the news of the war’s progress. The Western Citizen occasionally printed war news as broadsides, special one-page issues that printed a particularly important or relevant letter or dispatch such as the one written by William Garrard, Jr., a Bourbon County native.