I know there were probably newspaper articles and campaign stops that people saw, but it obviously didn't have a big enough audience than today because of television, radio and the Internet. Was the public, generally speaking, less informed about the candidates' positions and what they wanted to do as president?
They learned from newspapers, pamphlets, "broadsides", the press. Also, word of mouth from literate people who read such things and town meetings where local citizens and also party representatives would present their views. This 1813 newspaper talks about meetings of concerned citizens in Massachusetts in nominating a candidate for governor.
This is where the tradition of newspaper endorsements comes from. Usually, a newspaper would advocate one candidate over another, and some other newspaper in town would advocate for a different candidate. Voters who chose to be well-informed would read both.
Here's a bound volume of the Washington DC newspaper the United States Telegraph during the 1828 election. They obviously advocate for Andrew Jackson and give their view of different legislation of both sides and why Jackson is right and John Quincy Adams is wrong.
D.C.'s Daily National Journal, on the other hand, was pro-Adams and anti-Jackson. While I can't find a link to the National Journal at the moment, this page contains PDFs of several different newspaper articles published during the election that were critical of Jackson.
Likewise, there would be pamplets such as this pro-Adams one and this pro-Jackson one and this one that tries to remain unbiased and just lay out the candidates and their views.
As slow as the media was back then, it's not as slow as you might think. For example, this page gives a rundown of the earliest newspaper publications of the Declaration of Independence. It had been published in full in just about every major U.S. city within a week of its signing; word of mouth had probably reached them before that. George Washington famously had the Declaration read to his troops in New York City on July 9th, just five days after signing, while British troops were anchored across New York Bay on Staten Island.
So anything that happened during the campaign would be reached the masses fairly quickly. And anybody who was interested in politics certainly could become well-informed on the stances of the presidential candidates from the very earliest elections.
There was certainly mudslinging from the very beginning and any voter would need to be discerning. Generally speaking, though, no, the public was not less informed about the candidates' positions. Like today, it more depended on the particular voter and how much attention they paid to such things.