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 THE AMERICAN 
 NEWSPAPER
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OP CHICAGO PRESS 
 CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 
 
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 THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY 
 
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 THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 LONDON AND BDINBUBGH
 
 THE AMERICAN 
 NEWSPAPER 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES EDWARD ROGERS 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 
 CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 
 
 i J i ■> ' ' 1
 
 Copyright 1909 By 
 The University of Chicago 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 Published September 1909 
 Second Impression January 1912 
 
 Composed and Printed by 
 
 The University of Chicago Press 
 
 Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. 
 
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 PREFACE 
 
 Professor S. N. Patten in his latest book, 
 the New Basis of Civilization, opens his 
 first chapter with the following suggestive 
 words : 
 
 One summer day I took my notebook to a 
 wooded hillside whence I could overlook a rich 
 and beautiful valley. The well-tended farms, the 
 strong stone houses, the busy men and animals 
 moving peacefully over the roads and fields, would 
 inspire me, I was sure, with the opening theme of 
 this book. As I seated myself under a chestnut 
 tree a fellow-guest at the hotel came by, and glan- 
 cing at my memoranda asked if I, like himself, was 
 writing a lecture. He too had come to the woods, 
 he said, to meditate and to be inspired by nature. 
 But his thesis, enthusiastically unfolded, was the 
 opposite of mine. It was part of his faith as a 
 Second-Day Adventist that the world is now be- 
 coming more unhappy and more wicked; and it 
 is now so evil that the end of it rapidly approaches. 
 
 Professor Patten then proceeds to tell 
 how they saw different meanings in the 
 same things, how they came to opposite 
 
 vii
 
 viii Preface 
 
 conclusions, and how one pair of eyes is 
 always apt to see but one side of life. 
 
 In this study, however, I have tried, as 
 far as possible to see both sides of the 
 question. My aim has been to avoid the 
 pitfalls of hasty or set notions. The sub- 
 ject for discussion seemed to me to be one 
 of concrete fact and not one of personal 
 philosophy, and therefore I have examined 
 some fifteen thousand newspapers from all 
 sections of the country as a first means of 
 getting some acquaintance with the neces- 
 sary facts before forming any decided judg- 
 ments. Essays like those by F. Wilcox in 
 the American Academy of Political Science, 
 July, 1900, and E. L. Shuman, Practical 
 Journalism, have also proved particularly 
 valuable and the essay of Professor W. I. 
 Thomas in the American Magazine iox 
 March, 1908, has aided much in formulat- 
 ing my point of view on the psychological 
 aspects of the subject. 
 
 President Roosevelt's recent onslaught 
 on newspapers that "habitually and con-
 
 Preface ix 
 
 tinually and as a matter of business practice 
 every form of mendacity known to man, 
 from the suppression of the truth and the 
 suggestion of the false to the lie direct," 
 seems to have given expression to a crit- 
 ical attitude toward American newspapers 
 which has long been growing. Lord North- 
 cliff e, the premier of English journalism, 
 is reputed to have told a New York Times 
 reporter recently that in certain important 
 respects "American newspapers are getting 
 worse and worse every year — most of 
 them," and it is not long ago that Mr. 
 Charles Whibley, an English writer of 
 distinction, stated in Blackwood's his sin- 
 cere conviction that "no civilized country 
 in the world has been content with news- 
 papers so grossly contemptible as those 
 which are read from New York to the 
 Pacific Coast." Such criticism does not 
 come entirely from foreign visitors. Several 
 of our own foremost thinkers and writers 
 have been severe in their indictments of the 
 American press. John A. Sleicher, editor
 
 X Preface 
 
 of Leslie's Weekly, believes that the news- 
 papers of this country are "not as accurate 
 as they were fifty years ago." Mr. Frank 
 Munsey, with special reference to the Sun- 
 day papers, observes that "nothing new 
 has been discovered for fifteen years. Since 
 that time we have had only copies of copies. 
 All you can say is that some of them are 
 worse than others." Only the other day 
 no less than three of the foremost American 
 publicists — one of them President Hadley, 
 of Yale — took occasion to criticize Ameri- 
 can journalism and to question its honesty. 
 The substantial truth of these charges can- 
 not reasonably be doubted. The conclu- 
 sion to which my own study of the subject 
 has led me is that the nature of the Ameri- 
 can press is essentially sensational and 
 commercial with only a secondary place 
 given to the cultural aspects of human 
 thought, and that as a result its influence on 
 the morals of the community tends in the 
 direction of stimulating love of sensation 
 and interest in purely material things. At
 
 Preface xi 
 
 the same time I believe that the sources of 
 these quahties of the press and of this in- 
 fluence he largely in certain special traits 
 of the American people; for, as I shall 
 endeavor to show, the press represents the 
 nation. In other words, my investigations 
 have convinced me that if the American 
 press is to be judged harshly, and if it has 
 failed to attain its highest possibilities as 
 an educative force in the community, this 
 is due to the fact that it is a reflex of the 
 nation rather than a leader of it.
 
 CONTENTS 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Historical Evolution of the 
 Modern Newspaper i 
 
 CHAPTER n 
 
 The City and the Newspaper ... 25 
 
 CHAPTER HI 
 
 The Nature of the American News- 
 paper 43 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 The Influence of the American News- 
 paper 99 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 The Causes of the Influence of the 
 American Newspaper 165 
 
 A Psychological Interpretation. 
 
 An Economic Interpretation. 
 
 xin
 
 THE HISTORICAL EVOLUTION 
 
 OF THE MODERN 
 
 NEWSPAPER
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF THE 
 MODERN NEWSPAPER 
 
 Before discussing the American press of 
 the day, with its freedom that tends to 
 Hcense, a brief historical review of the 
 development of journalism in its several 
 functions seems in place. 
 
 The first attempts in the field of journal- 
 ism were made before the Christian era in 
 China, where the art of printing was then 
 known. We have little information today 
 concerning those early specimens of the 
 printed sheet. The first real newspaper, in 
 the modern sense of the term, was the 
 Pekin Gazette, which is still published and 
 which is the official organ of the Chinese 
 government. It is the oldest daily in the 
 world, having been first issued about 1340 
 A.D. It prints the edicts of the govern- 
 ment, the appointment of officials, and 
 other government news.
 
 4 The American Newspaper 
 
 The newspaper of the western world was 
 bom in ancient Rome, where in the Acta 
 Diurna we have a remote ancestor of our 
 newspapers. This Acta Diurna was a 
 small daily bulletin which aimed to give 
 to the citizens of the Roman capital the 
 news of the empire, especially the happen- 
 ings at Rome. It recorded the acts and 
 speeches of prominent Romans; it gave 
 accounts of the progress of the imperial 
 arms; it told of trials, judgments of the 
 courts, and acts of the Senate. If the 
 modern newspaper reader could see a copy 
 of this curious old Acta Diurna, he would 
 probably reject with scorn the notion of a 
 resemblance between this succinct bulletin 
 and the breezy, profuse modern news- 
 paper; yet here is the newspaper of today 
 in embryo. Comparison shows that form 
 and purpose have changed, but that there is 
 really slight difference as regards content, 
 for both are about wars, armies, deaths and 
 births, the deliberations of government, 
 and the acts of prominent persons. In
 
 Evolution of the Modern Newspaper 5 
 
 Rome and throughout the Middle Ages the 
 papers that told the news were posted in 
 some public place, a market or square, so 
 that the people might read them. This is 
 done in China today; and he who in China- 
 town in San Francisco chances to see at a 
 crowded street corner a group of China- 
 men reading the official news printed in 
 black letters on red paper and pasted on 
 the side of a building, can readily picture 
 the Romans gathered in the same way to 
 read the Acta Diurna. 
 
 In modern Europe newspapers appeared 
 first in Italy and Germany. Italy, so long 
 the center of art and learning, naturally led. 
 At Venice in 1566 there appeared a small 
 sheet, the Notizie Scritte, the first Italian 
 newspaper. It was sold on the streets, and 
 those who pressed it upon the passer-by 
 demanded for it a small coin called the 
 "gazzetta." Herein lies the origin of the 
 name "gazette," now so popular a name 
 for newspapers the world over. 
 
 In Germany as early as the middle of
 
 6 The American Newspaper 
 
 the fifteenth century, shortly after the in- 
 vention of printing, small sheets in episto- 
 lary form began to appear at Augsburg 
 and Nuremburg; there were similar pub- 
 lications at Vienna. All these sheets, 
 called variously Relationen or Neue Zeit- 
 ungen, gave accounts of discoveries, travels, 
 and similar important events. They were 
 issued irregularly and seem to have had a 
 precarious existence. It was not until 
 1615, one hundred and sixty- three years 
 after the invention of printing by means of 
 metal type, that regular collection and 
 publication of news began. In that year, 
 a German, E. Emmel, published at Frank- 
 fort the well-known journal, Das Frank- 
 jurter Journal. This sheet is still in exist- 
 ence and is considered the oldest European 
 weekly. ' Along with Butter, De Foe, and 
 
 I A chronological list of the early newspapers of Europe 
 still in existence is as follows: Frankfurter Gazette (1615); 
 Gazette de France (1631); Leipzig Gazette (1660); London 
 Gazette (1665); Stanford Mercury (1695); Edinburgh 
 Courant (1705); Rostock Gazette (17 10); Leeds Mercury 
 (17 18); Berlin Gazette (1722); Berlingske Fedende (1749)
 
 Evolution oj the Modern Newspaper 7 
 
 Renaudot, Emmel has been called the 
 father of journalism, but it is difficult to 
 say to which of them that honor belongs. 
 
 In France, the Gazette de France was the 
 first real newspaper. Publications of the 
 newspaper class began there in 1605 with 
 the Mercurie jrangois, a would-be histor- 
 ical compilation appearing from time to 
 time. From the beginning, the French 
 were influenced by the Italians and in 163 1 
 a French Gazette was published, at first a 
 poetical newspaper devoted to gossip that 
 often bordered on scandal. The publisher 
 was Doctor Theophraste Renaudot, and 
 when presently he issued it under the direct 
 patronage of Richelieu, it became as the 
 Gazette de France a potent weapon for 
 furthering the purposes of the great cardi- 
 nal. A number of small sheets intended to 
 influence public opinion appeared at the 
 same time and this kind of journaHsm 
 finally culminated in the printing of the 
 Mazarine, a paper which, as its name im- 
 plies, was issued in the time of Cardinal
 
 8 The American Newspaper 
 
 Mazarin. The Paris M^rcwf}' , published 
 a Httle later, represents a new type of 
 journal, giving neither news nor politics, 
 but containing matter of historical or tech- 
 nical interest. The French newspaper in 
 its modern form really begins with the 
 Revolution. During that stirring era, the 
 streets were crowded with vendors of 
 papers advocating every shade of political 
 opinion. This mass of hysterical political 
 sheets disappeared under Napoleon's strict 
 censorship. Le Moniteur Universelle, the 
 official organ of the government (1789), 
 discussed only moral and political ques- 
 tions, and among the scandals published 
 in the Nouvelles a la Main there was no 
 reference to Napoleon and his court. It 
 is only since the Third Republic that daily 
 newspapers have again increased rapidly 
 in France. As in England and America, 
 freedom of the press and a steady fall in the 
 cost of publication have made the people of 
 the French republic inveterate newspaper 
 readers. In 1903 there were one thousand.
 
 Evolution oj the Modern Newspaper g 
 
 four hundred newspapers printed in Paris 
 alone. There are some h'ke Le Temps, 
 Le Figaro, Le Steele, and La Justice, 
 which are conservative and of good moral 
 influence. There are others which, like 
 Le Petit Journal and Le Matin, seek a wide 
 circulation and get it by means of all the 
 arts of m.odern sensationalism. 
 
 Of the origin of the newspaper in Eng- 
 land, Alexander Andrews writes, "First we 
 have the written news letter furnished to 
 the wealthy aristocracy; then, as the crav- 
 ing for information spreads, the ballad of 
 news sung or recited ; then the news pam- 
 phlet, more prosaically arranged ; then the 
 periodical sheet of news, and lastly the 
 newspaper." The first English newspaper 
 is believed to have been the Weekly News, 
 issued in London about 1622, the so-called 
 English Mercuric being regarded by most 
 scholars as a forgery. On December 31, 
 1660, in Edinburgh the first number of the 
 Scottish Mercuris Caledonis appeared. The 
 first newspaper printed in Ireland was the
 
 lo The American Newspaper 
 
 Dublin Neius Letter, published in 1685, 
 followed by the Dublin Intelligencer in 
 1690. As in other parts of Europe, the 
 earliest newspapers of England were week- 
 lies. It was not until the eighteenth cen- 
 tury that dailies made their appearance. 
 England gave the modern world its first 
 daily, the Courant (1709). This paper 
 consisted of one page of two columns, five 
 paragraphs of which were translated from 
 foreign journals and contained for the most 
 part foreign news, and descriptions of 
 travel and of court and military life. Eng- 
 land furnished also the first penny paper. 
 The Orange Post (1730). In 1776 ap- 
 peared the first number of The Craftsman. 
 With this newspaper began the idea that 
 besides news, newspapers should contain 
 criticism of men and affairs. The Crafts- 
 man was printed in opposition to the 
 government and freely criticized its op- 
 ponents. The North Briton, edited by 
 Wilkes, who was so conspicuous in gaining 
 liberty for the press, had already appeared
 
 Evolution oj the Modern Newspaper 
 
 II 
 
 (1762). The Morning Chronicle and the 
 Morning Post were at this time the most 
 important of the London papers, and both 
 possessed great hterary merit as well as 
 political influence. Coleridge, Southey, 
 Lamb, Wordsworth wrote for the Post 
 and Fox and Sheridan for the Chronicle. 
 It was however in the nineteenth century 
 when the freedom of the press became 
 almost complete and the masses of the 
 people began to read, that newspapers 
 increased most rapidly. It is difficult 
 to estimate the wide circulation and 
 influence of the Times, Daily Telegraph, 
 Daily News, Morning Post, Pall Mall 
 Gazette, St. James Gazette, The Observer, 
 the leading English newspapers of our 
 day. 
 
 The story of the growth of the newspaper 
 in the United States is a remarkable one; 
 the development here has been greater than 
 anywhere else. One of the chief reasons 
 for this is the fact that in this country 
 "freedom of the press" has always existed.
 
 12 The American Newspaper 
 
 Let us briefly run over the facts of this 
 development. 
 
 A colonial press first appeared in Boston 
 in 1690. In September of that year Ben- 
 jamin Harris published a sheet with the 
 title of Puhlick Occurrences hath Foreign 
 and Domestick. It was suppressed. The 
 Boston News-Letter followed in 1704, but 
 its existence was short. The oldest news- 
 paper in the country today is the New 
 Hampshire Gazette founded in 1 756. Most 
 of the colonial papers confined themselves 
 to the barest mention of the news of the 
 day ; they did not give a column to a piece 
 of news that only needed a paragraph. If 
 opinions were expressed, they were on the 
 whole subservient to the opinions of those 
 in authority. Zealous Franklins and Zen- 
 gers were the exceptions, but it was they 
 who originated and practiced that inde- 
 pendent spirit which was infused in a new 
 class of paper that appeared after the year 
 1745 — the so-called Revolutionary Press. 
 This new type of journalism was like the
 
 Evolution of the Modern Newspaper 13 
 
 North Briton, its contemporary in England, 
 defiant, self-reliant, and independent. The 
 New Hampshire Gazette is a well-known 
 example of those rebellious journals which 
 boldly abused the home government and 
 lauded the colonists. 
 
 In the first year of the Revolution, we 
 find eight newspapers started in Philadel- 
 phia. When the Constitution went into 
 operation in 1789 and the freedom of the 
 press became well assured, there were 
 printed every week over 76,438 copies of 
 newspapers. With the establishment of 
 the government of the United States, news- 
 papers sprang into existence throughout 
 the thirteen colonies. European prece- 
 dent had made the colonial newspaper a 
 small sheet of one or two pages dealing 
 with political and patriotic subjects, but 
 now the size of the paper gradually in- 
 creased. There were few editorials, but 
 the articles were usually written by men 
 of marked abihty, such as Madison, Hamil- 
 ton, Jefferson, or Washington, and topics
 
 14 The American Newspaper 
 
 of the day were warmly debated over signed 
 names. Partisanship was undisguised and 
 sincere. 
 
 The succeeding years are those of the 
 beginnings of business enterprise apphed 
 to the newspaper. We find the predeces- 
 sors of contemporary American journahsm 
 using all possible means to gather and dis- 
 tribute news. Between 1835 and 1840, 
 before telegraphy and the Atlantic cable 
 were in use, the New York papers started 
 "pony expresses" and similar expedients 
 for gathering the earliest possible news 
 from Washington, which was then as now 
 the great news-center. For the same pur- 
 pose a line of fast saihng-boats was put 
 into commission to meet incoming vessels 
 from foreign ports. 
 
 It is, however, from those mechanical 
 appliances that have transformed the news- 
 paper as they have altered all other aspects 
 of modern Hfe, that the American news- 
 paper has received its greatest impetus. 
 With the invention of modern machinery
 
 Evolution oj the Modern Newspaper 15 
 
 and the typewriter, the use of electricity, 
 the use of the telegraph and telephone a 
 new era set in. The story of the develop- 
 ment of the modern American journal is 
 typified in the history of such newspapers 
 as the Herald, the Tribune, the Sun, the 
 Times, or the World. The sudden increase 
 both in the volume and scope of these 
 dailies is due for the most part first, to the 
 enormous reduction in the production 
 cost of materials, especially in paper and 
 power; second, to the reduction in the price 
 of composition due to the invention of type- 
 setting machines; third, to the economy of 
 time and labor resulting from the introduc- 
 tion of improved machinery by which the 
 papers are printed, cut, pasted, folded, 
 counted, and made ready for delivery by 
 a single machine; fourth, the increased 
 facility of gathering news, due to the free 
 use of telephones, telegraphs, automobiles, 
 and the like ; and fifth, the vast increase in 
 the number of newspaper readers, due to 
 the spread of education and the reduction in
 
 1 6 The American Newspaper 
 
 the price of the paper. Today any resident 
 of a large city in this country x:an get for 
 from one to five cents over one hundred 
 columns of news, editorial comment, pic- 
 tures, and cartoons, besides many pages of 
 useful advertisements. The accomplish- 
 ment of all this has necessitated an increase 
 in office equipment, and many of our daily 
 papers have erected elaborate establish- 
 ments at the cost of a million dollars or 
 more as, for example, the leading papers 
 of New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Cleve- 
 land, San Francisco, or any other of our 
 large cities. There has also been a com- 
 mensurate increase in office force. Some 
 of the large papers employ as many as 
 five hundred men. In the editorial and 
 reportorial departments more than a hun- 
 dred men are busy night and day. 
 
 This picture, so hastily sketched, surely 
 suggests a mighty growth from the humble 
 beginnings of the Notizie Scritte. The 
 great material and mechanical develop- 
 ment of the United States has caused this
 
 Evolution of the Modern Newspaper 1 7 
 
 pre-eminence of the American press in 
 material equipment; while freedom of the 
 press and universal education has given 
 the American newspaper its other special 
 characteristic, namely its enormous circu- 
 lation. 
 
 In the year 1850 a newspaper of fifty 
 thousand subscribers living within a radius 
 of thirty miles was considered a large 
 journal. Contrast this with any one of the 
 modern New York dailies with a circula- 
 tion of nearly half a million, distributed 
 even to points five hundred miles away. 
 In 1900 it was computed that there were 
 sixty thousand different newspapers in the 
 world. Of these the United States had 
 twenty thousand; Germany and Great 
 Britain, eight thousand each, France, five 
 thousand; Japan, two thousand; Italy, one 
 thousand five hundred, and so on down the 
 line of the nations in the following order: 
 Austria-Hungary, Asia, Spain, and Russia. 
 It will be noticed that this list is a good 
 index of the intelligence and progressive-
 
 1 8 The American Newspaper 
 
 ness of the different nations. The average 
 of intelhgence is in direct ratio to the num- 
 ber of newspapers. To attempt a brief 
 characterization of the newspapers of the 
 first four countries, one might say that in 
 general the newspapers of this country 
 devote most of their space to news, sports, 
 and poHtics; those of Great Britain to 
 editorial discussion and political issues; 
 those of France to petty politics, art, drama, 
 and gossip, and those of Germany to 
 national politics, science, and art. But as 
 regards the general influence of the news- 
 papers in their respective countries, one is 
 safe in saying that the influence of the 
 papers of the United States is the greatest. 
 Here in the baldest outline are the main 
 facts of the beginnings and progress of that 
 great institution — the modern press. 
 
 Some facts of general interest become 
 plain by this review. One is that the news- 
 paper of the past tended most frequently to 
 discuss questions of public policy. The 
 newspapers of the past, Chinese, Roman,
 
 Evolution oj the Modern Newspaper 19 
 
 mediaeval and modern, had, as must have 
 been noted, a bearing chiefly political ; they 
 were often written by clerks, notaries, or 
 other persons employed by the government, 
 and were constantly subject to such a 
 supervision by censors and other magis- 
 trates as still persists in Russia. Up to the 
 middle of the eighteenth century a rigid 
 censorship similar to that which now con- 
 trols the Journal de St. Petersburg, Nouve 
 Vremya (New Times) and Novoste {Latest 
 News) checked the action of the whole 
 press. The newspaper, except in so far as it 
 was purely literary, voiced the will of estab- 
 lished rulers. The first Notizie of Italy, 
 the first Frankfurter weekly journal of Ger- 
 many and the first daily, which as we have 
 seen appeared in England in 1702, were 
 one and all under the patronage either of 
 the government or of some nobleman or 
 poHtical faction. At an early date, govern- 
 ments realized that newspapers afforded an 
 easy and direct means of influencing the 
 people. As has been seen, part of Riche-
 
 20 The American Newspaper 
 
 lieu's great power was due to his adroit use 
 of the Gazette de France in shaping and 
 controlling public opinion, and to this day 
 each government of Europe has some great 
 daily which frankly voices and upholds its 
 policy. To assert then that the attitude of 
 the government toward the press has 
 usually determined the character of the 
 newspaper does not belie historic facts. 
 
 It must also have been noted in our re- 
 view of the development of journalism that 
 with the spread of the idea of the freedom 
 of the press newspapers rapidly increased 
 in number and volume. The relinquish- 
 ment of the censorship in the middle of the 
 nineteenth century gave a great impetus 
 to journalism in France. With the repeal 
 of the licensing act in England in the reign 
 of William and Mary the newspapers of 
 Great Britain grew in number, size, and 
 influence. In the United States, as has 
 already been suggested, the practically 
 entire freedom of the press is chief among 
 the reasons for that enormous development
 
 Evolution oj the Modern Newspaper 21 
 
 of news-getting and news-giving. This 
 freedom has had unique consequences. 
 So far has the pendulum swung that today 
 instead of the government granting freedom 
 to the press, it might almost be said that 
 it is the press which makes it possible for 
 the government to proceed. It is the press 
 which is free and the government con- 
 trolled. Indeed, the freedom of the press 
 in the case of many newspapers of this 
 country degenerates into a sort of license 
 that has come to mean an utter disregard 
 for law, and this license, as will be pointed 
 out later, has come to be the cause of much 
 that is evil in our press. 
 
 Furthermore, from this brief glance at 
 the history of the press, one is able to trace 
 clearly from the beginning the present two- 
 fold role of the modern newspaper: to 
 give the news and to express public opinion. 
 At first the stress fell chiefly on news-giving ; 
 the small sheets sold in the streets of Italy 
 were devoted for the most part to the collec- 
 tion of the gossip of the markets and to the
 
 22 The American Newspaper 
 
 distribution of this news to the pubhc. The 
 original function of the newspaper was to 
 act as a news-gathering and news-distribut- 
 ing agent. In process of time, however, 
 governments came to recognize that the 
 newspaper might be used effectively to 
 further the interests of those in power. 
 Governments accordingly turned their 
 attention to the newspaper, and out of 
 this situation came the tendency to put 
 greater stress upon the expression of 
 public opinion as distinct from the 
 news-gathering function. Parallel with the 
 growth and spread of this second principle 
 of the press, there grew up a third idea as 
 to the province of the newspaper, namely, 
 that the daily papers should not only 
 gather news and express pubHc opinion but 
 that they should also create public opinion. 
 This idea has attained its greatest develop- 
 ment in the American press. Moreover 
 the American journalist has not been con- 
 tent to use the editorial columns in order to 
 mold public opinion; he has, unfortu-
 
 Evolution oj the Modern Newspaper 23 
 
 nately, reached the point of altering and 
 coloring news. 
 
 Here, in these three theories of what 
 constitutes the function of the newspaper, 
 the evolution of the newspaper is seen. 
 First, that the newspaper should only 
 gather and distribute the news; second, 
 that its function should be primarily to 
 express public opinion, and third, that the 
 newspaper besides collecting news and 
 reflecting public opinion should create 
 opinion. Historically, the first-mentioned 
 function preceded the other two. It is only 
 in the present day, however, that the last 
 function — to create public opinion— has 
 been developed to its fullest Hmit. This 
 could only be accomplished in a nation of 
 newspaper readers, whose daily interests 
 touch the politics of the state, and in an 
 age of mechanical development that makes 
 possible the production of the modern news- 
 paper with its twenty-four pages covered 
 with pictures and distributed within a few 
 hours at a very small price over a radius
 
 24 The American Newspaper 
 
 of fifty miles to a million subscribers. In 
 summary then, the following tabular state- 
 ment will show the historical development 
 of the newspaper: 
 
 Country Aim Time 
 
 Italian To give the news 17th and 18th cent's 
 
 English To express public opinion i8th and 19th cent's 
 
 American To create public opinion 19th and 20th cent's
 
 THE CITY AND THE NEWS- 
 PAPER
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE CITY AND THE NEWSPAPER 
 
 Histories of journalism are few, and most 
 of those that we have are out-of-date, for 
 the modern newspaper changes rapidly. 
 The newspaper of today is vastly different 
 from that published twenty years ago. 
 There are a few books dealing with the 
 history of journalism in the different 
 countries of Europe, but these were written 
 some twenty or thirty years ago and in no 
 way foreshadow the modern growth of the 
 press. The best history of British journal- 
 ism that we have was written by Alexander 
 Andrews in 1859; nothing of equal merit 
 has since been produced in book form. 
 Comparatively little has been written on 
 American journalism and what has been 
 written does not cover contemporary con- 
 ditions. The story of the modern Ameri- 
 can newspaper is yet to be told ; practically 
 nothing has been written of the recent yet 
 
 27
 
 28 The American Newspaper 
 
 wonderful development of the modern 
 press, especially along financial and me- 
 chanical lines. There is no doubt that 
 there is great need of such a volume and 
 that there is a rich field lying fallow here. 
 
 The continual changes which take place 
 in the business of producing a newspaper 
 are due to a number of causes. For in- 
 stance, the invention of the cylinder press 
 years ago effected a change in the process of 
 makmg a newspaper. Before that time the 
 circulation of a paper was largely deter- 
 mined by the number of pulls one pair of 
 arms could give the old-style press within 
 the two hours allowed for the publication. 
 In those days a circulation of five hundred 
 was considered large. Again, the tremen- 
 dous growth of railroads throughout all 
 sections of the country caused another 
 revolution. For, as the routes of travel 
 doubled and trebled, the circulation of the 
 newspaper grew and its area was increased 
 a hundred-fold. With every invention and 
 improvement of machinery and motor-
 
 The City and the Newspaper 29 
 
 power the business of the newspaper under- 
 went still another change. With each of 
 these changes the sphere of the daily was 
 broadened, and with the rapid increase in 
 circulation there was a steady demand for 
 more room, for more money, and for more 
 men of ability. Thus we come to another 
 change of recent origin, namely, that in the 
 ownership of papers. With the need of 
 large capital newspapers ceased to be 
 owned and edited by the same man. News- 
 paper syndicates with trust methods have 
 sprung into existence everywhere in our 
 midst, and the policy of the newspaper has 
 become radically different. There have 
 been many other similar changes which any 
 history of journalism in this country would 
 treat at length. 
 
 Besides the lack of good historical studies 
 very little has been written regarding the 
 numerous problems of contemporary jour- 
 nalism. What has been done along this 
 line is mostly contained in the newspapers 
 themselves or in scattered magazine articles.
 
 30 The American Newspaper 
 
 President Roosevelt and others have occa- 
 sionally spoken of the power and problem 
 of the American press, particularly as re- 
 gards "muck-raking and the tendency of 
 editors to lie. " The largest mass of printed 
 matter concerning journalism consists for 
 the most part of reminiscences told by 
 newspaper men. What is needed, there- 
 fore, at this time is not only a reliable his- 
 torical treatise, but also an analysis of the 
 nature of contemporary journalism. The 
 latter task the writer has undertaken in the 
 pages that are to follow. Of the many 
 reasons why such psychological and statis- 
 tical studies should be made of the press of 
 this country, the two most important are: 
 first, nowhere else has the business of jour- 
 nalism shown so elaborate a development 
 as in the United States; and secondly, 
 nowhere else has the press found so large 
 an audience or attained to such influence 
 as among the citizens of this nation. There 
 are in the United States about 25,000 differ- 
 ent newspapers with a total annual output
 
 The City and the Newspaper 31 
 
 of over 5,000,000,000 copies. Here every- 
 body reads newspapers and here news- 
 papers are practically free to say what they 
 please. This is not true of Europe where 
 the newspapers are less numerous, have a 
 smaller circulation, and are more restricted. 
 For another reason, also, newspapers in this 
 country furnish a particularly interesting 
 field for study. The matter is well stated 
 in the following quotation : 
 
 Less accurate than the Engh'sh newspaper, less 
 well written than the French, less well equipped 
 than the German, the American newspaper occu- 
 pies a mean position between all three in the ex- 
 tent of its news service, in the freedom of its 
 literary vehicle, and in its habit of treating all sub- 
 jects from the point of the educator rather than 
 the investigator. 
 
 American newspapers differ from each 
 other and from the papers of other countries 
 in the manner in which the news is printed 
 and in the relative stress laid on the various 
 classes of material that make up the con- 
 tents of the paper. At the outset, for the
 
 32 The American Newspaper 
 
 sake of convenience, it is necessary that we 
 make our classification of newspapers on 
 this basis of manner of presentation of news 
 and relative stress. Thus, taking into con- 
 sideration the selective elements of tone, 
 color, and atmosphere, we are able to dis- 
 tinguish three types of papers: first, the 
 conservative press, second, the sensational 
 press, and third, the so-called yellow press. 
 In general, viewed from the standpoint 
 of time, the conservative newspaper is the 
 paper of the past, while the sensational and 
 yellow journals represent those of the 
 present. Viewed from the standpoint of 
 geography, the conservative paper belongs 
 to the country, while the sensational and 
 and yellow sheets are found in the city. 
 Conservative city papers, of the type of the 
 Philadelphia Ledger, there undoubtedly 
 are, but these are exceptions. As a rule, 
 it is certainly true that the city paper is 
 more sensational and yellow than the 
 country newspaper. This is but natural 
 since the city has long been the seat of
 
 The City and the Newspaper t,2> 
 
 radicalism, while the country tends to be 
 conservative. Hence, any study of modern y 
 American journalism must concern itself 
 with our large metropolitan dailies. In- 
 deed, one may safely say, that the modern 
 press is a development of our cities. There- 
 fore, before proceeding farther it seems 
 desirable to discuss the respective influences 
 of the country and city dailies and to ascer- 
 tain if possible the extent and the causes 
 of the increase in size and influence of the 
 city's papers, namely, the sensational and 
 the yellow journal, the two types to which 
 the great bulk of the newspapers published 
 in this country belong. 
 
 Many persons would object to the state- 
 ment that such a paper as the New York 
 Herald is a representative American morn- 
 ing daily or that the San Francisco Bul- 
 letin is a fair type of the average evening 
 paper. When the American in Europe 
 looks impatiently about a newspaper shop 
 in London or stands before a newspaper 
 "kiosk" on one of the Parisian boulevards,
 
 34 The American Newspaper 
 
 he resents the fact that American journal- 
 ism is almost exclusively represented there 
 by the pictorial features of the Police 
 Gazette, the gaudy political cartoons of 
 Puck and Judge, or some copies of the New 
 York Herald or the Chicago American. To 
 the Frenchmen and Englishmen who 
 naturally believe that these sensational 
 sheets are typical representatives of the 
 American newspaper, he quickly points out 
 that the numerous conservative country 
 papers at home should not be overlooked. 
 The American may further argue that a 
 large proportion of the newspapers of this 
 country have nothing in common with the 
 cynicism of the Sun, the pessimism of the 
 Post, or the gaudy headlines of our yellow 
 journals, and further assert that one has but 
 to turn to statistics to realize that the 
 "power of the press" after all is resident in 
 the country, for the country papers far 
 outnumber the city papers. His argu- 
 ments, however, are not wholly sound. To 
 be sure, figures flatter not only the active
 
 The City and the Newspaper 35 
 
 four-paged daily of the small towns but 
 attest forcibly the genuine influence of the 
 humble country paper. But these figures 
 formulate a plea upon a numerical basis 
 and disregard the crucial question of 
 "real influence." Mere statistics do not 
 tell much, but often rather belie the real 
 state of things. In the subject under con- 
 sideration they sadly neglect to recognize 
 two important factors, first, the scope and 
 field of the ordinary city journal, and sec- 
 ond, the rapid growth of our cities. They 
 forget that nearly half of the population of 
 America at the present time lives in cities 
 of over eight thousand inhabitants. They 
 lose sight of the fact that our big city 
 dailies have a large and extensive circula- 
 tion in the neighboring country among the 
 farmers. Obviously it is absurd to assert 
 that a small four-paged country journal 
 with a subscription list of about eighteen 
 thousand in any way compares with the 
 huge twenty-four paged daily of a large 
 city with over one hundred and fifty
 
 36 The American Newspaper 
 
 thousand subscribers. There is no com- 
 parison. The New York Times with a 
 circulation of 250,000 is worth over a 
 thousand of the Cahfornian Santa Cruz 
 Surf, with a subscription of 2,500. Con- 
 sider how many four-paged country papers 
 it would take to equal in size and influence 
 any modern city daily such as the New 
 York Sun. After such convincing com- 
 parisons, mere statistics become a joke and 
 we find, both as regards size and influence, 
 that the "power of the press" rests abso- 
 lutely with our cities and not with the 
 country. It is to the city that one must go 
 to form any estimate of journalism in this 
 country. 
 
 With the growth of cities the field of the 
 city paper has grown, and with the increase 
 of communication and travel the city paper 
 has begun to oust the little four-paged con- 
 servative journal of the country. It is true 
 that the number of these small sheets in- 
 creases every year, but as has been said, we 
 are not concerned here with mere figures
 
 The City and the Newspaper 37 
 
 but rather with a question of influence. 
 The city paper today, for instance, covers 
 an area of about two hundred miles. It 
 supplies news not only to the inhabitants 
 of its own city and the residents of suburbs, 
 but it is delivered at all points of the country 
 within a radius of two hundred miles be- 
 fore ten o'clock of the morning it is issued. 
 This region has happily been called its 
 "sphere of influence," as the political 
 scientist terms the particular area that a 
 country rules largely through influence and 
 suggestion. Traveling across the continent 
 from New York one passes through differ- 
 ent "zones." On the train out of New 
 York he is offered the New York papers — 
 the Times, the Sun, the Herald, and the 
 like. On the next day he is flooded with 
 the newspapers of Chicago, then of Salt 
 Lake, then of Ogden, and later of San 
 Francisco. Returning via San Francisco 
 on the Santa Fe, he passes through the 
 "zones" of the Los Angeles, the Denver, 
 and the New Orleans newspapers. In 
 
 392841
 
 38 The American Newspaper 
 
 this field the httle local paper cannot com- 
 pete with its big rival. If it survives at all 
 its mission is simply to furnish the town 
 gossip. It does not attempt to publish the 
 news of the great outside world, and it 
 exerts little influence on the minds of its 
 readers. The city paper is full of news of 
 the commercial and political world, of the 
 doings of all nations and peoples, and there- 
 by becomes a powerful force in the com- 
 munity. It suggests, educates, and con- 
 vinces. The country newspaper is like the 
 small grocery store in the suburban town 
 that is at the mercy of the huge city depart- 
 ment store. It supplies the purely local 
 needs and no more. The story of our 
 press is a repetition of the history of our 
 industrial corporations. This country is 
 the home of large concentrated enterprises 
 and along with all the rest the press has 
 become centralized. 
 
 In addition to this enlargement of the 
 field and influence of the metropolitan 
 newspaper through the improved means
 
 The City and the Neivspaper 39 
 
 of locomotion and communication, there 
 is the national fact of the steady increase 
 in the size and number of cities. The 
 movement of population is cityward. The 
 city has become the center of thought and 
 action. Here masses of humanity con- 
 gregate and thrive, and thus it becomes 
 possible to control them more or less as 
 a single unit. This the modern metro- 
 pohtan newspaper is able to do. It can form 
 public opinion. Moreover, the city is the 
 unit that gives expression to our political 
 and social life. Cities serve also as the 
 controlling and distributing centers for our 
 agricultural and manufactured products. 
 In short, since cities are the centers of 
 American life and industry, when we 
 speak of American journalism we particu- 
 larly refer to the big "dailies" of our larger 
 cities. 
 
 Around a metropolis, within a radius of 
 a hundred miles, towns ranging in popula- 
 tion from fifty to one hundred thousand 
 persons will grow up, and their inhabitants,
 
 40 The American Newspaper 
 
 mingling more and more with the metro- 
 pohtan life, will finally become merged in 
 the great mass. This area is called "the 
 metropolitan district." Although not part 
 of the great city, the interests of the sub- 
 urbanites tend to center there. They take 
 the city's newspapers, go to its theaters, 
 attend its conventions, and, where they 
 possess newspapers of their own, imitate 
 in them the tone and methods of the city's 
 journals. For instance, around San Fran- 
 cisco are San Jose, Oakland, Santa Rosa, 
 and Sacramento. All these towns have 
 newspapers of their own, but these papers 
 are mere imitations of those of San Fran- 
 cisco and are usually under their domi- 
 nance. The same thing is true of New York 
 and Chicago. The dailies published in 
 Manhattan exert a vital influence over the 
 large metropolitan area known as' Greater 
 New York. They also influence newspapers 
 and public opinion in towns like Jersey 
 City, Hoboken, Elizabeth, Newark, and 
 so forth. The newspapers of Chicago
 
 The City and the Neivspaper 41 
 
 likewise make themselves felt over a large 
 area. One finds its papers in Evan- 
 ston, Haywood, Oak Park, Riverside, La 
 Grange, and elsewhere. The papers of 
 the large city compete so well with the 
 small local papers that they have in each of 
 these towns a long list of regular sub- 
 scribers. Thus the newspapers of the 
 average American city represent not merely 
 the city in which they are published but 
 the population of the whole area over 
 which they are distributed. The large 
 New York journals have each a list of over 
 five hundred thousand subscribers spread 
 over a district containing something like 
 ten million people. The Chicago papers 
 cover an area with a population of about 
 five million persons, and have a circulation 
 of two hundred and fifty thousand each. 
 All this suggests the immense power and 
 influence of the newspapers of our large 
 cities. It shows that in spite of the num- 
 bers of the four-paged country papers, the 
 real American journalism is to be found in
 
 42 The American Newspaper 
 
 our large cities and that this urban jour- 
 nahsni touches, as it were, the hves of 
 about two-thirds of the country's popula- 
 tion. The influence of the prominent New 
 York papers is particularly striking. As 
 Wall Street influences the money markets 
 of the country, so Park Row and its 
 methods determine in large measure the 
 character of American journalism. These 
 New York papers are watched and imitated 
 by newspapers all over the United States. 
 In fine, as the cities are the controlling 
 levers of national life, as "Paris is France, 
 and what Paris says, thinks, and feels all 
 France says, thinks, and feels," so it may 
 be said that New York is the East, Chicago is 
 the West, New Orleans the South, and San 
 Francisco the far West, and that these four 
 cities together give us the United States. 
 And so the newspapers of these four cities 
 give us American journalism, representing 
 the characteristics, the sentiments, the 
 desires, and the hopes of the country.
 
 THE NATURE OF THE AMERI- 
 CAN NEWSPAPER
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE NATURE OF THE AMERICAN 
 NEWSPAPER 
 
 It is then appropriate that the metro- 
 pohtan newspaper should be examined 
 with care and in detail. The study 
 naturally falls into three main divisions: 
 (i) the nature of American journalism; 
 (2) its influence on morals; (3) the causes 
 of this influence ; and it is in this sequence 
 that I shall treat the subject. 
 
 In order to make a helpful estimate of 
 the daily papers of this country, a brief 
 preliminary analysis of the nature of the 
 press in general is necessary. The subject- 
 matter of any newspaper can be divided into 
 five general parts, and these in turn can be 
 split up into many minor divisions. These 
 five main classes are : (i) News; (2) Illus- 
 trations; (3) Literature; (4) Opinion; (5) 
 Advertisement. News includes every item 
 
 45
 
 46 The American Newspaper 
 
 that is a report of current events; illustra- 
 tions comprehend pictorial matter outside 
 of advertisements ; literature covers the field 
 of serial stories, special articles, jokes, and 
 poetry; opinion includes letters, exchanges, 
 and editorials, while advertisement is 
 obviously that large department wherein 
 are published paid statements of what is 
 to be had in the way of service, commod- 
 ities, and the like. There have been many 
 similar classifications of the material of 
 newspapers. One of these divides the 
 subject-matter into six parts, as follows: 
 (i) events of the place in which the paper 
 is published ; (2) events of other places and 
 countries ; (3) editorial opinion ; (4) quota- 
 tions from the financial, stock, and cereal 
 markets; (5) advertisements, and (6) spe- 
 cial departments on sports, dramatics, art, 
 and literature. 
 
 With these convenient divisions before 
 our eyes it would be interesting as well as 
 instructive to make a quantitative analysis 
 of our modern press. In his monograph
 
 Nature of the American Newspaper 47 
 
 on newspapers, Dr. Wilcox found that the 
 five divisions of the first classification 
 made above occupied on an average for the 
 whole country such percentages of the 
 total space as are shown in the accom- 
 panying tables. A careful glance at these 
 tables, even though made as far back as 
 ten years ago, will disclose many interest- 
 ing facts. For instance, war, politics, 
 business, sports, crime, and vice occupy by 
 far the greater portion of the average news- 
 paper's space. Opinion and advertise- 
 ment are omnipresent in all papers while 
 literature and illustration are sometimes 
 wanting and always held in abeyance. 
 Table III suggests the instructive fact that 
 the percentage of space occupied by crime, 
 vice, illustrations, and want advertisements 
 seems to have increased steadily with the 
 growth of circulation, while in political 
 news, editorials, and exchange columns 
 no apparent difference is to be noticed. A 
 careful survey of the columns of different 
 papers will show that a conservative
 
 •J 
 
 48 The American Newspaper 
 
 journal will devote only a few paragraphs 
 to a certain murder or prize fight, while a 
 sensational newspaper will give three or 
 four columns to the same thing and accom- 
 pany the account with many pictures. 
 
 But this quantitative difference in the 
 amount of space devoted to certain kinds 
 of news by the conservative and the sen- 
 
 TABLE I 
 
 The various newspaper matter was found to fill, on an 
 average for the whole country, the following percentage of 
 the total space: 
 
 ' a) War news, 17 . 9 
 
 ! Foreign, i . 2 
 Political, 6.4 
 Crime, 3.1 
 Misc., 1 1. 1 
 
 ! Business, 8 . 2 
 Sporting, 5 . i 
 Society, 2.3 
 
 II. Illustrations, 3 . i 
 
 III. Literature, 2.4 
 
 ,., ^ . . (a) Editorials, 3 . 9 
 
 IV. Opmion, 7 ■ I I J) Letters and exchange, 3 . 2 
 
 c) Want, 5.4 
 
 b) Retail, 13.4 
 
 , c) Medical, 3.9 
 
 V. Advertisements, 32.1 ^^ Political and legal, 2.0 
 
 f e) Miscellaneous, 6.0 
 \f) Self, 1.4 
 
 I. News, 55.3
 
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 poo>M o»^« "N « "^o ^u^cir*topoo 
 
 
 
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 loii^N N ^i^•<J-Ov^* t^O fO Tf « t^ ^ N O- 
 
 
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 in M C4 M N 
 
 
 
 zed ... . 
 
 s 
 
 pace. . . 
 
 
 
 S 
 
 
 ^ . 
 •T3 <" .« 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 u 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ir 
 
 g ;^ s s & i« g= ■ 
 
 
 
 
 _ 2 
 
 is 
 
 
 of papers an 
 1 no, of colu 
 entage of tot 
 
 1 
 
 a) War new 
 
 6) General i 
 
 I Foreig 
 
 2. Politic 
 
 3. Crime 
 
 4. Misce 
 c) Special n 
 
 1. Busin 
 
 2. Sport 1 
 
 3. Societ 
 Illustrations 
 Literature . 
 Oninion 
 
 I Editorial 
 2. Letters a 
 Advertiseme 
 
 s 
 
 . rt u 
 
 ... . 1 
 
 12 
 
 
 o o fc 
 
 HH 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 > 
 
 
 > 
 
 1
 
 50 
 
 The American Newspaper 
 
 TABLE III 
 An Examination of Newspapers in Classes as to Circulation* 
 
 
 40,000 Circula- 
 tion or More 
 
 7,500 to 20,000 
 Circulation 
 
 T 
 
 Crime and \nce 
 
 4.2 
 
 5-2 
 
 6.6 
 4.1 
 5-7 
 1.9 
 3-8 
 
 I.O 
 
 3 6 
 
 TI 
 
 Illustrations 
 
 I 
 3 
 3 
 7 
 4 
 4 
 3 
 
 9 
 
 in. 
 
 IV. 
 V, 
 
 Want advertisements 
 
 Medical advertisements 
 
 Political news 
 
 8 
 8 
 
 
 
 VI. 
 VTT 
 
 Letters and exchanges 
 
 Editorials 
 
 4 
 4 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Political advertisements 
 
 6 
 
 * In new^s of crime and vice, in illustration, and in want and medi- 
 cal advertisements, the percentage of space occupied shows an almost 
 steady increase with the increase of circulation, while the opposite is 
 true in political news, editorials, letters, exchanges, and political adver- 
 tisements. 
 
 TABLE IV* 
 
 
 New 
 York 
 
 Phila- 
 delphia 
 
 Chicago 
 
 St. 
 Louis 
 
 Omaha 
 
 San 
 Fran- 
 cisco 
 
 Crime 
 
 5 
 6 
 
 si 
 
 7i 
 3 
 
 
 2 
 
 3i 
 6 
 
 loj 
 S 
 
 8 
 5* 
 6i 
 10 
 h 
 
 2i 
 2i 
 II 
 
 7i 
 4 
 
 
 Sports 
 
 ih 
 
 Politics 
 
 U 
 
 Business 
 
 nh 
 
 Literature 
 
 2i 
 
 * Figures show the percentage of the total space devoted to each 
 particular branch of news. 
 
 TABLE V 
 
 Subject-Matter of Editorials 
 
 Amount of Space 
 
 Percentage 
 
 War 
 
 344 
 
 218 
 
 42 
 
 3Q 
 
 16 
 
 10 
 
 7 
 
 6 
 
 2 
 
 48 9 
 
 Politics 
 
 ■^i .0 
 
 Foreign affairs 
 
 6.0 
 
 Miscellaneous 
 
 '^. <c 
 
 Business 
 
 2 . 7 
 
 Literature 
 
 I .4 
 
 Social news 
 
 
 Crime and vice 
 
 0.9 
 
 0.3 
 
 Sporting news 

 
 Nakire of the American Newspaper 51 
 
 sational newspaper does not afford the best 
 basis for a classification of American news- 
 papers. It is only in a qualitative analysis y 
 that a satisfactory basis for classification 
 can be formed, and this statement can best 
 be illustrated and explained by a compari- 
 son of three well-known papers, the Boston 
 Herald, the New York Herald, and the 
 Chicago American. They will serve as 
 typical examples of the three separate 
 groups of daily papers found in this 
 country. 
 
 The first, the Herald exemplifies the 
 type of a good conservative paper. It gives 
 the daily news sanely and as far as pos- 
 sible presents the truth unvarnished and 
 without much comment. Its chief atten- 
 tion is given to politics and business. It 
 has few photographs, its editorials are 
 straightforward and unbiased, its news 
 columns give no undue balance to the 
 unusual, the morbid, or the vulgar. The 
 aim is evidently to act on principle, to be 
 nothing more or less than an unprejudiced
 
 52 The American Newspaper 
 
 agent for reporting the events of the day. 
 There is no direct attempt to arouse excite- 
 ment, to play upon the passions, or to 
 flatter the whims of the public. There is 
 really nothing in it that is conspicuous, 
 loud, or melodramatic. The Herald, like 
 all others of its type, at once voices and 
 leads middle-class intelligence. Respected, 
 if not popular, it has a small but regular 
 constituency. This satisfies its editors, 
 who do not seek primarily to catch sub- 
 scribers but to educate and develop sound 
 public opinion. Such papers are the lineal 
 descendants of the colonial press. 
 
 The second class of papers consist of the 
 sensational journal, of which the New York 
 Herald may be regarded as a fair example. 
 These sensational papers go a step farther 
 than the conservative journals, for they not 
 only give the news as they find it, but they 
 color it, or as the newspaper slang goes, 
 they "doctor" it. Even in the "make-up" 
 of the newspaper there is an appeal to 
 petty curiosity. Here begins the habit of
 
 Nature of the American Newspaper 53 
 
 giving greater space to crime, sports, and 
 society news. Big headlines and a greater 
 number of photographs are interspersed 
 among the news. The editorials begin to 
 swing more and more with the shifting of 
 public opinion or at the dictation of the 
 owners of the paper. One becomes con- 
 scious of a definite editorial pohcy which 
 follows rather than leads, of an eye to 
 expediency and a frank hunt for sub- 
 scribers. While the conservative paper 
 writes jor its readers, the sensational 
 journal writes to them. Under this policy, 
 the paper becomes spectacular, excited, 
 changeable, declamatory, and often argu- 
 mentative. This class of newspaper, while 
 it presents its accounts of daily events 
 attractively and vividly, inclines to cater 
 to the standard of mediocrity. In short, 
 its taste is usually commonplace. 
 
 There is finally the yellow journal, often 
 held to be the most typical form of Ameri- 
 can journalism. Without stopping to en- 
 large upon this point, the writer is inclined
 
 54 The American Newspaper 
 
 to doubt this position. There is little 
 question that yellow journalism is a large 
 factor, and any account of American 
 journalism would be incomplete without 
 it, but a careful examination of the difFer- 
 ent newspapers of the country leads one 
 inevitably to the opinion that it is not the 
 most distinctive type. That position is 
 held by the sensational newspaper. An 
 intensive study of yellow journalism would 
 be interesting, but since the aim here is to 
 center attention on what is most typical — 
 namely sensational journalism — only a 
 brief analysis of yellow journalism will be 
 attempted. 
 
 Quantitatively, an examination of yellow 
 and conservative papers shows that the 
 former class of papers devote 20 per cent, of 
 their space to reports of crime and vice 
 while the ordinary conservative newspaper 
 gives but 5 per cent. Qualitatively, yellow 
 newspapers are usually distinguished by a 
 flaring make-up, that is, striking headlines 
 in glaring type and many illustrations to
 
 Nature of the American Newspaper 55 
 
 give as vivid a description as possible of 
 crime, sport, divorce, and, in general, the 
 dramatics of life. Every item of news is 
 worked up into a story told with a rush and 
 a dash, the aim of which is to excite the 
 reader. Every avenue of suggestion is 
 used for sensational purposes. Editors 
 manufacture news; men with vivid imagi- 
 nations and clever pens are paid large 
 salaries to compose fictitious "writeups." 
 Other men are paid big sums to make 
 "scare headlines" in large red or black 
 letters. When it is remembered that it was 
 an editor of the St. Louis Globe, who de- 
 fined the most successful newspaper man 
 as "he who best knew where hell was 
 going to break out next and had a 
 reporter on the spot," it will not be 
 surprising that statistics show that the 
 city of St. Louis has more yellowness in 
 its papers than any other city in the 
 country. But what is especially distinct- 
 ive of yellow journalism is that when 
 hell is quiet and there is no sign of an
 
 56 The American Newspaper 
 
 eruption a reporter is immediately sent to 
 make one at any cost. 
 
 It is at this point that the distinguishing 
 mark of the yellow journalist is plain. All 
 the melodramatic methods of the sensa- 
 tional press are used, every detail of hell is 
 exposed, but a truly yellow journal does 
 more than this. The essential characteris- 
 tic of the yellow journal is that it creates 
 news. Another of its methods is to select 
 news from what is available with a view 
 to attract supporters to its owm opinions 
 and to cajole readers to its ends. It dis- 
 cards pages of news that the public ought 
 to know about. Its aim is to fix prejudices, 
 to arouse feeling, and for its own pur- 
 poses to prey upon the lower passions 
 of the great mass of mankind. It is not 
 forgotten that yellow journals are often 
 progressive and generous; that they fre- 
 quently employ the best talent and pay the 
 highest salaries; that they use the latest 
 machinery and the best methods to gather 
 and to distribute news; that they often
 
 Nature oj the American Newspaper 57 
 
 send grafters to jail, and, whether from 
 self-interest or not, sometimes defend the 
 rights of the people, especially the poor 
 and helpless of the community. The yel- 
 low journal might be likened to a living 
 creature with a heart but without a con- 
 science. This sounds like a paradox, but 
 nevertheless it is so. As Miss Commander 
 said in the Arena, "While other papers have 
 opinions, it [the yellow journal] has feelings 
 as well." It loves and hates, pities and 
 protects, despises and exposes at the same 
 time and in the same breath. 
 
 Yellow journaHsm is a distinct product 
 of America, but it was not created by public 
 demand here. It was largely the self- 
 created "hobby" of a rich man's son, who 
 wanted to dabble in frenzied journalism. 
 He saw clearly the reputation as well as the 
 financial success of such a newspaper. It 
 has many of the characteristics of the 
 circus poster and the patent medicine 
 "ad." It is a big advertising sheet full 
 of news, pictures, and comment. All
 
 58 The American Newspaper 
 
 classes read it to see what it has to say, 
 even though they may not Hke it. More- 
 over, what it has to say is often said well 
 and in an original way. Its circulation has 
 grown enormously; its many advertise- 
 ments have brought it great wealth. Even 
 the conservative newspaper has sometimes 
 imitated it, to become sensational where it 
 has not become yellow. The mercantile 
 value of the yellow journal having been 
 proven, newspaper publishers began to 
 search for writers and editors who could 
 invent things and originate ideas, who 
 could draw morbid pen-and-ink frenzies 
 and "fat purple cows." All this took the 
 public by surprise and at once became a 
 big financial success. The public wanted 
 to be amused and entertained and yellow 
 journalism was invented to cater to this 
 taste; it became the circus clown and 
 acrobat in modern journalism. 
 
 Yellow journalism acts as well as talks. 
 We often find yellow journals devoting as 
 much if not more space to the affairs of the
 
 Nature of the American Newspaper 59 
 
 business world, of the commercial and 
 agricultural conditions of the country, to 
 the fluctuations of the money markets, to 
 the proceedings of Congress and the like, 
 as do many conservative papers in the 
 same community. But in spite of these 
 seemingly beneficent characteristics, the 
 fact remains that a type of journal which 
 is constantly used for ulterior motives, 
 whose policy is always impermanent and 
 generally selfish, whose appeal is to the 
 primitive passions and low taste, is a 
 menace to our national life. 
 
 What has been said above indicates some 
 of the chief points of difference between 
 yellow and sensational journalism. The 
 sensational journal may justify itself by 
 the fact that, in flying in the face of tradi- 
 tion, it sometimes breaks down false pro- 
 prieties, even though it does not build in 
 their place. But when this fashion of 
 voicing the latest thought is set in motion 
 by an unscrupulous greed for power and 
 gain, when men desiring wealth and pres-
 
 6o The American Newspaper 
 
 tige play upon the passions and follies of 
 weak human nature in order to get them, 
 then the sensational journal becomes yel- 
 low and its influence is of the worst. 
 / Let us turn now to the most typical 
 
 form of American journalism, namely the 
 sensational newspaper. Examining it we 
 find twelve principal characteristics. They 
 are as follows: (i) "catering" to the pub- 
 lic; (2) "playing-up" news; (3) "seeking" 
 after news; (4) "doctoring" news; (5) 
 " sensationahzing " news; (6) "trivializ- 
 ing" news; (7) "falsifying" news; (8) 
 "muck-raking" by means of the news; 
 (9) "advertising" by news; (10) the '^ irre- 
 sponsibility" of the journalist; (11) the 
 so-called "partisanship" of the press, and 
 (12) flouting the law. 
 
 The next step in our argument is to see 
 what each of these twelve traits of our 
 press means. By way of introduction it 
 might be said that almost every paper has 
 a "policy," and it achieves and maintains 
 this policy by "editing" the news. This
 
 Nature of the American Newspaper 6i 
 
 it does by suppression, exaggeration, em- 
 phasis, depreciation, and the thousand 
 and one tricks known to the trade. 
 
 As to the first characteristic, "catering" 
 to the pubhc, the late J. S. Bennett, the 
 father of modern journaHsm, once ad- 
 dressed a young man who w^as speaking 
 eloquently about the "mission of the news- 
 paper." Replied Mr. Bennett most sagely, 
 "Young man, to instruct the people as you 
 say is not the mission of journalism. The 
 mission, if journalism has any, is to startle 
 or amuse." This is, in a nutshell, the 
 thought behind all sensational journalism. 
 In the sensational newspaper the people 
 are written to; they are not forced to lift 
 themselves to any standard above their 
 own. This common policy of "catering" 
 is further illustrated by the story of an 
 editor who, when offered two sonnets by 
 the same poet, accepted one and declined 
 the other. Presently, much to the sur- 
 prise of his visitor, he was heard praising 
 the one that he had returned. "But it 
 
 /
 
 62 The American Newspaper 
 
 was the other which you printed," ex- 
 claimed his puzzled auditor. "Oh, that 
 was my choice for the newspaper certainly 
 but personally I prefer — ." Wliat he 
 meant was that the modern editor has no 
 mind of his own, for he merely represents 
 the policy of his employers and the mind 
 of the public. No one would think for a 
 moment that Mr. Brisbane's favorite read- 
 ing consists of the editorials of the Hearst 
 papers. The editor does not think of 
 what he prefers so much as of what the 
 public wants. The modern editor of any 
 one of the big daihes says to his readers, "I 
 am no mycologist. This dish may be a 
 toadstool or it may be a mushroom for all I 
 know, but I hope you will find it appetiz- 
 ing. It is what I imagine you prefer as a 
 dish." It is in this way that the editor is 
 an important factor toward determining 
 public opinion and public taste. He is 
 always scheming new methods and new 
 dainties to please the insatiable appetites 
 of the American people for news. We are
 
 Nature of the American Newspaper 63 
 
 a reading nation and desire to read news 
 that is full of vim and pulsating with life, 
 with excitement, and with strife. An 
 editor therefore who coaxes our appetites 
 by *'dishing-up" news in a sensational 
 style is successful. Give the people what 
 they want, is the maxim of most editors. 
 
 The presentation, or ''playing-up" of 
 news is another of the important features of 
 all modern journalism, especially the sen- 
 sational press. Who could imagine one 
 of the daily sensational journals without 
 huge headlines of a startling nature, big 
 and striking illustrations, and heavy lettered 
 type in which current events are presented 
 in the most alluring style? Nowhere else 
 is the system of using elaborate headlines 
 so prevalent and common as in this 
 country. To work up an "extra" by 
 spreading in some startling and novel 
 fashion a big scare headline in red ink 
 clear across the first pages has become an 
 art for which men are paid high salaries. 
 This headline is designed of course to
 
 64 The American Newspaper 
 
 catch the eye and to sell the paper — a small 
 touch of journalistic advertising and noth- 
 ing more. Often, however, when one 
 purchases such a paper he finds that al- 
 though the ''extra" reports a frightful 
 wreck in which many were killed, the news 
 columns show that only two or three were 
 slightly hurt. In brief, headlines are 
 "bluffs" used to exaggerate and misrepre- 
 sent the news in order to stimulate the 
 public to buy. The editor who is selling 
 his news as a commodity is anxious to 
 create a demand; he is selling news, and 
 he believes that the best way to advertise 
 his goods is to varnish them with black 
 ink and to garnish them with frills. He is 
 right in his judgment of the American 
 people, for although fooled often in the 
 past by these "extras," they cannot resist 
 the cry of the newspaper body peddling his 
 wares. Again and again they succumb to 
 the editor's bluff. Much of the foreign 
 news is the same in ah the dailies; the 
 chief difference is in the local news.
 
 Nature of the American Newspaper 65 
 
 To illustrate: A diagnosis of a hospital 
 record will appear in a conservative news- 
 paper as only a three-line paragraph, 
 while the same bit of local news will in the 
 sensational journal grow into the length 
 of a column or more, displayed with photo- 
 graphs and headlines. A well-known news- 
 paper correspondent who has achieved 
 national fame as a journalist "WTites to those 
 who desire to become newspaper men and 
 gives them the following advice: "Look 
 for something human, pathetic, pictur- 
 esque, humorous, or peculiar in some way 
 or other — then write that. Make a ' special 
 article,' as we say. Nothing is too old or 
 hackneyed — the flight of a runaway cab, 
 the torturing of a neighborhood by a loud- 
 talking parrot, the behavior and comments 
 of the crowd at a fire — any one of ten mil- 
 lions of subjects will serve, provided you 
 know how to bring out whatever it was that 
 interested you. Two or three such bits of 
 work will be more apt to get you a place on 
 a paper than anything else that you can
 
 66 The American Newspaper 
 
 do." Frederic Hudson, once manager of 
 the New York Herald, held that every 
 newspaper should have some one great 
 piece of news or story of wide interest in 
 every issue — some "extra" with a huge 
 headline. The tools with which the sen- 
 sational press "plays up" the daily news 
 are the large flaring scareheads in heavy 
 black and red type, photographs, faked 
 and doctored, and humorous and scathing 
 cartoons. 
 
 Today it is the chief business of a news- 
 paper to gather news, or, as the phrase 
 goes, "to chase news." One of the chief 
 differences between the old newspaper and 
 that of the present lies in the fact that for- 
 merly newspaper editors contented them- 
 selves with what came to them, whereas 
 now our editors reach out after news. To 
 succeed as a reporter, one must have a 
 "nose for news." We find as a conse- 
 quence a wild chase for news in a frantic 
 desire to fill space and a consequent inac- 
 curacy or even absolute untruthfulness.
 
 Nature of the American Newspaper 67 
 
 There has grown up with the rise of our 
 papers a special class of newspaper men 
 whose business it is to ferret out strange 
 stories, to discover mysterious crimes and 
 their perpetrators, and to secure news from 
 persons who are doing their utmost to con- 
 ceal it from the public view. Documents 
 are found and even stolen. During the 
 last presidential cam-paign, one of the 
 owners of some of the biggest newspapers 
 in the country had in his possession per- 
 sonal letters and correspondence that had 
 passed between corporations and certain 
 private individuals. With these letters 
 in his possession he swung public opinion 
 against both corporations and individuals. 
 The question that disturbed everybody at 
 the time was, how did he acquire those 
 private letters? Later developments 
 showed that they had been stolen and it is 
 said that they were sold to the editor for the 
 large sum of twenty thousand dollars. 
 There have been many similar cases. 
 Indeed, the practice of reporters to get
 
 68 The American Newspaper 
 
 news at any sacrifice and in any way is too 
 common to need further elaboration. 
 
 Another method pursued by some papers 
 to obtain the news desired is "shadowing." 
 A reporter writes of one of his experiences 
 at this kind of work: "Beheving that this 
 milHonaire knew something in which the 
 pubHc was keenly interested, I followed 
 him for days as I would have followed a 
 balloon, a kidnaped girl, or the general in 
 command of an army." " Get what you're 
 sent for at any price," is the constant order 
 of the city editor to his anxious reporters. 
 As long as the news is obtained, no one 
 bothers about the questionable means 
 used to get it. As one editor blatantly 
 wrote, "If a reporter gets what he is told to, 
 he is a good reporter; if not, he is no good. 
 There is no half-way in this course of 
 schooling." This is the average standard 
 of a good reporter. Anyone who by means 
 of "hook or crook" will get the news and 
 write it in an attractive manner will make 
 a success as a reporter. Subjects of a
 
 Nature of the American Newspaper 69 
 
 private nature are of interest to the public 
 and must be opened to the public. It 
 matters little how much pain and suffering 
 is caused so long as the newspaper has news 
 to print. That is business, so they say. 
 "I've got to do it," seems at once to be the 
 motto, the excuse, and the exultant battle- 
 cry of every earnest worker attached to 
 any one of the big dailies. 
 
 It will be well to quote on this vital point 
 Julian Ralph, a veteran journalist of the 
 first rank : 
 
 To attain difficult ends, correspondents have 
 had themselves shut up in prisons and in mad- 
 houses, have crossed the ocean in the steerage, have 
 braved the terrors of the cholera in Hamburg and 
 the plague in India, and have invaded every law- 
 less land there is. With them, and with all others, 
 the deeds they have done and the methods they 
 have employed have been invariably weighted by 
 their own consciences, and so it must ever be in 
 such cases. 
 
 Mr. Ralph then relates a humorous 
 anecdote to illustrate his thought.
 
 yo The American Newspaper 
 
 The great statesman, Gladstone [he says], on 
 one occasion, took the question out of the sphere 
 of the correspondent's conscience and settled it 
 himself. It was when Homer Davenport, the well- 
 known cartoonist from America, went to Hawarden 
 to see the aged chieftain in order to familiarize 
 himself with his face and draw it. He met Mr. 
 Gladstone on the road near his house. He told 
 him he was a tourist from Oregon. "And did you 
 come all the way from Oregon to see me?" Glad- 
 stone inquired. "I did, sir," was Davenport's 
 reply. "Then," said the ex-premier, "all I can 
 say is that you must be fond of travel. Good 
 morning, sir." 
 
 Another story a propos to our discussion 
 is told of a reporter who went to Rudyard 
 Kiphng's room dressed as a mechanic 
 and there talked with the novelist in that 
 disguise. There are a thousand more 
 stories of similar nature showing the 
 questionable methods taken to obtain the 
 desired piece of news, but these few in- 
 stances will suffice for our purposes. 
 
 This pursuit of news, this competitive 
 spirit, this fierce and perpetual struggle is
 
 Nature of the American Newspaper 71 
 
 an important characteristic of the sensa- 
 tional newspaper of the present day. 
 Indeed the immediate cause of the ten- 
 dency toward exaggeration and sensational- 
 ism in our American newspapers might 
 almost be affirmed to be this inordinate 
 desire to find ''a story." Max O'Rell, the 
 famous critic, cleverly describes the Ameri- 
 can newspaper as a "huge collection 
 of startHng and amusing short stories." 
 Every reporter is cautioned never to fail 
 to run a story down, to follow the slightest 
 clue, to obtain pictures at any cost, to 
 endeavor to discover some unique feature 
 that may entitle the "assignment" to the 
 dignity of a scare "head" or a four- 
 column "writeup." Under this system 
 of selection, trifling matters are often given 
 prominence at the hands of the ablest news- 
 paper men, while weighty matters are 
 thrown to "cub" reporters; this elaborat- 
 ing of one "story" usually means the cut- 
 ting down of another which contains more 
 sober and instructive matter. It is a
 
 72 The American Newspaper 
 
 question of stress, of the amount of empha- 
 sis given certain kinds of news, and the ulti- 
 mate cause Hes plainly in the fact that the 
 public supports and approves this vagrant 
 use of fertile imagination. Since the pub- 
 lic patronizes, the paper takes full ad- 
 vantage of its opportunities to fill its pages 
 with non-essential and sensational news, 
 illustrated by photographs, cartoons, and 
 other kinds of pictures. Hence that strenu- 
 ous and incessant competition for life and 
 death going on all the time; that frantic 
 struggle after news. Yet while this is 
 dependent on the American appetite, it 
 must be remembered that this appetite has 
 been largely developed by the papers. 
 Here there is plain evidence of an inter- 
 play of influence between the paper and 
 the public. 
 
 Another obvious aspect of sensational 
 journalism is its practice of exaggerating 
 and "doctoring" the news. Mr. Edwin 
 L. Shuman, a reporter of long standing, 
 writes in his book. Practical Journalism,
 
 Nature of the American Newspaper 73 
 
 that the practice of supplementing bald 
 statements of facts with the imagination, 
 is widespread in the world of journalism. 
 He jokingly comments upon the current 
 idea of a chair of journalism and a chair of 
 morals in the same university and upon the 
 confusion and doubt into which a student 
 would be thrown if he attended both 
 courses at the same time. The vividness 
 with which the merest rumor is unreason- 
 ably magnified and worked up is too well 
 known. 
 
 It is related of Ballard Smith, a distin- 
 guished editor and correspondent, that once 
 during the "silly season," when things were 
 dull, he called in a few reporters to help 
 him read the afternoon papers and try to 
 "make a piece of news" for tomorrow's 
 paper. Everything was read, even the 
 advertisements. "I have it!" he cried 
 out after half an hour's reading, and, 
 catching up a big pair of shears, he in- 
 stantly clipped out a three-line paragraph 
 and handed it to one. It was simply an
 
 74 The American Newspaper 
 
 announcement that a tiny baby girl had 
 been found in a vacant lot of ground in 
 Harlem. The only uncommon feature of 
 the case was that the infant was richly 
 dressed. "There!" said he triumphantly. 
 "It is five o'clock, and by midnight we 
 should have a page, or nearly that, of this 
 in type or ready to be set up. You write 
 the main story. See the place where the 
 baby was found, the policeman who found 
 it; follow it to Matron Webb's room in the 
 police headquarters, where all the found- 
 lings are first taken, and get a long, full 
 account from the matron of her experi- 
 ences with such cases — the most remark- 
 able, the strangest, the most pathetic, mov- 
 ing, or stirring experiences she has had. 
 Then jump into a cab and go to the asylum 
 where these babies are brought up, and to 
 the Potter's Field where they are buried. 
 The idea is to hang the whole story of the 
 treatment of foundlings upon the case of 
 this beautiful, richly dressed baby which you 
 are to use as the text. Before you start,
 
 Nature oj the American Newspaper 75 
 
 map out the work bearing on the subject for 
 the rest of the staff to do. You can have 
 twenty reporters if you need them. We 
 will drop everything else and tell the pub- 
 lic, for the first time, the story of a found- 
 ling." Thus a mere hint becomes a five- 
 column article and a mere rumor becomes 
 an "extra." 
 
 A story is told of a lively impressionist 
 who came to Paris to take charge of the 
 local edition of a well-known New York 
 paper. One Sunday afternoon he rushed 
 a hurried order for an "extraordinary" on 
 the ground that something unusual, som.e- 
 thing like a new French Revolution had 
 begun in the capital, that an attempt to 
 assassinate the President had failed, and 
 that armed troops lined the different streets 
 to the Palace. All that had really hap- 
 pened was this: He had seen the Presi- 
 dent driving to his palace at a fast pace 
 with a terrifying escort of cuirassiers armed 
 with revolvers, and as he never before had 
 seen this imposing piece of pageantry
 
 76 The American Newspaper 
 
 which so delights the GalHc RepubHcans, 
 he became excited and flashed the news of 
 revohition across the Atlantic. This was 
 ''good" journalism, no doubt, but suppose, 
 on the other hand, that a French corre- 
 spondent were to cable that President 
 Roosevelt had decided to abolish the army 
 because he saw him receive some military 
 officers in mufti. How often do news- 
 papers bring out in one evening four or 
 five "extras" when really nothing new of 
 any importance has happened. Anything 
 to sell the papers and make money. 
 "Extras" are invented just for this pur- 
 pose. Anything will serve for any "extra;" 
 and, as has been already suggested, all it 
 needs is a rumor of a murder, an assault, 
 a theft, or an accident. 
 
 This characteristic tendency to exag- 
 gerate and "write up" every rumor is 
 further demonstrated in the recent "war 
 talk" between the sensational papers of 
 Japan and of this country, especially those 
 of the Pacific slope. In spite of the fre-
 
 Nature of the American Newspaper 77 
 
 quent exchanges of courtesies and renewed 
 protestations of friendship between the 
 governments of Washington and Tokyo, 
 these papers continued to bring fresh re- 
 ports of a growing estrangement between 
 the two nations, of secret alhances, and 
 quiet mihtary maneuvers. So the pubHc 
 has had a regular "war of words and 
 rumors" within the columns of these un- 
 reliable sheets. I have just returned from a 
 trip to Japan, where I interviewed some 
 of the more educated Japanese. In reply 
 to my questions they were positive in their 
 assertion that it was a mistake to think that 
 Japan wants to fight or that she will fight 
 this country. They openly acknowledged 
 that their country was in no condition for a 
 war. They also frankly admitted that they 
 are at present burdened by enormous taxes 
 growing out of an immense war debt, and 
 there has been a failure of crops for three 
 successive years. But in the face of these 
 facts, the sensational newspapers of this 
 country would have us believe that war
 
 78 The American Newspaper 
 
 is imminent and they have convinced many 
 people that such is the case. Again, the 
 newspaper correspondents who reported 
 that the Oklahoma constitutional conven- 
 tion was controlled by Indian delegates 
 who filled the constitution with a pictur- 
 esque array of radical planks were as far 
 as possible from the truth, for though it 
 appears that there actually were two In- 
 dians who were members of the conven- 
 tion, they belonged to the minority and ex- 
 pressly disapproved of the radical planks. 
 These are but a few of many instances 
 illustrating the persistent habit of our 
 typical American newspapers to "doctor" 
 news. 
 
 The fourth and perhaps most striking 
 characteristic of American newspapers is 
 the ''sensationalizing" of news. This 
 streak of yellow runs through most of our 
 large city dailies. With the rapid growth 
 of the country and therefore of the press, 
 newspapers give more and more attention 
 to crime, sporting news, and to the erratic
 
 Nature 0} the American Newspaper 79 
 
 behavior of ''society." Theft, murder, 
 and assault are given page upon page in 
 which detailed and morbid accounts are 
 accompanied by all kinds of revolting 
 pictures. The t>^ical sensational journal 
 in New York is often ridiculous, often 
 maddening, sometimes disgusting, and 
 occasionally downright wicked. There 
 have been many examples of this kind of 
 journalism in the New York newspaper 
 accounts of the murders, assaults, and 
 unusually numerous crimes of varying seri- 
 ousness with which the New York police 
 have recently had to deal. To such an 
 extent was this kind of exaggerated news 
 exploited that some of the more conser- 
 vative papers were forced to enter a 
 vigorous protest. 
 
 The Evening Post said: ''No one at- 
 tempting to derive an estimate of the pres- 
 ent conditions in New York from the front 
 page contents of many of our newspapers 
 could be blamed for concluding that society 
 is on the verge of deplorable anarchy
 
 8o The American Newspaper 
 
 The alarm is being sounded, not only by 
 publications to whose thunderous and 
 shrieking headlines we have grown accus- 
 tomed, but by papers which professedly 
 aspire to higher journalistic aims." Similar 
 accounts of a suppositious reign of crime 
 that raged a year in San Francisco (known 
 among newspaper men as the " Siege of the 
 Gas-Pipers") materially injured the best 
 interests of that city. As will be recalled, 
 a series of horrible murders and thefts 
 occurred at intervals during a period of a 
 few months. No trace of the perpetrators 
 of these crimes could be found. The hunt 
 of the police seemed hopeless. Soon the 
 papers of the city determined that the city 
 was besieged by a gang of notorious crim- 
 inals. These accounts were spread over 
 the country, and by what was gleaned from 
 the newspapers it seemed as if San Fran- 
 cisco was in the very throes of a criminal 
 outbreak. The criminals when finally dis- 
 covered turned out to be two young men, 
 one of wh m was barely eighteen. In a
 
 Nature oj the American Newspaper 8i 
 
 similiar way, a false report cabled east and 
 to Europe of the many cases of bubonic 
 plague breaking out in Chinatown was most 
 harmful and has done a great deal toward 
 keeping visitors and business from our 
 shores. This much is sufficient to illus- 
 trate that there is a growing tendency in 
 our newspapers to tell exaggerated and 
 disgusting stories and to relate sensational 
 tales of vice and of the sporting world. The 
 detailed discussion given in our sensational 
 press of the Thaw, the Needham, and the 
 Durant cases is full of danger to the morals 
 of the average newspaper reader, especially 
 the young, who devour outright everything 
 they read. 
 
 Our newspapers have a tendency also to 
 print that which is ridiculous and trivial in 
 its nature and this common habit I have 
 called the ''trivializing" of news. Our 
 newspapers are filled with stories of foreign 
 courts, with the intrigues, scandals, and 
 erratic doings of the nobility. The gamb- 
 ling and suicides at Monte Carlo are given
 
 82 The American Newspaper 
 
 daily notice. All. that is frivolous and 
 eccentric in society, the so-called ''400's" 
 and "500's" of American society, is given 
 special attention. Foreign and home poli- 
 tics are neglected for this, or are given a 
 less conspicuous place. 
 
 This daily printing of the ridiculous is 
 well exemplified in the story told by a 
 grizzled "vet" who was acquainted with 
 English and French journalism and who 
 epigrammatically remarked that, "The 
 French newspapers are the best written 
 but the worst informed, the English papers 
 are the worst written but the best in- 
 formed." "And the American news- 
 papers?" asked a representative of this 
 country. "The American press," replied 
 he, "oscillates between the two extremes." 
 Thereupon he produced from his overcoat 
 pocket the greatest of the New York 
 papers and read an account cabled from 
 Paris by a special correspondent. It told 
 with much detail of a cab-horse who knew 
 his way about the Villa Lumiere so well
 
 Nature of the American Newspaper 83 
 
 that it was only necessary to whisper in 
 his ear, ''Gare St. Lazare," or "Moulin 
 Rouge," in order that the animal should 
 draw the cab to the desired destination and 
 by the shortest route. This is but one of 
 a hundred cases, where ridiculous matters 
 creep into our most sane and reliable 
 journals. Reporters seem to delight in 
 writing nonsense. In such matters, Ameri- 
 can journalism has been universally jeered 
 at and it has deserved the jeers. It is only 
 too well known, that there are certain 
 schools of journalism which aim to give 
 prominence to the ridiculous and incredu- 
 lous even while they lampoon hypocrisy, 
 jeer at conventions, expose pretenders, 
 demolish false idols. These same news- 
 papers also tend to destroy faith in stand- 
 ards, to satirize the honest, the simple, and 
 the pure. 
 
 Perhaps the greatest accusation that can 
 be made against newspapers of this country 
 is that they have a habit of printing "false" 
 news. Our foreign correspondents' igno-
 
 84 The American Newspaper 
 
 ranee of the politics, the language, and the 
 social institutions of the country in which 
 they are stationed has been largely at fault, 
 and for this very reason our foreign news 
 columns have been the cause of much 
 merriment to journalists of other countries. 
 We have a good proof of this in the famous 
 Dreyfus case, when reams of "stuff," not 
 containing one ounce of truth, were bril- 
 liantly written and accepted as true by the 
 American public. News was manufac- 
 tured by the wholesale. Brilliant journal- 
 ists were highly paid to write just for 
 "extras," which were published during the 
 trial sometimes ten times a day. The in- 
 nocent public was daily given prejudiced 
 and untrue accounts of the trial. Faked 
 pictures were made. Facts were misrepre- 
 sented and the public was deceived. 
 
 The average reporter acts on the danger- 
 ous principle that false news is better than 
 no news. He often goes still farther and 
 says that false news is even better than true 
 news if the former is of more interest to the
 
 Nature oj the American Newspaper 85 
 
 general public. To illustrate this tendency 
 to falsify news, a humorous story is told of 
 a Parisian foreign correspondent of one of 
 our newspapers who at a moment of con- 
 siderable political tension at the French 
 capital received a cable from his editor in 
 New York which ran something like this: 
 ''Interview Delcasse on the situation." 
 "He showed me the telegram" says the 
 narrator of the story and asked, 
 
 " 'Do you think I could get the interview 
 with the minister ?' " 
 
 "'No,' I hastily replied." 
 
 "'Do you think that you could get an 
 interview from Delcasse?' " 
 
 "'No,' was my immediate answer." 
 
 '"Could anyone interview him on this 
 situation just now ?' " 
 
 "Again my answer was a vehement 
 'No!'" 
 
 '"Very well, I will go home and write the 
 thing myself.' " 
 
 And he did. His paper reproduced his 
 copy word for word, with enormous" head-
 
 86 The American Newspaper 
 
 lines and faked photographs. Yet this 
 correspondent was unacquainted with Del- 
 casse, had never seen him, and did not 
 know the A B C of that intricate and diffi- 
 cult subject — French politics. Faked in- 
 terviews are often written up in this way, 
 and this is but a typical example of what 
 I have termed the "falsifying" of news. 
 
 The most fruitful fields for false news are 
 a war campaign, the intrigues of foreign 
 princes, or the adventures of some young 
 spendthrift. To illustrate still further this 
 common practice of altering and perverting 
 the news and sometimes inventing it, an 
 astute editor is reported to have publicly 
 said that he believed in sending to cities 
 young men who knew nothing about them, 
 because their impressions, even if they were 
 not to be trusted, were still attractive and 
 novel. Perhaps it is for the same reason 
 that a Frenchman's description of a base- 
 ball game makes such enjoyable reading 
 for the baseball "fan." It seems that 
 there is no profession or trade in the
 
 Nature of the American Newspaper 87 
 
 world in which so small a premium is 
 placed on great ability and honest work and 
 in which the opportunities for scamped 
 work, shoddy work, bluff, flash, and mere- 
 tricious work are so many. IMen with 
 fertile imaginations seem to make splendid 
 reporters. Men who can dream stories 
 and write news are in constant demand and 
 are paid high salaries. In sober moments 
 the public really prefers the vivid reality 
 of things as they are to garnished nonsense. 
 Ordinarily, however, it wants ''fake" 
 stories, for these are interesting and excit- 
 ing. "Fakes" are not only encountered 
 in the "doctoring" of news but in the 
 "making" of photographs as well. Fake 
 pictures of persons and accidents are daily 
 printed in newspapers. Many of them 
 employ an expert artist who executes in 
 wash a picture as directed, and from this a 
 photograph is taken and these "fake" 
 photographs themselves are altered and 
 changed to suit the fancy of the managing 
 editor. Another splendid instance of this
 
 88 The American Newspaper 
 
 "falsifying" of news occurred the other day 
 when all the San Francisco newspapers 
 reported in glowing terms a vaudeville show 
 that had not taken place. They must have 
 written their account of it from a progamme 
 that had been distributed. From notices 
 of dances, theatricals, and receptions news- 
 papers write big stories without even send- 
 ing a reporter. Reporters under such cir- 
 cumstances are unnecessary. Moreover, 
 photographs are often printed that have no 
 resemblance to the person referred to. 
 How many times have unfortunate celeb- 
 rities seen another's picture substituted for 
 their own ! 
 
 The eighth characteristic of American 
 journalism is the present tendency to 
 "knock," the tendency which received from 
 our President the name of "muck-raking." 
 Our papers are always ready for the atti- 
 tude of criticism, opposition, and attack. 
 They oppose and attack our political and 
 social institutions. They lay stress upon 
 all that is evil in human nature and public
 
 Nature oj the American Newspaper 89 
 
 life. In this way they develop a skeptical 
 turn of mind among the people. They 
 give the impression that all men are 
 "grafters" and that all decent movements 
 for reform are mere pretenses. This habit 
 of belittling everything is full of danger. 
 The average city daily seems to see no 
 good in our present national life. If one 
 judged from the statements of newspapers, 
 wickedness and corruption seem to stalk in 
 the open unmolested and even invited. 
 Thus the worst side of our national and 
 city life is presented to our gaze in big, 
 black, ugly print and this tends to create 
 and encourage a feeling of pessimism and 
 distrust among the reading public. Be- 
 cause of this utter disregard by our press 
 of persons and institutions President Roose- 
 velt was moved to make his famous 
 "muck-rake" speech that will go down in 
 history as a classic of its kind. As an 
 illustration of this characteristic of the 
 press, take the attitude of the New York 
 papers in branding the latest utterances of
 
 go The American Newspaper 
 
 President Roosevelt against the trusts and 
 their evil doings as "unrestrained and 
 unregulated" and as "full of much alarm." 
 This is but two of many instances where 
 the community is sadly neglected by its 
 newspapers, whenever the interests of these 
 newspapers and their officers are at stake. 
 This tendency to write about the evils and 
 sores of society seems to be growing with our 
 papers ; they write for the most part about 
 morbid, pathetic, and criminal events. They 
 are always negative in their comments. 
 
 "Advertising" by means of the news 
 columns is a more recent development of 
 modern sensational journalism in this 
 country. By this term "advertising by 
 news," is meant the common practice of 
 so writing and selecting news that it will 
 be an advertisement to the paper. In this 
 way the paper will gain new subscribers 
 and its increased circulation will in turn 
 increase its number of advertisers. To 
 understand fully this latest characteristic, 
 one must study the process of the "com-
 
 Nature of the American Newspaper 91 
 
 mercializing" of news. Modern American 
 journalism is menaced by the absolute 
 dominance of the counting-house. Wall 
 Street dictates to Park Row. The Al- 
 mighty Dollar rules the day. The adver- 
 tising columns more largely determine the 
 policy of the newspaper than do its officers. 
 It is largely sensational in order to attract 
 the attention of people to the advertising 
 columns. The modern newspaper is 
 owned today not only for power but for 
 financial reasons. It is maintained only 
 so long as it returns a decent revenue and 
 is run at a profit. It is primarily a money- 
 making scheme and therefore like the up- 
 to-date business man, the newspaper owner 
 seeks first of all to satisfy the demand of his 
 subscribers. Therefore our editors and 
 reporters are ordered and forced to write 
 only that class of news that will gain new 
 subscribers and increase the number of 
 pages of advertisements. This character- 
 istic is becoming more and more a per- 
 manent one.
 
 92 The American Newspaper 
 
 Among the features of modem journal- 
 ism which repel men of education and indi- 
 viduality, one of the most prominent is 
 the tendency toward what the writer has 
 called for want of a better term "imper- 
 sonalism." Today the practice is to write 
 unsigned articles and under this privilege 
 many reporters indulge in a license that 
 they would not dare to assume if they signed 
 their names as did our forefathers. The 
 cause of this sense of irresponsibility can 
 be traced to the change of ownership from 
 the private editor to the group of individuals 
 of the corporation. It is this large and 
 corporate nature of the newspapers which 
 induces irresponsibility by removing per- 
 sonal responsibility. Reporters feel that 
 they are not compelled to give an account 
 of themselves; they are exempted from 
 blame. They are accountable to no one 
 but their employers and so are not imme- 
 diately subject to the law. With the 
 change of ownership from the individual, 
 who was generally the editor, to the stock
 
 Nature of the American Newspaper 93 
 
 companies now controlling our large morn- 
 ing dailies, the eflfacement of the individual 
 has been complete. The present organiza- 
 tion of the modern newspapers calls less for 
 individual leadership than it does for organ- 
 ization and system. Journalism under the 
 old system of individualism was a pro- 
 fession, but today it is nothing more than a 
 trade. The large newspaper is an insti- 
 tution that requires a large capital to insure 
 success. Such sums are usually beyond 
 the means of a single individual. As a 
 result, newspapers are owned by corpora- 
 tions, political parties, and capitaHsts. 
 What we really need therefore is a revival 
 of the old type of journalism which was the 
 clarion voice of vigorous personality and 
 responsibility. Men then were careful of 
 what they wrote and were fastidious in 
 their language. Impersonalism in modern 
 journalism means irresponsible journalism 
 such as we have today. Irresponsible 
 journalism means decadence of power and 
 the gradual decline of journalism as an
 
 94 The American Newspaper 
 
 educative force and as a moral factor in 
 the community. Hence, unless American 
 journalism is saved from mercenary im- 
 personalism, it must ultimately degenerate 
 into a mere bargain-counter sale of adver- 
 tising space and irresponsible narratives of 
 daily events. 
 The next characteristic of our news- 
 ^ papers needs but passing notice, for it is 
 quite familiar to most readers. It is 
 "partisanship." Almost all papers are 
 members of some one of the great political 
 parties. They owe allegiance to some polit- 
 ical organization and print news in the 
 interest of that organization and to the 
 detriment of their opponents. In order to 
 do this, they of course alter and twist facts 
 to suit their partisan views ; they only give 
 one side of the case. Generally the leaders 
 of the party own and control the papers. 
 In fact most editors "do" politics in their 
 own interests and "do" this politics with 
 their paper. The presidential campaign 
 for 1908 between Taft and Bryan was con-
 
 Nature of the American Newspaper 95 
 
 ducted chiefly by men who were in some 
 way connected with a newspaper. The 
 whole campaign was not, as of old, one of 
 the "stump" but rather one of the "press." 
 It was through the news columns that the 
 party leaders hoped to make votes. The 
 intelligent reader can tolerate any kind of 
 editorial vehemence or partisanship, but 
 he is impatient with any prejudice in the 
 news columns. So familiar is the fact that 
 papers are printed in the interest of some 
 particular group that intelligent people 
 make allowance for just such partisanship 
 and read between the lines. The average 
 reader, however, is easily deceived and be- 
 lieves what he reads. 
 
 I will now turn to the last and twelfth 
 characteristic of American journalism : the 
 habit of our papers to flout public law and 
 order. They belittle our public officials, 
 they throw mud at our leaders, they criti- 
 cize and assail our President and other 
 representatives of government. They sneer 
 incessantly at public institutions and talk 
 
 ^
 
 96 The American Newspaper 
 
 lightly of our laws. They deride the police. 
 In brief, they not only disregard the law 
 themselves but encourage a disrespect for 
 it among the people. The following clip- 
 ping from one of San Francisco's morning 
 dailies will serve as an illustration of our 
 point. To quote: 
 
 Though William E. Dargie, owner and editor 
 of the Oakland Tribune, ran away to avoid having 
 his deposition taken in the libel suit brought against 
 him by the National Band of this city and is still 
 a fugitive, the legal probing into Dargie's motives 
 
 for defending the grafters is going ahead 
 
 Yesterday the deposition in the case was taken. 
 It revealed as the author of the alleged libel a city 
 newspaper man, the political editor of the San 
 Francisco Chronicle. He told how Dargie had 
 hired him some weeks before at fifty dollars a 
 week. He admitted that he did not know person- 
 ally that any of the statements in the alleged libel 
 were true; that he made no effort to verify what 
 he wrote; that he could not remember who told 
 him any of these things, nor when, nor in whose 
 presence. 
 
 In a word, the newspapers seem to con- 
 sider themselves immune from the law and
 
 Nature oj the American Newspaper 97 
 
 as a consequence freedom of the press has 
 come to mean license and a pubh'c nuisance. 
 Such in detail is the nature of the Ameri- 
 can press — a press whose main ambitions 
 are on the whole to attract attention, to 
 play upon the people's whims and moods, 
 to seek madly after news, which is then 
 doctored, faked, and twisted to suit the 
 interests of the paper and the taste of the 
 frivolous and the curious ; a press which is 
 essentially commercial and irresponsible.
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF THE AMER- 
 ICAN NEWSPAPER
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF THE AMERICAN 
 NEWSPAPER 
 
 A cursory review of the general influence 
 of the American press points to the fact 
 that newspapers exercise an influence in 
 America more far-reaching than in any 
 other country. Archbishop Corrigan once 
 remarked : 
 
 Nowhere in the world has the press found a 
 larger and more receptive audience than on our 
 shores. Here everyone reads; everyone, even the 
 poorest, is rich enough to buy the daily papers; 
 here more than elsewhere, in our characteristic 
 hurry to save time and labor, we are willing to 
 allow others to do our thinking and to serve us not 
 only with the daily history of the world, but with 
 lines of thought and suggestions of conduct ready 
 for use. 
 
 Herein lies the great power of the press, 
 its power to suggest to a whole community 
 what it should think and do. Herein lies 
 the great opportunity of any newspaper to 
 
 lOI
 
 I02 The American Newspaper 
 
 become a powerful influence in the body 
 politic for good or for evil. There is 
 danger as well as hope in this opportunity, 
 and the public must suffer the consequences 
 of the choice of the editor whether he will 
 dedicate his paper to the interest of the com- 
 munity or not. 
 
 The average American is an inveterate 
 newspaper reader. There are many rea- 
 sons for this, but the most important one 
 is the high level of education and intelli- 
 gence among the common people of this 
 country. In Europe, as a rule, it is only 
 the upper and middle classes that read 
 newspapers. There the great masses of 
 the plain people are either too ignorant, 
 too busy, or too indifferent to read. Eng- 
 land is an exception to this rule, for there, 
 as in the United States, the average Eng- 
 lish mechanic and laborer subscribes to a 
 newspaper. It is reckoned that in the 
 United States more than 5,000,000,000 
 copies of newspapers of all kinds are pub- 
 lished annually. In 1896, there were 20,630
 
 Injliience oj the American Newspaper 103 
 
 newspapers published in this country and 
 it is safe to say that today there are over 
 25,000. This is more than double the 
 number published in any other country. 
 A glance at these figures readily convinces 
 one of the immense power the press may 
 wield to the advantage or the detriment of 
 the nation. This power is enormously 
 increased by the fact that it is the plain 
 people that make up the great mass of 
 the reading public and that it is to this 
 group that the newspapers cater and ap- 
 peal. For the most part, the average man 
 seeks his theology, his politics, his creed 
 in the newspapers. The newspaper is the 
 source of his knowledge, and what it pub- 
 lishes he believes as "gospel truth." The 
 modern American newspaper is to the 
 average American reader what the Gre- 
 cian oracle at Delphi was to the ancient 
 Greek. 
 
 When one stops to reflect upon these 
 significant facts, one is appalled at the 
 influence of the press and startled by its
 
 I04 The American Newspaper 
 
 opportunities to do harm. Great power 
 always brings with it many temptations; 
 the great man is always confronted by the 
 hardest temptations, and so any organ that 
 can control the thought and conduct of a 
 people is face to face with temptation and 
 the interest of the community is at stake. 
 In view of all this one may well ask, What 
 is the influence of the schools and other 
 educational agencies as compared with the 
 daily paper which records every important 
 act and utterance of humanity? The 
 newspaper overshadows every other edu- 
 cational agency. The lecture-room, the 
 pulpit, the public meeting, the pamphlet, 
 the book are relatively unimportant, for 
 whereas these reach but a small minority 
 of the people during irregular intervals, the 
 daily paper comes constantly in touch with 
 the great masses who read it and depend 
 upon it for their information and recreation. 
 Ready-made opinions appeal to people 
 who have little time and less zeal for dis- 
 cussion. Nowadays most of what we
 
 Influence oj the American Newspaper 105 
 
 wear, eat, and think is "ready made." 
 We realize better the significance of this 
 statement when we remember that toda>y 
 one gets for a penny a mass of reading- 
 matter equal to the contents of a thick book 
 and often produced at an expense a hun- 
 dredfold greater than that of a book. One 
 is told what is going on over the wide 
 world, what men are thinking elsewhere, 
 and what is being done in every department 
 of literature and art. So crowded is the 
 reader with a mass of news and so pressed 
 is he for time that he is often at a loss to 
 give a connected account of the really im- 
 portant daily events, even after he has 
 read a newspaper for an hour. His rapid 
 review of the headlines and paragraphs 
 muddles his brain and his extensive reading 
 of the columns confuses him. As a result, 
 he is unable to digest what he has read. 
 
 So keen is the competition between news- 
 papers to give variety and plenty of news, 
 that they go to much expense and trouble 
 to outdo each other in giving the most news
 
 io6 The American Newspaper 
 
 for the least money. In order to do this, 
 they are forced to "pad" and to put into 
 print much that is extraneous and much 
 that could be omitted. They are con 
 fronted with the demand and they care not 
 what it is, so long as they supply it and sell 
 their papers. All this of course poisons 
 the mind and loads it with exaggerated 
 ideas and half truths. As the wise man said, 
 "He who is half -educated is a dangerous 
 man." To develop this thought a little 
 farther without anticipating what is to 
 follow, it seems appropriate to remark here 
 that all information that is useless is worse 
 than useless because it distracts attention, 
 wastes time, and dissipates energy. This 
 is at the expense of the country, for it 
 suffers when the attention, time, and energy 
 of the people are spent on nonessentials. 
 How much better would it be if this same 
 amount of time, attention, and energy were 
 devoted to the interest of the. state ! The 
 newspaper has developed a class of "news- 
 paper readers" who devour every word,
 
 Influence oj the American Newspaper 107 
 
 every column, and every page, and who 
 quote it, believe in it, and live by it. Most 
 people's reading stops at the newspaper, 
 and even those who do not take their opin- 
 ions direct from leading articles have their 
 intellectual standards and their method 
 of reasoning impaired by reading the main 
 body of the newspaper. In view of this, 
 one feels strongly that if our newspapers 
 only knew what was demanded by the best 
 standards and were ready to act on this 
 knowledge, our rate of national and indi- 
 vidual progress toward a reign of equity and 
 reason would be amazing. 
 
 I am not losing sight of the fact that there 
 are plenty of cases in which the power of 
 the press has been exerted for good. I have 
 already referred to the many exaggerated 
 stories printed in connection with the Drey- 
 fus trial, but at the same time it should be 
 borne in mind that certain aspects of that 
 trial afford an excellent example of the 
 value of the press. The French courts 
 tried to disregard the truth and to do this
 
 io8 The American Newspaper 
 
 they attempted to exclude the reporters. 
 The foreign newspapers, however, made 
 so determined a stand that the French 
 government finally surrendered. One 
 might well say that it was public opinion 
 formed by the foreign press which com- 
 pelled the French to give Dreyfus another 
 trial and to set him free. Another instance 
 of the good done by newspapers is told in a 
 story that a reporter relates of his first 
 assignment : 
 
 Half a dozen New York correspondents went to 
 the jail in Newcastle on the day set for a whipping. 
 When we asked the sherifif to allow us to go in the 
 jail-yard we told him plainly that if the woman 
 was whipped we should be the means of arousing 
 such indignation throughout the land that he would 
 find no hole or corner in which to hide from the 
 outburst of scorn and wrath that would pour down 
 upon him. 
 
 That whipping did not take place ; more- 
 over, whipping criminals was abandoned 
 for the future. Another instance of the 
 power of the press in a good cause can be
 
 Influence oj the American Newspaper 109 
 
 seen in its fight for the abolition of the con- 
 vict slave trade in the southern states, 
 especially Georgia. Further, besides form- 
 ing public opinion on important political 
 and social problems, newspapers are in- 
 fluential in small things. To relate another 
 experience of a reporter : 
 
 To descend to a little thing, as it will seem to 
 my well-to-do readers, I once put an end to an 
 unjust law preventing the playing of barrel-organs 
 in the streets of New York. I say I did it; in 
 truth, I aroused the forces that did do it. I had 
 many thousand times seen what the playing of a 
 street-organ meant to the poor in the crowded 
 tenement districts. I had seen how the children 
 danced to its music, how their mothers came to 
 the windows to lean out and listen, how the lads 
 and the men drew near and whistled or sang the 
 
 tunes When the aldermen declared that 
 
 the street music must be stopped I thought only of 
 the million who loved it and who got far too little 
 pleasure. I wrote to all the newspapers, I inter- 
 viewed the editors, I published letters, editorials, 
 and descriptive accounts of what I had seen in the 
 world out-of-doors. The law was never put into 
 effect and soon afterward it was annulled.
 
 no The American Newspaper 
 
 This shows what a single reporter who 
 set in motion the forces which mold and 
 change public opinion accomplished. A 
 single individual, allied with the press, was 
 strong enough to defy the city fathers who 
 had decided that this kind of music was 
 a public nuisance. 
 
 But it is not in good causes, little or big, 
 that the power of the American press is for 
 the most part exerted. On the contrary, 
 our newspapers tend directly to affect the 
 morale of the community along the lines 
 of its vices rather than of its virtues. By 
 vices are meant tendencies essentially 
 savage and non-social, and these the mass 
 of newspaper material stimulates and per- 
 petuates. The newspaper has become in 
 fact a medium for a persistent pandering to 
 the primitive love of sensation and to pre- 
 judiced judgments of persons and nations 
 and of the ultimate facts of life. In short, 
 it appeals to the worst instincts in man : to 
 his brutal passions and morbid imagina- 
 tion. Its tone for the most part tends to
 
 Influence oj the American Newspaper 1 1 1 
 
 create a satirical and skeptical point of 
 view concerning government, a contempt 
 for laws, and a distrust of those who are 
 empowered to make and carry them out. 
 The love of disaster to others is contnually 
 kept up, the appeal here being to a common 
 weakness — to jealous human nature. In 
 the field of industry current prejudices are 
 strengthened, just as in literature stand- 
 ards of mediocrity are set. In all fields of 
 thought and action, the love of the common- 
 place is catered to and developed. 
 
 It is perhaps somewhat of a truism that 
 reading affects habits of thought and that 
 habits of thought give rise to habits of 
 action, but any truism which continues to 
 interpret acts, bears repetition. Man is 
 largely a bundle of instincts ; habits play a 
 big role in his daily life and his morality is 
 largely made of these two elements — 
 habits of thought and habits of action. 
 Any influence then which bears upon these 
 two elements affects his character. It 
 has been wisely said, "Tell me what you
 
 112 The American Newspaper 
 
 read and I will tell you what you are," and 
 this saying is most emphatically true, 
 especially of the non-intelligent and non- 
 cultured reader. 
 
 Let it be conceded then that what the 
 individual reads reacts upon his character. 
 If he is in the habit of reading that which 
 is ugly, vulgar, and low, he himself will 
 form habits that are ugly, vulgar, and low. 
 If a man's reading is confined to the non- 
 sensical and the brutal, he ceases to be 
 able to detect brutality and nonsense. If 
 he reads nothing but what is ugly and taste- 
 less he loses his sense of beauty and his 
 taste. A bad newspaper is as insidious as 
 the music hall or the musical farce. It 
 wields a great power through suggestion : it 
 hints and gives ideas, it suggests lines of 
 thought and conduct, and through the 
 medium of suggestion it affects the morale 
 of the community. 
 
 Morality is the product of civilization; 
 it is the result of human reasoning and of 
 acquired instincts which shape the environ-
 
 Influence of the American Newspaper 113 
 
 ment about man just as that environment 
 reacts to reshape those instincts. It follows 
 that it is by a study of the social forces 
 which tend to shape already established 
 instincts that one can get the direction of 
 social development, and chief among the 
 social forces playing upon men in society 
 today is the modern newspaper. 
 
 When we stop to consider the above 
 truths and relate them to the fact already 
 mentioned, that in this country the daily 
 paper is regularly read by millions of 
 readers of average intelligence, the tre- 
 mendous power of the press is obvious. 
 We must remember also that it is only 
 within a comparatively short period that 
 many people have read newspapers. A 
 few decades ago it was considered a luxury 
 to subscribe to a newspaper. The reading 
 of a newspaper was a privilege given to only 
 a few. Newspapers then represented 
 certain classes, and the classes that habitu- 
 ally read daily papers were business and 
 professional men interested in the larger
 
 114 The American Newspaper 
 
 affairs of life. As a result of this, the 
 newspaper was dignified and excluded all 
 traces of sensationalism. It is very different 
 today. Newspapers are read by everybody 
 everywhere. No one is too poor to buy a 
 paper ; no one is too ignorant to read. News- 
 papers are now for the masses and not for 
 the classes, and this fact largely determines 
 the character and policy of the paper. It 
 prints that class of news which caters to 
 the masses, namely, that which is sensa- 
 tional and commonplace. 
 
 When the present-day newspaper growth 
 began, there were 20,000 to 30,000 persons 
 who had their newspapers but there were 
 100,000 of the middle class and 1,000,000 
 of the poorer class who had no newspaper. 
 The elder Mr. Bennett went after that 
 million and hundred thousand, and all that 
 newspaper men have since done has been 
 to appreciate and elaborate his conception 
 of the field and scope of the newspaper. 
 
 In our review of the influence of the 
 American newspaper we shall consider it
 
 Influence oj the American Newspaper 115 
 
 under the following heads: (i) Its influ- 
 ence on the reader of average intelligence 
 and education, with reference to his habits 
 of thought and the development of his 
 ideas along political, economic, and cul- 
 tural lines ; (2) its influence on the ignorant 
 masses, i.e., the class which in Europe does 
 not read at all but which in America has 
 risen above the level of the illiterate; (3) 
 its influence on the young; (4) its influence 
 on the national life. In considering these 
 topics, the twofold influence of the news- 
 paper is to be borne in memory. First, 
 those who read are directly affected not 
 only by what is printed as in the case of 
 other printed matter, but also by the feeling 
 that the paper, which goes regularly to a 
 large list of subscribers, is in a sense the 
 voice of these subscribers. That is to say, 
 the influence of newspapers depends in 
 part upon the opinion of their readers. 
 This statement appears to be paradoxical, 
 but as will be seen later there is much truth 
 in it. Secondly, the skilful editor succeeds
 
 ii6 The American Newspaper 
 
 admirably in so selecting and altering news 
 that he disguises leadership under the sem- 
 blance of public opinion. It is this latter 
 phase of newspaper influence which par- 
 ticularly interests us. It is the way a 
 newspaper prints its news and the purpose 
 it has in view which concern us more than . 
 what it prints. In other words, we are 
 concerned with the policy, motive, and 
 method of modern newspapers. 
 
 The keenest interest of the average 
 American is centered in government and 
 politics. Let us see what message the 
 press carries to its readers on this subject. 
 
 The influence which newspapers exer- 
 cise upon political opinion in this country 
 can hardly be exaggerated. It may be 
 said that state and even national elections 
 are frequently determined by the attitude 
 of the press toward office holders and the 
 laws on the statute books. Here is a 
 gigantic force in the community capable of 
 molding public opinion and actually 
 doing it by methods outlined in chapter one.
 
 Influence oj the American Newspaper 117 
 
 Instead of an ideal non-partisan press 
 offering to inquiring minds a correct state- 
 ment of the facts concerning the character 
 of the candidates, the nature of the cam- 
 paign issues, and the hke, we find a press 
 frequently and deliberately misleading the 
 people by partial or self-interested state- 
 ments. Let us see how this affects our 
 city and state governments. 
 
 In the first place, it keeps the best men 
 out of public office. Every class, whether 
 it be the "vested interests" or the ward 
 politician, fears the enmity of the news- 
 papers. The candidate who has the papers 
 of his town against him has small chance 
 of election. When a journal is anxious 
 to have an official do a thing, it at once 
 proceeds to show him that he must sub- 
 mit to its will. The average official sub- 
 mits without a protest. He knows how 
 to be good when it is to his interest. Let 
 an official go counter to a newspaper's 
 policy and at once it sets the public on his 
 trail; it uncovers or manufactures un-
 
 ii8 The American Newspaper 
 
 savory details of his private life, and like a 
 bloodhound seeks every clue that will 
 result in his downfall. Often, as a result, 
 public officers are reduced to mere dele- 
 gates and dare not exercise any independ- 
 ence of thought, as, for example, in the 
 famous Pennsylvania case that gave rise 
 to the Grady-Salers libel law of that state. 
 In thus intimidating public officials, news- 
 papers meddle with the law; they pervert 
 the law. During election campaigns, the 
 newspapers collect scandalous or highly 
 laudatory data about candidates and in 
 every way color their issues in favor of the 
 side which they are supporting. Only too 
 often it is newspaper influence that has 
 persuaded a city to elect unrighteous or 
 incapable officials. Men seeing how pub- 
 lic servants are badly handled by a partisan 
 and adverse press turn away in disgust and 
 refuse to take any interest in public affairs. 
 Men of refinement naturally shrink from 
 having the glare of publicity thrown on 
 their private business and family life. It
 
 Influence oj the American Newspaper 119 
 
 seems fair to believe that this is one of the 
 chief reasons why the nation lacks intelli- 
 gent and patriotic public ofi&cials and so 
 becomes the prey for class, as well as party, 
 politics. There are some newspapers in 
 this country that divide the voters on class 
 instead of on political questions. This 
 class disti action is made on the basis of 
 wealth. An eminent divine, once a public 
 servant, truly wrote: 
 
 The indiscriminate criticism and abuse of pub- 
 lic men cannot be too severely reprehended. It 
 lowers the tone of the press and is destructive of 
 public morals. INIany good men are deterred from 
 entering political life out of personal, family, social, 
 or business considerations which have arisen from 
 a justifiable fear of the reckless attacks that may 
 be made upon them. Sensitive natures although 
 conscious of high moral rectitude will thus shrink 
 from serving the people. 
 
 This rutliless and indiscriminate abuse 
 of public men by our newspapers is one of 
 the unfortunate conditions that attach to 
 the freedom of our institutions. As has 
 already been said, it tends to prevent a
 
 I20 The American Newspaper 
 
 really meritorious class of citizens, a class 
 greatly needed and wanted, from entering 
 political life. It keeps away successful 
 business men, who would make splendid 
 administrative officers for our cities. A 
 glance over the majority of American news- 
 papers will readily convince one that our 
 press resorts more to vilification and calum- 
 ny than to argument and reason. News- 
 papers in their praise and blame run in 
 ruts, so that no matter what a man does, 
 it is easy to predict what the paper will 
 print. If it is a man they are in the habit 
 of vilifying, they will say harsh things 
 about him, no matter what he may have 
 done. If it happens to be a man whom 
 they have in the past been in the habit of 
 praising they will praise him again even 
 though he may have committed a crime. 
 On the other hand, when they first form 
 their opinions of men, as of institutions 
 and things, newspapers are hasty and im- 
 petuous. They are, moreover, aggressive 
 in forcing their views upon their readers.
 
 Influence of the American Newspaper 121 
 
 It is not forgotten that Nast's cartoons of 
 Tweed and his ring were entirely justi- 
 fied and brought iniquitous Tammany Hall 
 to justice. Yet the cartoons of Davenport 
 have been used to vilify the character of 
 honest and illustrious statesmen. His 
 hideous characterization of McKinley and 
 Mark Hanna were entirely unwarranted. 
 They were downright brutal. Many assert 
 that these cartoons were responsible for the 
 shooting cf McKinley. From such news- 
 paper standards as these it is a relief to 
 turn to a paper like the Evening Post, a 
 splendid example of the higher type of 
 paper. There are many such papers in 
 this country, but unfortunately they are 
 in a small minority in the city. The 
 average city newspaper fails to realize that 
 freedom of speech should not mean law- 
 lessness of the press. In adopting a 
 policy of partisan calumny or praise, the 
 newspaper helps to bring about the de- 
 plorable situation in which the govern- 
 ment of cities, states, and xiation is rele-
 
 122 The American Newspaper 
 
 gated to men who are in many cases vicious 
 or unduly self-seeking. 
 
 Besides electing their own officials to 
 governmental positions, newspapers often 
 have constructive policies in regard to legis- 
 lation. They have bills which they formu- 
 late and push through with the aid of their 
 representatives in the legislature. Many 
 editors hold political office. A careful 
 survey of the roll of municipal, state, and 
 federal officers shows the names of a large 
 number of newspaper men, and the papers 
 these men edit too often take an unwar- 
 ranted share in controlling legislation. 
 They not only present or cause to be pre- 
 sented measures which are nothing more 
 than their own pet schemes, but they make 
 readers believe these are indorsed by huge 
 monster meetings that never were held. Pe- 
 titions will be acclaimed, petitions which 
 they themselves have gotten up and in favor 
 of which they manufacture fake organiza- 
 tions and individuals. On the whole, it may 
 be said that the influence of the press in the
 
 Influence oj the American Newspaper 123 
 
 field of politics tends to accentuate partisan 
 strife, to swing elections in favor of given 
 groups, to push legislation which at best 
 has local rather than general welfare in 
 view, and to bring the public mind to an 
 attitude of sneering distrust of all those 
 who are engaged in carrying on the work 
 of government. 
 
 Newspaper policy is not limited in 
 political matters to mere interference with 
 the election of public officers or the passing 
 of laws ; it sometimes promotes movements 
 against the very laws themselves. It has 
 often been noticed that a prominent char- 
 acteristic of the American is, to use Kip- 
 ling's words, "the mocking devil in his 
 blood .... that bids him flout the law 
 he makes y If this tendency to lawless- 
 ness is due to other causes, if it cannot be 
 said that the American press creates this 
 spirit, it certainly cannot be disputed that 
 it tends to perpetuate it. Its attitude is 
 too often revolutionary and irresponsible; 
 it preaches violence and advocates mob
 
 124 The American Newspaper 
 
 rule. It follows naturally that here is an 
 influence tending to lower public taste, to 
 excite a morbid imagination, to incite to 
 rebellion, and to arouse the brutal impulses. 
 In the recent ''graft" cases in San Fran- 
 cisco, where a lot of boodlers and those who 
 bribed them were arraigned for public in- 
 vestigation, it was almost impossible to find 
 jurors who had not been prejudiced by 
 reading the papers. So far-reaching had 
 been the prejudiced message that the news- 
 papers had borne to the citizens of San 
 Francisco, that it was difficult to find twelve 
 men who were able to believe they could 
 render an impartial verdict. Many papers 
 preach a disregard for the laws of the 
 country and the institutions of society. 
 They sneer and laugh at them; they dis- 
 obey and question them. The habit of 
 "muck-raking" seems instinctive. One 
 cannot lay too much stress upon the sig- 
 nificance of this common characteristic of 
 the newspapers. 
 
 In Europe the state and society are pro-
 
 Influence oj the American Newspaper 125 
 
 tected from abuse and slander by the office 
 of the censor. In this country where there 
 is freedom of the press, where newspapers 
 seem to say and do as they please, paying no 
 heed to the law or any moral restraint, 
 there has grown up a loose conception of 
 the responsibility of the press. News- 
 paper men seem to consider themselves not 
 bound by the same laws as other indi- 
 viduals. The journalist hides behind the 
 newspapers and thinks that he is protected 
 from blame. He therefore defies and 
 abuses the public law. Too often do our 
 newspapers intimidate jurors and judges. 
 They question the decision of the courts, 
 they threaten lawyers if they dare push a 
 case, they make and unmake justices, and 
 all this goes to create in the people a disre- 
 spect and lack of confidence in its depart- 
 ment of justice. As soon as you impeach 
 this arm of government, which more than 
 any other should be kept free from politics 
 and individual self-interest, you attack the 
 bed-rock of organized society. Without
 
 126 The American Newspaper 
 
 it you have anarchy. It is quite a frequent 
 occurrence in these days for anyone to 
 pick up a newspaper and read columns of 
 abuse of our courts and judges. Often 
 on account of this justice miscarries. 
 Newspapers, and here I refer to the per- 
 sonnel as well as to the organization of any 
 one of our modern papers, feel that they 
 can elect or reject a judge. They can; 
 and therein lies the danger as well as the 
 evil. In most of our cities where there is a 
 movement to wipe out graft and to bring 
 ''grafters" to justice, we find newspapers, 
 to whose interest it would be to set free the 
 criminals, hurling abuse at the courts that 
 are trying to do their duty and uphold the 
 law. Through the insidious means at 
 their command the papers destroy the good 
 will and confidence of the people. Judges 
 are afraid to mete out justice under the 
 circumstances; they are threatened with 
 defeat at the next election — and if they 
 disobey they are generally defeated. A 
 good example of this is going on in San
 
 Influence of the American Newspaper 127 
 
 Francisco at the present time before the 
 very eyes of the public who are being hood- 
 winked and used by the newspapers of 
 that city. An attempt is being made to 
 bring to justice men who have wilfully 
 bribed and others who have been bribed; 
 men who have misused public office and 
 sold privileges to corrupt corporations. At 
 first all the papers in the community were 
 naturally on the side of good government 
 and favored the prosecution of the criminals 
 who were a disgrace to society and an insult 
 to San Francisco. But when the forces of 
 the "higher-ups" and the powers-that-be 
 were set in motion, a change of front was 
 noticed among a few of the papers of the 
 city. Through jealousy, pressure from 
 corporations, and through self-interest, 
 they joined forces with the "grafters" and 
 commenced to abuse the prosecution which 
 a few months before they had lauded. The 
 following letter is suggestive of the char- 
 acter of the influences and forces which are 
 called into play:
 
 128 The American Newspaper 
 
 March 13, 1908 
 
 Mr. E. S. Simpson, Managing Editor ^^Call" 
 San Francisco, Cal. 
 
 Dear Sir: Contrary to the avowed assurances 
 of Willard P. Calkins, the president of the Calkins 
 Newspaper Syndicate, as repeatedly expressed to 
 me by Mr. Calkins himself, I found that I was 
 expected to antagonize President Roosevelt and to 
 suppress public news favorable to him. 
 
 When, in response to a request from Mr. Cal- 
 kins, I expressed my sincere admiration for Presi- 
 dent Roosevelt, my article was suppressed. I also 
 found that I was expected to write covert arguments 
 in favor of Schmitz, Ruef, Glass, Harriman, and 
 the San Francisco boodlers. 
 
 Because I refused to do so and because I wrote 
 and published an editorial article deprecating the 
 release of Schmitz and Ruef, I have found it 
 advisable to throw up my editorship of the Calkins 
 Newspaper Syndicate's organ in Fresno. 
 
 At the same time with my resignation the Cal- 
 kins Syndicate has been favored with the resigna- 
 tions of Mr. Clifford J. Owen — and of half of the 
 
 editorial staff Arthur Street, the editor of 
 
 the Pandex of the Press, writes me from Chicago 
 that he, too, has thrown up his editorship and 
 part ownership of that magazine, now under the
 
 Influence of the American Newspaper 129 
 
 Calkins control, for reasons almost identical with 
 mine. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 (Signed) Edwin Emerson 
 
 P. S. — Enclosed find my last editorial article on 
 the Schmitz decision. The views expressed in this 
 editorial were denounced as "the limit" by the 
 Calkins Syndicate's editorial manager and led 
 directly to my resignation. 
 
 Here we have inside information; here 
 we have the subsidizing of the press, here 
 we have the control of the counting-house 
 over the editorial staff; here we have the 
 suppression and alteration of news to suit 
 the whims of one man, in brief, we have 
 here a t3^ical example, nothing more or 
 less, of the average sensational newspaper 
 throughout the country. 
 
 In San Francisco they are trying to de- 
 feat justice. They are using the same old 
 tactics; they attack the personal records 
 of the prosecutors themselves, they unearth 
 past history, and make the most of the
 
 130 The American Newspaper 
 
 little they can find. They buy jurors, 
 they kidnap witnesses, they intimidate 
 judges. They have also questioned the 
 good faith of the prosecution and at- 
 tacked the means utilized by the prosecu- 
 tors. As a result of all this abuse the 
 people have begun to lose faith in the prose- 
 cution and public interest lags. This is 
 the very thing that the newspapers aim at. 
 As a consequence, these corruptionists 
 remain free after months of trials which 
 have cost many thousands of dollars. 
 There is small doubt in the minds of the 
 people that those on trial are guilty, but 
 through the clever manipulation of the 
 newspapers, public opinion has swung 
 from the fighting mood to one of indiffer- 
 ence. The newspapers did not maintain 
 that the men standing at the bar of justice 
 were not guilty; all they did was to ques- 
 tion the records of the prosecutors and to 
 impeach the decisions of the courts. In 
 the present election these newspapers are 
 making strenuous efforts to defeat those
 
 Influence oj the American Newspaper 131 
 
 judges who in their eyes have favored the 
 prosecution. It is a deep-laid scheme to 
 defeat the movement for good government. 
 It should be said also that the papers on 
 the other side, those that favor the prose- 
 cution, have used the same methods as 
 those lined up with the ' ' grafters. ' ' Today 
 their columns are full of abuse of those 
 courts and judges that have not favored 
 their side of the case. How, under such a 
 perverted notion of the way to attain 
 justice, can we in this country expect to get 
 just verdicts ? How can we expect justice 
 at all, when the press which controls public 
 opinion changes at will, when it defies 
 censorship, and when it asks for complete 
 freedom from the law? It has no more 
 right to ask this than any other corporation. 
 All others are held responsible for their 
 acts. This statement may seem to the 
 reader to exclude too completely any con- 
 sideration of the libel laws. As a matter 
 of fact, as we know, libel laws are on the 
 whole inoperative. They are seldom put
 
 132 The American Newspaper 
 
 into operation. An individual fears the 
 abuse of the newspaper. There are very 
 few men in this country who would dare 
 sue a newspaper for libel. Each one 
 knows well that the newspaper would pour 
 forth more abuse and would seek to 
 pervert every detail of his life, public and 
 private. The public fails to realize that a 
 paper that steals a man's good name de- 
 serves a heavier punishment than the man 
 who steals his property. Few of us ever 
 reflect upon these simple things. 
 
 One of the most culpable features of 
 American journalism lies in its appeal to 
 the unreasoning and primitive emotions in 
 man. There is need of some check to 
 protect society either through censorship 
 or some other system by which newspapers 
 should be held responsible to the law for 
 what they do and say. In the year 1856, 
 Andrews in his History of British Journal- 
 ism wrote in this prophetic vein : 
 
 This is the only danger that we can foresee in 
 the cheapening of the press— that, appealing to a
 
 Influence oj the American Newspaper 133 
 
 class whose passions are less tutored and re- 
 strained, it can gather a mob, and raise a cry of 
 "Rescue," if the law lays its hand upon some 
 assassin whom it should scorn to shelter with its 
 privileges. 
 
 Like many prophetic remarks of its kind, 
 this is only half true. And yet when one 
 stops to reflect that our morning papers are 
 devoting five-eighths of their first pages to 
 hideous accounts of crime and other social 
 atrocities and that the evening papers warm 
 over these same revolting dishes, then one 
 is forced to realize the danger of the situa- 
 tion. To illustrate this let us take a note- 
 worthy example. 
 
 A murder was committed by a jealous 
 husband, one Ismond, a barber, who 
 claimed that on going home in the evening 
 he found his wife and his victim, whose 
 name was McLeod, sitting on the same sofa 
 in a compromising position. The follow- 
 ing extracts from the account given by the 
 papers are fairly typical of the point of view 
 from which the public is led to regard such
 
 134 The American Newspaper 
 
 tragedies: "Ismond is given a good char- 
 acter by the neighbors and by his fellow- 
 workers. The neighbors seem to justify 
 
 him 'The only mistake that he made 
 
 was in not killing both of them,' said a gray- 
 haired woman across the road, 'if what he 
 suspected was true.' " The public author- 
 ities expressed similar views. The influ- 
 ence of such an article is surely harmful, 
 since it tells the public, old and young, that 
 a husband is justified in taking the law in 
 his hands and killing when for any reason 
 he feels that he has been wronged. It 
 further tells them that the proper thing to 
 do is to murder first and then find out if his 
 suspicions are correct. Another typical 
 example of the way newspapers incite to 
 unjustifiable murder is their tolerant and 
 even laudatory attitude toward lynching. 
 Southern journals in particular uphold 
 violence and incendiarism and have prob- 
 ably been the mainstay of much of the 
 recent rioting in the South. When it has 
 printed opinion to back it, a crowd is
 
 Influence oj the American Newspaper 135 
 
 quickly and easily persuaded to take the 
 law in its hands and to administer punish- 
 ment in a spirit which says, "The law of 
 the country is either not sound or the ad- 
 ministration of justice is not what it ought 
 to be. We, the people, may make or 
 break the law at will. We are the law." 
 Another function of the sensational 
 paper which brings it close to the courts is 
 its self-imposed responsibility as detective. 
 It poses as protector of society; it assumes 
 the task of ferreting out evil and exposing 
 it to the public. Besides this function, it 
 undertakes to obtain injunctions, to issue 
 complaints, to file suits, and under "dum- 
 my" plaintiffs to make charges. If the 
 decision is rendered in its favor, it conveys 
 the idea to the public that justice has been 
 done and the law upheld, but if the verdict 
 is against it, then it threatens the court and 
 tells the people that justice has been per- 
 verted and that the judge is unfit to sit on 
 the bench. A business man once, in dis- 
 cussing an injunction granted in one of
 
 136 The American Neivspaper 
 
 these newspaper suits arising out of a water 
 scandal, remarked, "Why, of course the 
 judge granted the injunction. Everybody 
 knew he would. There is not a judge on 
 the bench who would have the nerve to 
 decide the other way with all the row the 
 new^spapers have made about it. He 
 simply knows on which side his bread is 
 buttered." This aptly expresses the situa- 
 tion. It is certainly true that out of spite 
 newspapers have sent many an innocent 
 man to jail. If they take a dislike to one 
 who is charged with a crime they will print 
 all sorts of revolting pictures of the criminal 
 that do not bear the slightest resemblance 
 to the original. They will alter the news 
 and give the public an utterly wrong im- 
 pression of the man and his case. Sensa- 
 tional headlines are used to convince the 
 public and the jury. A man is ofttimes a 
 grafter before he has been convicted ; they 
 take it for granted. A man is shown to be 
 guilty before he is proven to be such, and in 
 this regard our newspapers seem to believe
 
 Influence of the American N^ews paper 137 
 
 in the French system, which says a man is 
 guihy until proven innocent. Cases are 
 numerous where newspaper articles have 
 influenced a jury. The courts of Massa- 
 chusetts have awakened to this fact and 
 have imposed heavy penalties upon any 
 newspaper which attempts intentionally to 
 prejudice a jury while a case is being tried. 
 The English courts are more vigorous and 
 severe. They lay down the rule that a 
 person accused of a crime can only properly 
 be convicted on the evidence which is 
 legally admitted and not upon the hearsay 
 and gossip of the newspaper and the public. 
 But all improper influences upon legis- 
 lators or judges exercised by newspapers 
 are as naught in comparison with their sys- 
 tematic and constant effort to instil into the 
 minds of the ignorant and the poor, who 
 constitute the mass of readers, that justice 
 is not blind but bought ; that the great cor- 
 porations own the judges, particularly the 
 federal judges. Abuse of individuals is 
 nothing as compared to this constant at-
 
 138 The American Newspaper 
 
 tempt by papers to convince the people 
 that our institutions are rotten to the core 
 and that the wealthy are the privileged 
 class. Much harm is done to the bulk of 
 the American people in thus creating false 
 and vicious impressions. They come to 
 think that the newspapers are giving a 
 true picture of the state of affairs and that 
 every man has his price. They conclude 
 that the poor man has little chance for 
 justice; and so class feeling is aroused and 
 the masses look with hatred upon those 
 who are rich. 
 
 Cartoons are used effectively to fix these 
 prejudices. They exert a subtler and 
 stronger influence than mere comment. 
 They are more effective than an editorial 
 or campaign speech. Behind the humor 
 of the picture there is a deeper meaning, 
 and so in the laugh that follows there is left 
 a bitter impression upon the mind of the 
 reader. The cartoon has caught his eye 
 and engrossed his attention. It has made 
 him think. Take, for example, the car-
 
 Influence of the Americaiz Newspaper 139 
 
 toons of the big Carthaginian labeled, 
 "The Trusts," holding a squirming federal 
 judge in his huge fist, which are likely to 
 appear whenever an injunction is granted. 
 It cannot be estimated how much influence 
 these have had upon the working classes, 
 but this much is known, that they have 
 engendered bitter antagonism between 
 labor and capital. These cartoons have 
 helped to make that great problem of 
 "labor and capital" which now distracts 
 the nation. Another cartoon, that of 
 Justice holding her scales with a working- 
 man unevenly balanced by an immense bag 
 of gold, has done much harm with every 
 laugh it caused. That picture of a hideous 
 monster of a man dressed in clothes with 
 dollar marks, with a judge protruding from 
 his pocket and a workingman under his 
 foot, is but another example of cartoons 
 that encourage a disregard for the law and 
 stimulate bitter class antagonism. If the 
 readers believe such cartoons, and many 
 do, nothing but pessimism and strife can be
 
 I40 The American Newspaper 
 
 expected in the future. The stability and 
 integrity of the nation rest upon the courage 
 and hopefulness of its citizens, and any- 
 thing which undermines these traits is an 
 attack upon its security and honor. 
 
 Before leaving this aspect of the influence 
 of the American press upon the political 
 opinions of the general reader, it is but fair 
 to note that there is much that the news- 
 paper has done which is constructive rather 
 than destructive. The press has undoubt- 
 edly done good work in spreading the 
 theories and practices of municipal reform, 
 in promoting the fight for municipal owner- 
 ship, for pure food, for clean streets, 
 and all other forms of good municipal 
 hous:keeping; it has sometimes led cam- 
 paigns for the purity of the ballot against 
 the united forces of the "machine ;" it has 
 itself many times initiated the prosecution 
 of bribery, of land steals, insurance frauds, 
 and the like. It is the press which has 
 exerted itself in behalf of better poor laws, 
 ad located good tenement laws, child-
 
 Influence of the American Newspaper 141 
 
 labor laws, and general protection of 
 labor's interests. Both by the wide reach 
 of their appeal and their own generous 
 gifts newspapers have raised money for 
 those whom earthquake, flood, or fire have 
 made desolate. When Chicago, Baltimore, 
 Galveston, San Francisco, and many other 
 smaller cities suffered disaster from quake, 
 flood, or fire, it was the newspapers that 
 issued the first calls for aid and they them- 
 selves added to the large sums sent from 
 all over the world to the needy. They 
 have also started benefits for widows and 
 orphans, sent children of the slums to the 
 country, and given deserving students and 
 teachers coveted trips to Europe. Whether 
 because it adds to their reputation or be- 
 cause they are actuated by less selfish 
 motives, newspapers are often found favor- 
 ing good legislation and supporting com- 
 petent men. Despite the frequent changes 
 of front of the yellow journal, despite the 
 fact that whenever its policy is attacked, 
 whenever the interests of the owners of the
 
 142 The American Newspaper 
 
 paper are in question, the average news- 
 paper will forsake the public weal for its 
 own selfish benefit and power, the news- 
 papers do frequently voice sound opinions 
 regarding public law and order and the 
 administration of justice. 
 
 Take again the press's attitude toward 
 economic questions. Within the last de- 
 cade these questions have come to receive 
 as much attention from the newspapers as 
 politics. 
 
 Most newspapers publish daily accounts 
 of the money and labor markets. Their 
 influence in this regard must not be too 
 lighdy judged. Too much stress cannot 
 be laid upon the influence of the papers on 
 industrial problems, for the citizen's opin- 
 ion as to whether a strike or boycott is 
 justifiable or not depends largely upon 
 what he reads in the newspapers about 
 the dispute. The average man's knowl- 
 edge of the trusts, the money markets, the 
 economic movements and policies of differ- 
 ent states can only be formed by what the
 
 Influence oj the American Newspaper 143 
 
 newspapers give in the way of reliable facts. 
 Besides influencing man's economic opin- 
 ions, they affect his economic conditions 
 by helping to decide strikes, by attacking 
 trusts, by bringing on panics, by causing 
 fluctuations in the money markets. Busi- 
 ness men say that newspapers can hinder 
 or cause a slump in the stock and produce 
 markets. The ideas of the average man 
 about the purposes and actions of labor 
 unions and employers' associations have 
 scarcely any other base than that which can 
 be got from the papers. The mass of 
 opinion in regard to the problems that need 
 adjustment between labor and capital 
 swings with that of the newspapers. Like 
 the knowledge of all the facts of trade 
 manipulation, of fluctuations of stocks, 
 and of the prices of wholesale and retail 
 commodities, the details and progress of 
 mechanical production come to most people 
 through the advertisement or other columns 
 of a paper. 
 Among its various tasks, the American
 
 144 The American Newspaper 
 
 newspaper may be said to have set itself 
 the duty of contributing to the culture of 
 its readers. The word culture is here 
 used in a broad sense to include all sorts of 
 education and training. 
 
 Education is a moralizing influence; an 
 ignorant man is generally brutish and 
 vulgar; the educated man is usually kind 
 and cultured. Through knowledge one 
 comes to know the true, the good, and 
 beautiful. Through knowledge comie mor- 
 als. Morals are the code of an educated 
 man who can exercise self-control and 
 fortitude in relation to his fellow-man. 
 The salvation and hope of the nation there- 
 fore lies in the education of its people. 
 Hence, anything which tends in any way 
 to affect the education of the masses thereby 
 affects the morals of the community. The 
 kind of education is the important factor 
 in the shaping of efficient democracy; the 
 American newspaper tends to give a kind 
 where good and bad are mingled but 
 where the bad is the more accessible and
 
 Influence oj the American Newspaper 145 
 
 attractive. The modern American news- 
 paper is our national educator of the plain 
 people, young and old. 
 
 As has already been shown in another 
 connection a goodly part of the daily 
 columns of papers furnishes news and 
 information about artists and art, about 
 writers and literature, explorers and explo- 
 rations, travelers and travels. The ideas 
 of the average American reader concerning 
 painting, books, and music are largely 
 based on what he reads through this chan- 
 nel. The brilliant and intelligent "write- 
 ups" of the dramatic critic, when believed, 
 determine the theatergoer's impressions 
 whether new plays are good or not. A 
 page is given to a review of the latest books, 
 and photographs of famous pictures often 
 appear. Special articles are eagerly so- 
 licited from well-known authors or explorers 
 and the highest market prices are paid for 
 them. An explorer of international fame 
 recently received eight hundred dollars for 
 a thousand-word article. Two thousand
 
 146 The American Newspaper 
 
 a year was offered a prominent divine for a 
 monthly sermonette of five hundred words ; 
 while a renowned author was paid as high 
 as a dollar a word for every thousand-word 
 story that he would care to write. At the 
 present time in the San Francisco Call 
 there is an international literary contest 
 going on between two well-known authors. 
 One is an American author, Miss Wilkins- 
 Freeman, and the other an Englishman, 
 Mr. Max Pemberton. The merits of these 
 two authors are to be judged and voted 
 upon by the reading public. 
 
 Prizes are offered for correct answers to 
 puzzles, for the best letter on some subject, 
 for the wittiest joke, for the cleverest way 
 to meet an emergency, and the like. The 
 women are told what the latest fashions 
 are. The housekeepers are schooled in the 
 art of cooking. Physical exercises are 
 discussed, illustrated, and explained. Big 
 prices are paid to specialists for articles on 
 such subjects as food, shelter, and clothing, 
 the care of children, and so forth. Much
 
 Infltieitce oj the American Newspaper 147 
 
 useful medical information is given. Per- 
 sonal hygiene is taught. The aim would 
 seem to be to tell the people everything that 
 will make their life more healthy, comfort- 
 able, and intelligent. Letters of inquiry 
 are solicited and promptly answered. 
 Courses in science and technical subjects 
 for the general reader are offered by uni- 
 versity professors. When necessary, money 
 as well as time is lavishly expended to ac- 
 quire the information that is thought de- 
 sirable. From June to September a num- 
 ber of information bureaus are kept open to 
 report without charge on summer trips, 
 hotels, resorts, etc. Printed almanacs 
 which take the form of condensed yearly 
 encyclopedias are distributed by the paper 
 free. 
 
 Another encouraging sign of modern 
 American journalism is shown in the 
 "Home-Study Circle" conducted by spe- 
 cialists, professors, and experts, which 
 aims to serve as a source of information for 
 the average reader. The courses offered
 
 148 The American Newspaper 
 
 cover the fields of literature, science, and 
 art. Equally instructive and practical is 
 the Household Department which furnishes 
 menus, dress patterns, and the like, and the 
 Question Bureau which answers all ques- 
 tions through experts employed for this task. 
 Thus we find that the modern up-to-date 
 American journal aims to be the national 
 storehouse of useful and scientific learning. 
 In spite of its money seeking and its thirst 
 for readers, it recognizes, however dimly, 
 that through its columns it can perform 
 an invaluable service, since progress is 
 ultimately based on the intelligence of men 
 and democracy depends upon the educa- 
 tion of the majority. 
 
 Thus we see that the educational possi- 
 bilities of the newspaper are immense; 
 but that it does not always educate in the 
 highest sense is apparent to all. So long 
 as the newspapers continue to print the 
 great mass of trivial stuff which now fills 
 their columns, they will be a failure as an 
 instrument of education and at best will 
 
 V
 
 Influence oj the American Newspaper 149 
 
 offer for the intellectual life of their readers 
 only commonplaces or ill-proven facts. 
 In brief, if we sum up the total results of 
 newspaper endeavor along educational and 
 cultural lines, the real gain is small. Mr. 
 Leslie Stephen says, "The world is better, 
 no doubt, even for an honest crossing- 
 sweeper. But I often think that the value 
 of second-rate literature is not small but 
 simply zero," and if this is true, the average 
 literary work of the American newspaper, 
 falling short as it does of any high standard, 
 is almost nil. The press itself avows its 
 own limitations. On this point a reporter 
 uniquely defended and explained "yellow" 
 journalism with the remark, "We don't 
 think that our paper is 'nice,' but we do 
 know it reaches the people. It is our inten- 
 tion to teach the people, and the first step 
 is to get them to listen to us. We beheve 
 that it is better to raise a whole city one 
 inch than to hoist a few men and women 
 ten feet in the air." Thus the sensational 
 journal working on the theory of the
 
 150 The American Newspaper 
 
 "divine average" sophistically teaches and 
 preaches mediocrity or worse. 
 
 The two principal educational forces in 
 this country are the public schools and the 
 newspapers. With the young, the public 
 schools deal more or less successfully. But 
 among the mature we have great masses of 
 people, who are as densely ignorant as they 
 are poorly housed. Some did not go to 
 school when they were young, some lived 
 in districts where there were no schools, 
 and others are illiterate immigrants from 
 countries where the education of the poor 
 is entirely neglected. Let us glance at a 
 few general figures. Over 2,250,000 males 
 of voting age are classified in the census for 
 1900 as illiterates. There are 1,500,000 
 over ten years of age who are unable to 
 speak English. There are hving in our 
 midst over five million male voters of 
 foreign birth. We have a foreign popu- 
 lation of over 12,000,000, a heterogeneous 
 mass that has not been assimilated. To a 
 much greater extent than the school, the
 
 Influence oj the American Newspaper 151 
 
 newspaper is the agent of assimilation; it 
 is the press that makes Americans out of 
 this vast army of foreign immigrants. 
 Besides this large number of foreign, 
 we have native, population of considerable 
 size at "a low level of intelligence." It is 
 apparent then that the principal problem 
 confronting us in our struggle to develop 
 an effective democracy is the education, 
 assimilation, and uplifting of this great 
 mass of people. We can enlighten the 
 children by means of compulsory school 
 acts but we cannot force knowledge upon 
 adult men and women. Many theories 
 have been advanced as to the best method 
 of meeting this difhcult situation, but none 
 are satisfactory. The Settlement fails. 
 The one institution however that is coping 
 with this problem and getting practical 
 results, even though those results are not 
 always what they should be, is the press, 
 especially the "yellow journal." It is 
 giving to the foreign portions of our popu- 
 lation American standards, ideas, and the
 
 152 The American Newspaper 
 
 general feeling of the community. In 
 brief, it reflects the opinion of the average 
 American. Thus we have the American 
 newspaper not only as the giant molder 
 of public opinion but the monster mechanic 
 that shapes and reshapes the mental make- 
 up of the plain people. It is the educator 
 of the plain people, especially of that great 
 section of the population which in countries 
 other than America does not read at all. 
 
 Another important question connected 
 with the influence of the press is its effect 
 upon the mind and intelligence of the 
 young. The growing youth is too imma- 
 ture to form a judgment or to discriminate 
 in his reading; he accepts what he reads. 
 His susceptible mind is not only, as some- 
 one has aptly put it, a "package of in- 
 stincts," but it has a remarkable aptitude 
 for absorbing everything it runs across. 
 Imagination and not reason as a rule play 
 the largest part in his daily life. When we 
 realize how easily he is aroused, persuaded, 
 and taught by everything and everybody
 
 Influence of the American Newspaper 153 
 
 about him, the tremendous influence that a 
 newspaper may have upon him becomes 
 apparent. He is enticed by its colored 
 pictures; he is dehghted by its cartoons, 
 and he reads all the accounts of crimes with 
 great glee. Inexperienced and irrespon- 
 sible youth knows little of the real world ; it 
 lives in a world of its own creation, a world 
 formulated in terms of what is read, seen, 
 or heard. For only too many young people 
 the world is mirrored by the daily news- 
 paper. And what do they see there? 
 Nothing but an exaggerated world. They 
 find in the daihes detailed accounts of 
 murders, suicides, prize fights, and horse- 
 races. As a consequence, in their imagi- 
 fiations this world becomes a place where 
 such things are usual. Photographs of 
 crime and of sporting events intensify this 
 point of view. A child brought up in 
 healthy surroundings and given the best 
 literature to read generally turns out good, 
 sane, and normal, but a boy who reads dime 
 novels and sees the world of his imagina-
 
 154 The American Newspaper 
 
 tion peopled with Indians and cowboys, out- 
 laws and detectives, often goes to the bad. 
 That is the natural outcome. If it be true 
 of man that he is the creature of his environ- 
 ment, yet more emphatically is it true of the 
 growing boy that he is the creature of the 
 many social forces that play about him. 
 If the world of his imagination is degen- 
 erate and vulgar, he will become degen- 
 erate and vulgar. If the child reads news- 
 papers which furnish a vast amount of this 
 lurid stuff, his field of vision becomes 
 shockingly limited and his imagination 
 feeds upon the pathological side of human 
 nature. Think of youth reading the de- 
 tailed accounts of the Durant and Thaw 
 cases. Or, to take another side of the 
 material, think of the vapid nonsense with 
 which a young person's head is filled when 
 he reads accounts of the social "doings" of 
 "gilded" society and of the latest events of 
 the sporting world. Such matter would 
 spoil the best bred child. It undermines 
 future generations.
 
 Influence oj the American Newspaper 155 
 
 It is not the adult but also the young 
 person, and perhaps the latter chiefly, who 
 turns daily to digest the silly notes on 
 society, to follow ibe immoral antics of 
 degenerate noblemen and the vulgar new 
 rich. This sort of thing has turned the 
 head of many an innocent youth. As is 
 well known among educated people, social 
 circles are as distinctly drawn on the basis 
 of birth, education, or money in this coun- 
 try as in other countries, but in spite of 
 such well-defined sets in New England, the 
 middle states, and the South, the press leads 
 the public imagination to picture all social 
 leaders as belonging to the "400," and 
 these "leaders," in the fancy of the people, 
 invariably possess millions and are sur- 
 rounded by persons who meet solely for 
 the display of superlatively costly flowers, 
 rich gowns, and golden dinner services, 
 and whose only aim in life is to find some 
 new means of stimulating their jaded 
 interests. What can all this do but form 
 in the young as in the old a desire for the
 
 156 The American Newspaper 
 
 frivolous, for the vulgar, and for the non- 
 essential ? Add to this the training which 
 the omnipresent sensational newspaper 
 gives in the habit of desultory, haphazard 
 reading, and then consider how far the 
 press of today may be expected to aid the 
 young reader in forming habits of mental 
 sobriety and self-control. Is it not on the 
 contrary helping him to acquire the habit of 
 wasting valuable time and energy on un- 
 wholesome trash ? Is it not safe to believe 
 that much of that lack of mental discipline, 
 of self-directed thought, and capacity to 
 concentrate one's mind, which character- 
 izes too many Americans, is due to an early 
 habit of indiscriminate newspaper reading ? 
 A good deal also might be said about the 
 influence of the pictures of the "comic 
 supplement." It is not ultra critical to say 
 that a sense of humor developed on such 
 cheap "funny" pictures as most of these 
 are will never travel as far in the enjoyment 
 of true nonsense as the child who learned 
 to laugh by way of Alice in Wonderland
 
 Influence of the American Newspaper 157 
 
 or Lear's Nonsense Book or Burgess' 
 Goops. When a young mind is nursed 
 with trash, stunted with the trivial, and 
 poisoned with the untrue, its possessor will 
 not become that intelligent and independ- 
 ent citizen on which sound democracy 
 depends. That it is the frothy character- 
 istics of a paper which chiefly attract and 
 hold the interest of the young, while what 
 is solid and worthy is apt to escape notice, 
 is one of the serious elements in this whole 
 question of the influence of the newspaper. 
 To read the newspaper properly one must 
 be able to discriminate between what is 
 false and what is true, what is important 
 and what is trivial. The young child 
 cannot do this. 
 
 In the December (1908) number of 
 Current Literature, the following para- 
 graphs appeared under an article en- 
 titled "Sounding the Doom of the 
 'Comics.' " 
 
 It begins to look as if the death knell of a time- 
 honored feature of American journah'sm — the
 
 158 The American Newspaper 
 
 comic supplements of the Sunday newspapers — 
 had struck. A tide of protest is rising all over the 
 land, and the very existence of "Foxy Grandpa," 
 the " Katzenjammer Kids," "Happy Hooligan," 
 and "Buster Brown" — those darlings of the 
 heart of childhood — ^is menaced. Mothers' meet- 
 ings have declaimed and educational conferences 
 have resolved against them. One lady speaker be- 
 fore the recent American Playgrounds Congress in 
 New York registered her conviction that the comic 
 supplement is "debasing the morals of the chil- 
 dren," by emphasizing and apparently condoning 
 "deceit, cunning, and disrespect for gray hairs." 
 And now a leading New England newspaper an- 
 nounces its abandonment of this feature. "The 
 comic supplement," it says, "has had its day. We 
 discard it as we would throw aside any mechanism 
 that had reached the end of its usefulness, or any 
 'feature' that had ceased to fulfil the purpose of 
 attraction." 
 
 In speaking of the "comic supplements" 
 the writer on the Herald maintains that 
 "the comic supplements have ceased to be 
 comic! They have become as vulgar in 
 design as they are tawdry in color. There 
 is no longer any semblance of art in them,
 
 Influence oj the American Newspaper 159 
 
 and if there are any ideals they are low and 
 descending lower." 
 
 Summed up, then, the injurious effects 
 of the newspaper habit are: first, waste of 
 much time and energy in reading unim- 
 portant news, premature, untrue, and im- 
 perfect accounts of important matters and 
 prejudiced editorials of uninteresting sub- 
 jects. Secondly, class prejudices are kin- 
 dled because of the partisan bias or com- 
 mercial greed of newspaper managers. In 
 the third place, the mind is loaded with 
 cheap literature and prone to an aversion 
 for good books and sustained thought. The 
 daily newspaper reduces the intellectual 
 life of its readers to a continuous round of 
 petty excitements. In the fourth place, 
 by flouting the law and its officers it breeds 
 a certain feeling of lawlessness. These are 
 the various forms of its influence upon the 
 general reader, upon the uneducated, more- 
 over, and upon the young we have found 
 that the influence of the press is full of 
 danger.
 
 i6o The American Newspaper 
 
 Still another aspect of the question 
 may be mentioned, namely the influence 
 which papers have upon their own em- 
 ployees. Journalism involves enormous 
 mental and physical strain. It uses up men 
 in its frenzied search for news. Many have 
 become complete physical wrecks, their 
 best energies having been dissipated after 
 a few years of service. The profession of 
 journalism, if one may so call it, is not only 
 injurious to the public but reacts unfavor- 
 ably upon those who create it. Mr. Julian 
 Ralph says, "But it journalism tends to 
 form the habits of stealing, to make men 
 careless of the future; and it demands 
 high-pressure service to the bitter end, even 
 when one's energies have to be worked up 
 with a forced draught." In no field of 
 effort do men labor under higher pressure 
 and unc|er greater sacrifices than do most of 
 the newspaper men of this country. The 
 making of a metropolitan daily is fierce, 
 bitter, and exhausting work. This rush 
 and tear is characteristic of the times. It
 
 Influence of the American Newspaper i6i 
 
 is the very nature of the " beast" American. 
 Park Row, Kke its prototype in finance, 
 Wall Street, is always seething and bub- 
 bling. This habit of rush is to be con- 
 demned. It engenders a similar tendency 
 in the readers. The modern metropolitan 
 paper is not only produced at a great cost 
 in money but also at a great sacrifice in life 
 and nerve. Such things cannot be reck- 
 oned in dollars and cents, but its marks 
 are nevertheless registered upon the body- 
 politic. The word Rush is written all over 
 the average paper. 
 
 Lest it be thought that too much stress 
 has been laid upon harmful influences of 
 the newspaper, it seems well to summarize 
 in a brief paragraph those among its influ- 
 ences which seem beneficial. It has al- 
 ready been suggested that even though the 
 material offered for reading is questionable, 
 the newspaper at least cultivates the habit 
 of reading, and that along with much that 
 is superficial and uncertain it disseminates 
 some useful knowledge. Add to this, that
 
 1 62 The American Newspaper 
 
 it does enthusiastically aid in many a cam- 
 paign for the realization of the best prin- 
 ciples of social service and civic decency. 
 One other point may be enlarged upon 
 here. In spite of nvuch jingoism and petty 
 provincialism, the newspaper acts as a 
 medium for developing broader notions of 
 international relations. What travel and 
 art has done for the few, the newspapers do 
 for the many. To be interested in politics 
 and the affairs of the world, to follow the 
 intellectual and moral advancement of one's 
 country and of others is to enlarge one's 
 nature, and our newspapers, in so far as 
 they describe faithfully the happenings and 
 the character of the nations of the world, 
 tend to encourage the broader cosmopolitan 
 spirit. He who becomes tolerant and hu- 
 mane in his ideas of older nations becomes 
 more intelligently interested in the welfare 
 of his own people, country, and home. In 
 so far as the newspaper tends to focus 
 attention daily on the doings of the whole 
 world, it tends to do away with the preju-
 
 Influence of the American Newspaper 163 
 
 dice and the international and internecine 
 hatreds which are for the most part the 
 result of ignorance and narrowness. The 
 world is made smaller, safer, and more 
 habitable by the press, which through its 
 great international association tends to 
 unite the different countries and to make 
 them one. It is a great human agency with 
 the power to do away with international 
 conflicts, and while too often it fails to use 
 this power or exercises it in a contrary direc- 
 tion, yet on the whole by turning a light up- 
 on the thrones, the cabinets, or parliaments 
 of all nations, it tends by that act to impose 
 moral restraint on rulers and to cultivate 
 in the individual a decent regard for the 
 opinions of all mankind. When it plays 
 this -role, it is a great moral influence, con- 
 sciously or unconsciously developing a 
 spirit of internationalism and universal 
 peace. 
 
 In brief, the influence of contemporary 
 American journalism of today is one that 
 neither wholly degrades nor entirely ele^
 
 164 The American Newspaper 
 
 vates. It would seem that the newspaper 
 of our own time mirrors pubUc opinion, 
 rather than shapes it for good or ill. The 
 editor seeking to make his paper popular 
 plays upon the prejudices of the crowd and 
 is himself in turn played upon by them. 
 There is always present this steady inter- 
 change of influence and suggestion between 
 the reading public and the news-giving 
 daily. There is always a permanent inter- 
 relation and interaction between these two 
 factors. Neither one can exist without the 
 other and both interplay with similar re- 
 sults. Any rise in the standards of news- 
 papers means a relative rise in pubhc 
 morality and vice versa. In short, the wel- 
 fare of each depends upon the other; what 
 benefits or degrades one, benefits or de- 
 grades the other. And if this be true, the 
 great and final question, a question which 
 this study does not pretend to solve, is 
 whence comes the influence that finally de- 
 termines the character of both press and 
 public ?
 
 THE CAUSES OF THE INFLUENCE 
 OF THE AMERICAN NEWS- 
 PAPER
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE CAUSES OF THE INFLUENCE OF 
 THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER 
 
 Having considered at some length the 
 nature and influence of the American press, 
 it is now in order to consider what has made 
 the press of this country the vigorous, com- 
 mercial, self-interested, and sensational 
 press that it is. Since the American press 
 seeks to echo and cater to taste rather than 
 to shape it, it will be plain at the outset, that 
 there is some difficulty in distinguishing 
 between cause and effect. What follows 
 represents an attempt to analyze that pub- 
 lic taste which at once sways the newspaper 
 and is in turn swayed by it. 
 
 A PSYCHOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION OF 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF AMERICAN 
 
 NEWSPAPERS 
 
 The fundamental cause of the nature 
 and influence of the American press is to be 
 found in the nature of the American people. 
 
 167
 
 1 68 The American Newspaper 
 
 No wiser or more prophetic sentences could 
 have been uttered than those dehvered by 
 Whitelaw Reid in the year 1879. He said 
 in part : 
 
 The tiling always forgotten by the closest critic 
 of the newspaper is that they must be measurably 
 what their audiences make them — what their con- 
 stituencies call for and sustain. The newspaper 
 cannot uniformly resist the popular sentiment any 
 more than the stream can flow above its fountain. 
 To say that the newspapers are getting worse is 
 
 to say that the people are getting worse It 
 
 even works more evil now than it ever wrought 
 before, because its influence is more widespread; 
 but it also works more good and its habitual atti- 
 tude is one of effort toward the best its audiences 
 will tolerate. There is not a newspaper today in 
 New York, faulty as they are, that is not better 
 than its audience. 
 
 In other words, American journaUsm is 
 measurably no worse nor any better than 
 the American people. "Qu'est ce la 
 presse ? C'est la voix de la nation." The 
 newspaper is the mirror of the community 
 — this is my thesis.
 
 Causes oj Newspaper Influence 169 
 
 Professor Hadley in his latest book, 
 Standards of Public Morality, has a chapter 
 on the formation of pubhc opinion which 
 will serve in its admirable phrasing as a 
 point of departure for our examination of 
 the causes of the influence of American 
 journalism. In discussing the nature of 
 public opinion, Professor Hadley says on 
 pp. 13 and 16: 
 
 We have no universal public opinion 
 
 We have sections of public opinion, working sepa- 
 rately and often pulling apart. The Tribune 
 appeals with confidence to the public opinion of one 
 set of people; the Post to the public opinion of a 
 somewhat different set; the Journal to the public 
 opinion of a set far different from either. The 
 facts, views, and motives which are familiar to the 
 readers of one of these papers are unfamiliar to 
 the others. Each group believes that its opinions 
 represent a real understanding of the needs of the 
 people, and that the views of the other groups 
 represent the arguments of selfish hypocrites, 
 doubly detestable because they take the form of 
 an appeal to public interest. In the face of difl5- 
 culties and schisms of this kind, it sometimes 
 seems as if there were no common ground on
 
 1 70 The American Newspaper 
 
 which to stand; no set of facts sufficiently known 
 to all men to serve as a starting point in the dis- 
 cussion of public affairs; no opportunity for getting 
 on a universal basis of sympathy in the domain 
 of pubhc morals corresponding to that on which 
 we stand in our private moraUty. 
 
 One of the great difficulties which beset the 
 newspaper editor when he tries to discuss public 
 questions is the fact that most of his readers have 
 a strong pecuniary or personal interest in having 
 them decided in some particular way. The man 
 who owes money likes all the argument in favor of 
 a depreciating currency, and is suspicious of those 
 on the other side. With the man who has money 
 due him the case is reversed. The man who im- 
 ploys labor feels the need of giving the largest 
 amount of control to him who risks his capital. 
 The arguments in favor of the rights of the capi- 
 talist employers seem to him strong; all efforts 
 to limit those rights savor of immorality. The 
 laborer, on the contrary, who works for another 
 man, feels that he in giving his effort and in per- 
 haps risking his life has far more to do with the 
 product than the man who has simply invested his 
 money. He looks with favor at every argument 
 concerning the rights of labor and with disfavor 
 at any argument or precedent which seems to sup- 
 port the claims of property. If an editor wishes
 
 Causes oj Newspaper Influence 171 
 
 to make his paper popular with a certain class, he 
 lays stress on the arguments which that class likes 
 and feeds them with facts which they want to be- 
 lieve. His readers gradually get into a position 
 where their prepossessions have been strengthened 
 until they become prejudices, and where misin- 
 formation has been added to prejudice until it 
 becomes almost irremovable. 
 
 This citation substantiates the behef, 
 that if we desire to gain an insight into the 
 nature and causes of the influence of 
 American journahsm, we must recognize 
 that both nature and cause He in. pubhc 
 opinion, that is, in the mind of the people. 
 A complete investigation of the subject 
 should of course treat also the economic 
 influences which are behind this American 
 newspaper as they are behind the people 
 and their opinions. It is certain that the 
 present-day spirit of commercialism and 
 consolidation in the field of production has 
 gone a long way to determine the nature 
 of the American press, but it was the 
 American people first upon whom these 
 economic changes played. The key to the
 
 172 The American Newspaper 
 
 question, What are the causes of the influ- 
 ence of the most typical of the American 
 newspapers ? is found in an interpretation 
 of the psychology of the typical American 
 and in the analysis of the newspaper as a 
 purely business undertaking. 
 
 These two interpretations are well pre- 
 sented by William Marion Reedy, the 
 editor of the St. Louis Mirror, and by 
 President Hadley of Yale University. In 
 an address delivered before the Missouri 
 Press Association in which he declares 
 flatly that there is no such thing as a ''free 
 press" in America, Mr. Reedy says in part: 
 
 In every city the papers may appear to fight 
 one another upon the surface, but in every case 
 they have a business combination to shut out the 
 newcomer. The established daily papers in any 
 city are as much a trust as the steel trust or the 
 Standard Oil — while the Associated Press is 
 another national trust — and it is exceptionally 
 rare that anyone can break in upon the combination 
 and fight it; and if one does, it must be solely 
 through the possession of financial support, great 
 enough to fight to a finish the established news-
 
 Causes of Newspaper Influence 173 
 
 paper wealth of the community, controUing and 
 owning carriers, newsboys, and newsdealers abso- 
 lutely. Of course, when a newspaper so backed 
 succeeds in establishing itself, it is not to be ex- 
 pected that the paper will take up the cause of 
 the people against the interest of the men of great 
 wealth who have put their money into the new 
 journalistic enterprise. The newspapers of any 
 city will always be found a unit when there comes 
 up any matter in which the public-service interests 
 and the interests of the advertisers are a unit. 
 
 This is the economic aspect of the sub- 
 ject. 
 
 President Hadley in a widely debated 
 article in the Youth's Companion, gives us 
 a psychological explanation of the real cause 
 of American journalism. He says about the 
 present journalistic conditions in America: 
 
 Most of the men who edit newspapers will give 
 the people the kind of newspapers they want. 
 There will, of course, be exceptionally good editors, 
 who will make their papers better than their 
 readers demand, and try to educate the people up 
 to a higher level; just as there will be exceptionally 
 bad editors, who will make papers worse than the 
 readers want, and be the instruments, v^hether
 
 174 The American Newspaper 
 
 they try to or not, of educating the public down 
 to a lower level. 
 
 But the average editor will work for the average 
 reader. He cannot be any more independent of 
 the man who buys his goods than the manufacturer 
 or merchant can be. A manufacturer who refuses 
 to produce things that the people want, because 
 he thinks they ought to want something better, 
 will be driven out of business, and so will a news- 
 paper editor. People sometimes talk of "yellow 
 journaHsm " as if the editors of the yellow journals 
 were solely responsible for their existence. They 
 are responsible to some degree; but to a still larger 
 degree the responsibiUty lies with the public that 
 will buy and read their news 
 
 If the public cares more for sensations than it 
 does for facts, more for excitement than it does 
 for evidence, it is obvious that its opinions will be 
 based on wrong data and often on dangerous ones, 
 and that its conclusions will be unwise and irre- 
 sponsible. And as long as pubUc opinion is unwise 
 or irresponsible, the government of the country 
 will be bad. 
 
 C. F. Lydston in his volume on The 
 
 Diseases oj Society says, 
 
 America has for many years furnished condi- 
 tions peculiarly favorable to degeneracy. The
 
 Causes oj Newspaper Influence 175 
 
 strenuous life of the average American, certainly 
 of every ambitious citizen, has many aspects bear- 
 ing upon degeneracy in general, and vice and crime 
 in particular. Lust for vi^ealth, desire for social 
 supremacy, ambition for fame, love of display, late 
 hours, lack of rest, excitement, the consumption of 
 alcohol, especially by women — all these factors 
 combine to cause what Beard termed a distinctly 
 American disease. The body social is growing 
 more and more neuropathic. In the train of this 
 widespread neuropathy comes degeneracy, with all 
 its evil brood of social disorders. 
 
 It would be impossible in the compass 
 of this brief study to make a thorough 
 psychological examination of American 
 life and opinion. It will suffice here to 
 enumerate and analyze somewhat cate- 
 gorically those characteristics of the Ameri- 
 can public which seem fundamental for our 
 purpose, that is, which seem to be the 
 source of the nature and influence of the 
 American press. Distinctly American char- 
 acteristics may tentatively be classified 
 under six general headings: (i) audacity; 
 (2) independence; (3) cupidity; (4) curi-
 
 176 The American Newspaper 
 
 osity; (5) strenuousness, and (6) love of 
 change. From audacity there arises a 
 spirit of enterprise, from independence a 
 spirit of competition, and from cupidity a 
 spirit of commercialism. From curiosity 
 is derived a desire to learn, from strenu- 
 ousness a desire to do something new. As 
 seen in the first part of this study, all these 
 traits are reflected in the enterprising, com- 
 peting, commercial journal with its hunt 
 for information, its desire to do things, and 
 its tendency toward sensationalism. 
 
 First, let us examine the trait of audacity, 
 which is expressed through the pluck, bold- 
 ness, and daring of the adventurous and 
 courageous American. The history of this 
 country has aided to bring out clearly this 
 trait of our national temperament. The 
 ''winning of the West" is nothing more nor 
 less than the story of the heroic exploration 
 of the wild frontier by men of pluck and 
 courage. This young nation has impetu- 
 ously plunged into many new and vast 
 fields of endeavor. It has assumed great
 
 Causes oj Newspaper Injiuence 177 
 
 burdens lightly and even carelessly. It has 
 accepted its position as a world power and 
 has shouldered large economic problems 
 with noticeable nonchalance. The whole 
 story of this country is one of boldly seek- 
 ing and finding; one of energetic and Hght- 
 hearted exploration and discovery, of lusty 
 pioneering and settling. Our people have 
 entered new lands, new fields of effort, and 
 new problems. Out of all this naturally 
 evolved the national trait of enterprise. We 
 have become a pushing, industrious, and 
 enterprising race. Our whole life is one 
 round of energy. Our newspapers with 
 other national institutions have become 
 permeated with this spirit and the editor, 
 catching the spirit of enterprise in the air, 
 is forever trying new "stunts," making 
 new "literary" adventures, or daily at- 
 tempting something novel to startle or to 
 amuse. In his opinion his chief problem 
 is to strike some new vein ; to be the first to 
 discover some larger opportunities. Every 
 new "make-up," every new arrangement of
 
 1 78 The American Newspaper 
 
 form, every new advertisement is but a sign 
 of this enterprising desire to push ahead 
 and to outdo one's rivals. 
 
 Closely allied with this characteristic 
 of audacity and enterprise is the national 
 trait of independence that gives birth to the 
 spirit of competition. This instinct for 
 independence was planted on these shores 
 by our Puritan forefathers, was incor- 
 porated in the American commonwealth, 
 and nursed into full growth during the sub- 
 sequent development of the country. It 
 gave scope to the doctrine of individualism. 
 Here was a new land to be developed, here 
 was a wilderness to be conquered, here 
 mines were to be worked, and here indus- 
 tries were to be established. This was a 
 new country in which the principles of 
 equality were proclaimed and where every 
 man was to have an equal chance to win his 
 spurs in whatever way he saw fit. All this 
 gave impetus to the competitive spirit 
 innate in man and made the United 
 States the place where this competitive
 
 Causes of Newspaper Influence 1 79 
 
 spirit expresses itself in its most acute 
 form. 
 
 Cupidity is another national character- 
 istic that the building of the nation has 
 nurtured. Through the spirit of enter- 
 prise and competition men were urged to 
 succeed, to win at all costs. They be- 
 Heved in that false doctrine that "the 
 means justified the ends" and thus in the 
 course of history it has often happened that 
 we have acted with recklessness and cruelty. 
 An eager desire to possess something, a 
 mad craving for money gain, an inordinate 
 wish for wealth and power and comfort is 
 common to all people, but it is especially 
 typical of the American. In a magazine 
 article. Professor Taussig, of Havard Uni- 
 versity, has well stated the four impulses 
 that urge most men in their struggle after 
 wealth. These are: (i) love of ease and 
 comfort; (2) desire for distinction; (3) 
 impulse of native energy; (4) passion for 
 power and mastery. Out of this desire for 
 something there sprang into being the
 
 i8o The American Newspaper 
 
 modern spirit of commercialism that has so 
 vitally affected our democratic institutions. 
 That the United States constitutes a young 
 nation, that it is an energetic, wealthy in- 
 dustrial nation, that it is an enterprising, 
 combative, and progressive nation is ob- 
 vious. The American paper is an admi- 
 rable example of an institution whose devel- 
 opment has been vitally affected by these 
 three instincts. 
 
 We come now to the consideration of the 
 last three characteristics which play just as 
 important a part as those mentioned in de- 
 fining the influence of American journalism. 
 First, there is the national trait of curiosity, 
 for the American usually desires to know 
 things as well as to do things. He is an 
 investigator, he is an inventor, he is an 
 explorer, and an adventurer by nature. 
 He is inquisitive as well as acquisitive. 
 He yearns to unravel the mysterious, to 
 probe the unknown, to learn the hidden 
 secrets of life. He wants to see new faces, 
 to visit new places, to hear new talk, and to
 
 Causes oj Newspaper Influence i8i 
 
 learn new things. He wants information, 
 and it is this desire which the newspaper 
 by its great mass of news tries to satisfy and 
 which it does satisfy. The American 
 wants to know what the rest of the world is 
 doing, and especially what it thinks about 
 him. He wants to know the world as it is ; 
 not what happened in the past, but what is 
 going on now. As a result, American news- 
 papers exceed foreign journals in the size 
 and quantity of news and err rather in 
 quality than in any other particular. If 
 they give more for the money it is chiefly 
 in the form of a greater quantity of 
 superficial facts which the reader himself 
 demands. 
 
 This country has rightly been called the 
 land of the "strenuous," and the popular 
 idol, President Roosevelt, typifies this 
 national characteristic. The American is 
 a busy, pushing, hustling individual and so 
 is the American newspaper. He must 
 always be doing something; anything to 
 keep busy. The man who retires from
 
 1 82 The American Newspaper 
 
 business early is put down as a "dead 
 one." Behind the national desire for 
 power and distinction is this innate restless- 
 ness and energy that is inborn in the aver- 
 age American. If, as a people, we are do- 
 ing many things that are on a large scale, 
 it is because of this great store of energy. 
 Embedded in this life of Rush is the desire 
 to see things done quickly and to this 
 demand the newspaper caters. The news- 
 paper knows that it must furnish prompt 
 news, even at the sacrifice of the truth. 
 It must get out the first "extra" at any 
 cost. It must give the readers something 
 for their money and at once. Hence the 
 scramble after news, the ambition to outdo 
 one's rivals, the insatiable desire to furnish 
 "beats" and "extras." Strenuousness 
 makes a demand for news and plenty of it, 
 and so the editor, himself a strenuous 
 American, invents ever new methods to get 
 the news in the quickest way and to "dish 
 it up for breakfast in the most attractive 
 style." This naturally gives rise to sen-
 
 Causes of Newspaper Injluence 183 
 
 sational and "yellow" methods in journal- 
 ism. 
 
 The last trait of the American citizen is 
 his fickleness. This potent desire for 
 change and variety gives birth to love for 
 sensation, for novel things, and to weari- 
 ness of the old. Americans are bored if 
 they must always read the same books, 
 meet the same people, see the same plays 
 or pictures, and they are forever seeking 
 ''the latest and queerest." As yet we are 
 not citizens of a nation bound by tradition 
 and custom; we live not in the past but in 
 a present that is constantly losing itself in 
 the future. The average American citizen 
 gets tired of his public officials ; he believes 
 every man should have a chance. The 
 American loves sensation in all that he 
 says and does; he is constantly startling 
 himself and the rest of the world by new 
 achievements and new antics. He is build- 
 ing the largest locomotives, the highest sky- 
 scrapers, winning the Olympic contests, 
 or making the aviator record. He is
 
 184 The American Newspaper 
 
 spectacular and is fond of the glare and 
 flash of the limelight. He enjoys the 
 shouts and bonfires of election time; he 
 craves excitement. He has the habit of 
 playing practical jokes on his friends, of 
 surprising his enemies, and of amusing 
 himself. He also enjoys the grotesque and 
 the foolish. All this is reflected in the 
 American newspaper, both because the 
 American newspaper wants the greatest 
 number of readers and because it is written 
 by Americans. Because of this love of 
 sensation we have the yellow and sensa- 
 tional newspapers. Mr. Stringer, of Cana- 
 da, in his recent arraignment of the 
 "Canada-fakirs" has this to say: 
 
 The gravest charge against the yellow journalist 
 is that his end is not truth, but sensation. He 
 may even give us truth, as he claims, but his very 
 menace lies in the fact that the truth he gives us 
 is truth marshaled and colored by a febrile and 
 unstable personality. 
 
 And so the somewhat dubious influence 
 wielded by the American press seems to me
 
 Causes oj Newspaper Influence 185 
 
 to be caused by marked characteristics of 
 the American people. The Amxcrican is 
 sensational and so is his paper ; the Ameri- 
 can is democratic and so is his paper. 
 The successful, up-to-date editor does little 
 more than adapt his newspaper to the 
 demands and temperament of the public. 
 He strives to print that class of matter 
 which especially appeals to the marked 
 traits which have been indicated. 
 
 Throughout this discussion, we have 
 been examining in particular the sensa- 
 tional newspaper and the aim has been 
 to show that this, the typical journal, is a 
 reflection of the American people. A simi- 
 lar analysis of "yellow" journalism ought 
 to show the same facts in exaggeration, 
 and the writer has ventured to quote at 
 length from a recent article in the American 
 Magazine for March, 1908, by Professor W. 
 I. Thomas, of the University of Chicago, 
 who has made therein an admirable study 
 of the interesting question, Why does 
 yellow journalism prosper? When ap-
 
 1 86 The American Newspaper 
 
 plied to American life, Professor Thomas' 
 conclusions lead in the same direction as 
 that in which I have been trying to turn 
 attention. Professor Thomas speaks from 
 the standpoint of the psychologist who aims 
 to analyze the current journalistic antics. 
 He says in part that yellow journalism 
 owes its existence to the persistence in men 
 of primitive emotions of an essentially anti- 
 social character, and to the fact that emo- 
 tions are pleasurable, no matter what their 
 origin, and that people will pay to experi- 
 ence shock. There is, he continues, the 
 emotional interest of the reflex type repre- 
 sented by the whole gamut of competitive 
 games. Then there is a "second form of 
 shock associated with horrors, misfortunes, 
 
 detractions, and slanders Artistic 
 
 presentations of which tragedy is an 
 example are conflict situations of a general- 
 ized and reflective type, while scientific and 
 business pursuits are really of the hunting 
 pattern of interest, involving the same 
 emotional strain as the chase."
 
 Causes of Newspaper Influence 187 
 
 The yellow feature of journalism we are 
 told falls largely into the second class above, 
 depending on the interest attaching to the 
 disastrous. To quote again : 
 
 If a yellow sheet be analyzed, it will be found 
 that it handles events and persons from the pain 
 or disaster standpoint. The event itself is of no 
 significance. The loss of life, the loss of happiness, 
 the loss of property, the loss of reputation, death 
 and detraction, is the whole story. In a word, it is 
 an appeal to the hate reflex. 
 
 But the yellow press does not stop with the 
 singling out and the overemphasis of situations of 
 the fear-and-hate reflex. It distorts incidents and 
 situations so they will correspond to the most crude 
 and brutal conditions of consciousness and desire. 
 It perverts facts and manufactures stories pur- 
 porting to be true, for the sake of producing an 
 emotional shock greater than would follow on the 
 presentation of the exact truth. 
 
 Professor Thomas proceeds further to 
 assert, that the yellow journal does not 
 differ from certain legitimate forms of art 
 in the material employed, but only in the 
 manner of handling the materials. Thus:
 
 1 88 The American Newspaper 
 
 Love, hate, fear, despair, intrigue, sentiment, 
 adventure, and the marvelous are the subjects of 
 art as well as of the yellow journal ; but art in the 
 proper sense, as I have pointed out, handles its 
 materials from a generalized, or ideal, standpoint, 
 and with some conscious reference to the signifi- 
 cance of the type of action. On the other hand, 
 to reflect or mimic the elemental emotions and 
 secure a shock unmodified by any conscious over- 
 sight, is a characteristic both of yellow and of that 
 which we, for lack of a more definite terminology, 
 are accustomed to call low forms of art. In this 
 sense, there is, of course, yellow art as well as 
 yellow journalism and the yellow journalism is 
 worse than the yellow art only in regard to those 
 numerous cases where fictions are presented as 
 realities. The yellow journal .... is a positive 
 agent for vice and crime. The condition of mo- 
 rality, as well as of mental life, in a community 
 depends on the prevaihng copies of this news- 
 paper. A people is profoundly influenced by what- 
 ever is persistently brought to its attention. A 
 good illustration of this is the fact that an article 
 in commerce — a food, a luxury, a medicine, or a 
 stimulant — can always be sold in immense quan- 
 tities if it be persistently and largely advertised. 
 In the same way, advertising crime, vice, and 
 vulgarity on a scale unheard of before in the annals
 
 Causes oj Newspaper Influence 189 
 
 of history has the same effect — it increases crime, 
 vice, and vulgarity enormously. 
 
 Professor Thomas elsewhere asks the 
 question, If truth and the knowledge of 
 truth are so valued and the machinery for 
 securing them in advanced societies is so 
 elaborate, how are we to explain the exist- 
 ence and popularity of the most highly 
 elaborated organ of untruth ever developed 
 in the history of society ? The explanation, 
 he states, seems to lie along two lines as 
 follows : 
 
 (i) In the existence of an invincible appetite for 
 sensation in human nature, and the failure of 
 society up to the present point to substitute social 
 for anti-social feehng in the popular mind; and 
 (2) in the fact that the art of printing is so ennobled 
 by its historical association with the pursuit of 
 truth and with the interests of humanity, that we 
 have been slow to perceive and credit the essential 
 viciousness of the operations of the yellow press. 
 The traditions of the press are so fine and printing 
 is so deliberate an act that we have a persistent 
 faith on the printed page; and even after we have 
 been repeatedly deceived we still find it difficult 
 to believe that anything printed can be untrue.
 
 I go The American Newspaper 
 
 But our faith is departing. At present we believe 
 nothing that we see in the daiHes, or at any rate 
 we do not beUeve it absolutely 
 
 So much for the psychological causes 
 of the influence of the press, derived on the 
 one hand, from the psychological make-up 
 of the American people, and on the other, 
 as Professor Thomas points out, in certain 
 universal traits of human nature. 
 
 AN ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OF 
 THE CAUSES OF AMERICAN 
 NEWSPAPERS 
 
 In the previous subdivision of this chap- 
 ter we discussed the psychological aspect 
 of the causes of American journalism. It 
 was a study of the external causes from 
 without the paper, namely, the character- 
 istics of the American people. Here we 
 are to examine the internal causes as found 
 in the newspaper itself. As in our previous 
 study, there are certain preliminary prem- 
 ises which must be established before pro- 
 ceeding directly to the main thought. One
 
 Causes oj Newspaper Influence 191 
 
 cannot properly understand the nature or 
 problem of journalism in this country un- 
 less he is familiar with the economic history 
 of the United States. Every economic 
 change in the country, every invention and 
 discovery has in some way affected the 
 newspapers. The invention of telephone 
 and telegraph, of electricity, the increase 
 in the facilities of transportation, the lower- 
 ing of the stamp rate, have all been vital 
 factors that have played important parts 
 toward increasing the size and circulation 
 of the daily paper. Without these inven- 
 tions modern journalism would not be 
 what it is today. It has been through these 
 changes that it has come to its present type 
 and only through these means has it been 
 able to assume its present character. More- 
 over, along with our general economic 
 history there has been a marked tendency 
 toward the concentration of large capital. 
 Trusts have sprung up all over the land. 
 Everything possible was made into a trust. 
 Naturally newspapers followed, so that
 
 192 The American Newspaper 
 
 today the average metropolitan daily means 
 an investment of a million dollars or more. 
 American journalism is in a sense a 
 product of our American democratic institu- 
 tions which connote a high degree of free- 
 dom. It is likewise to some degree a 
 result of American economic conditions. 
 Its characteristics plainly show the effects 
 of this age of modern industrialism. There 
 is a profound truth in the opening para- 
 graph of the Introduction to Professor 
 Veblen's book, The Theory oj Business 
 Enterprise. He says, 
 
 The material framework of modern civilization 
 is the industrial system, and the directing force 
 which animates this framework is business enter- 
 prise. To a greater extent than any other known 
 phase of culture modern Christendom takes its 
 complexion from its economic organization. This 
 modern economic organization is the "Capitalistic 
 System " or "Modern Industrial System" so called. 
 
 These few lines contain a world of mean- 
 ing, and are especially applicable to Ameri- 
 can journalism.
 
 Causes oj Newspaper Injluence 193 
 
 A newspaper like all social institutions 
 reflects the different epochs through which 
 it passes. When the size of a sheet of paper 
 and of a press plate was limited by condi- 
 tions of manufacture to the sweep of a 
 man's forearm in paper-making or in work- 
 ing a hand-press, the newspaper consisted 
 of only one large folio sheet doubled. When 
 changes took place in paper manufactured 
 at the close of the eighteenth century and 
 in the bed-plate of a press at the beginning 
 of the nineteenth century, and when power 
 was applied to printing, then the news- 
 paper began to be folded and enlarged, so 
 that instead of only four sheets there 
 were sixteen. The introduction of the 
 cylinder press after the middle of the nine- 
 teenth century and the manufacture of 
 paper of any size from wood pulp, fed to a 
 press from a spool, changed the daily 
 paper to its present form, containing a 
 variable number of pages from four to a 
 hundred. The various stages through 
 which the newspaper has passed reflect
 
 194 The American Newspaper 
 
 the social conditions of the different periods. 
 The small local conservative newspaper 
 before 1880 was the product of an agri- 
 cultural society. It dealt little with the 
 great outside world. It was sectional not 
 cosmopolitan, it was local not national, it 
 was conservative not sensational, it was 
 slow not progressive. It expressed and 
 typified the habits and temperament of the 
 American people at that period of develop- 
 ment. Then came a period of transition 
 in 1880 when this country began to forge 
 ahead as an industrial nation. As a result, 
 American journalism became liberal, pro- 
 gressive, and national. Between the years 
 1880-98, the newspaper underwent a radi- 
 cal change; it was the embryonic stage 
 from which sprang the modern or "up-to- 
 date" newspaper. Later it changed its 
 standards with the change in the standards 
 and traditions of the nation. Since 1898 
 we have become an industrial nation 
 with colonies. The Spanish- American 
 War plunged this country into the game of
 
 Causes of Newspaper InflMence 195 
 
 world politics. So today we have a sensa- 
 tional, commercial, and international news- 
 paper whose character was shaped with the 
 industrial awakening, when the trusts be- 
 gan to form and the protective tariff was 
 enforced, and when cities began to increase 
 rapidly. The "machine" has long since 
 been so perfected that it is the primary 
 agent in every process in the production 
 of the paper. It is, however, so expensive 
 that the carrying on of a newspaper neces- 
 sitates the investment of a large capital. 
 Speaking along the same line of thought, 
 Mr. Reedy of the St. Louis Mirror says : 
 
 The prizes of journalism are not for those who 
 can think soundly or write well. The man who 
 writes has no chance to reach the real topmost 
 power in journalism. He can only become an 
 employee of some rich concern, writing not what 
 he believes, but what his employers order him to 
 think. What editor today controls his paper? I 
 can think of but one — dear old Henry Watterson, 
 a relic from the Golden Age. Where is there an 
 editor today like Dana, Greeley, Halstead, McCul- 
 lagh, Hyde, Joseph Medill, Raymond — a man who
 
 196 The American Newspaper 
 
 makes his paper's policy the expression of himself 
 alone? .... The owners of newspapers are 
 business men. They want dividends. They want 
 the business, the commercial ideal, upheld at all 
 hazards. They must get the money from the men 
 who have it, they must cater to please the men who 
 run the community, and such men are out for their 
 own pockets first, last, and all the time. All the rest 
 is "leather and prunella!" The great intellectual 
 personality no longer dominates the great paper. 
 The supreme headship of a great newspaper is not 
 the man who may be turned out in a school of jour- 
 nalism but a money-maker. The journaUst proper 
 can never be more than a hired man on a great 
 paper. So a school of journalism does not promise 
 the sort of success that means the exercise of the 
 
 real power of journaHsm Everything in 
 
 this country has been regulated, more or less, ex- 
 cept the daily press. The daily press has partici- 
 pated, more or less, in the regulation, but there are 
 reasons for believing that one of the greatest evils 
 in the United States is this same daily press itself. 
 
 Thus the newspaper business is essen- 
 tially a money-making scheme, dependent 
 on the one hand upon its popularity with 
 the public, on the other, upon the money 
 market. It takes money to run it and it is
 
 Causes of Newspaper Influence 197 
 
 run to make money. A propos of this 
 statement, the following conversation be- 
 tween an eminent speaker and a reporter 
 contains a world of meaning. 
 
 Eminent speaker — No, sir; nothing from me. 
 I have nothing to say to a pubUcation as persist- 
 ently unfair and vicious as yours. The Whirl can 
 go to Hades with my compliments. 
 
 Reporter (cheerfully) — Can go, my dear sir; our 
 circulation manager is prepared to prove that it 
 does go there already — has the largest circulation. 
 
 The world recognizes and applauds 
 success. So every paper like any other 
 business concern desires success and in 
 order to gain this distinction it must satisfy 
 the demand of the people. The sensational 
 journal succeeds because it is sensational 
 and because the people want sensational- 
 ism and because those who advertise in the 
 paper see that it means business for them. 
 If the people wanted something else the 
 editor could not sell a hundred copies of 
 his paper. It is purely a question of sup- 
 ply and demand. The successful editor is
 
 1 98 The American Newspaper 
 
 he who finds out what the people want, not 
 what they need, and gives it to them, in 
 such form, of course, as best suits his own 
 wishes. A story is told of a conversation 
 between a big cigar dealer and the owner 
 of a series of yellow journals stretching 
 across the continent. The cigar dealer is 
 
 said to have remarked, "Well Mr. , 
 
 I like you personally all right, but I don't 
 like the way your papers are managed." 
 The newspaper magnate turned around 
 and pointed across the street where a huge 
 advertisement of the cigar dealer could be 
 seen on the side of a building five or six 
 stories high. "Do you see your unsightly 
 sign over there?" he asked. "Well, Mr. 
 
 , I am doing exactly what you are 
 
 doing there, no more and no less. I am 
 giving the people what they want for their 
 money. You furnish them a cigar for five 
 cents and it suits their fancy! Well, I am 
 doing the same thing. You advertise your 
 cigar in this hideous fashion with your ad- 
 vertisements spread over buildings and in
 
 Causes oj Newspaper Influence 199 
 
 highly colored paints. Well, I print head- 
 lines in red ink all over my paper so that it 
 will advertise the paper and get me new 
 subscribers and advertisers. It is merely 
 a business proposition." 
 
 Since newspaper business demands a 
 large investment, we naturally find that 
 most of our newspapers have become huge 
 corporations owned by a few individuals. 
 Some persons own several newspapers. 
 The trust tendency among our newspapers 
 is marked. A good many of these owners 
 of our large newspapers possess them not 
 only for the material gain but also for the 
 prestige and power they give. Backed by 
 a newspaper, politically and socially, a 
 man wields immense power in his com- 
 munity. Lately too, just as the rulers of 
 Europe long ago realized the power of the 
 press to control the opinions and emotions 
 of the people, the trust magnates of the 
 country have made an effort to get control 
 of the newspapers. It is rumored that the 
 yellow newspaper trust owned by a single
 
 200 The American Newspaper 
 
 millionaire who has indulged his ambition 
 in politics much to the depletion of his 
 pocket-book has been forced to mortgage 
 its papers. Strange to relate, the man 
 who now practically controls this syndicate 
 is the greatest railroad magnate in this 
 country. It was this same man whom 
 these papers were constantly abusing a 
 few months ago. But today things have 
 changed; no word is said against him or 
 his railroads. Besides this change of 
 policy toward this individual and his busi- 
 ness there has been a decided change of 
 politics. It is another proof of the old 
 adage "that politics makes strange bed- 
 fellows." When the owner of these yellow 
 papers was forced to mortgage them, he 
 changed his attitude toward the two great 
 parties. He has apparently switched his 
 allegiance from the one that he lauded in 
 times past over to the other which formerly 
 he most shamelessly attacked. These facts 
 are significant. It means that there really 
 is no such thing as the freedom of the press.
 
 Causes of Newspaper Influence 201 
 
 It means corporation control. The cor- 
 porations have been attacked by the news- 
 papers, which have used their columns to 
 form public opinion against them. So 
 successfully have newspapers been able to 
 bring pressure against the big business 
 interests of the country, that the capitahsts 
 for self-preservation have gone into the 
 newspaper business themselves. They have 
 purchased old papers or established new 
 ones. It is but a repetition of that policy 
 by which at all times the dominant interests 
 have shown their realization of the useful- 
 ness of the press as a means of control. 
 Napoleon not only depended upon the press 
 to prepare France for his plans and to 
 execute many of them, but he directed and 
 worked the newspapers in a way which 
 showed him to be a modern journalist who 
 clearly appreciated the power of the press. 
 Bismarck was a manipulator of the news- 
 papers. He realized fully the immense 
 force they exerted in the country and so he 
 sought their aid to push his policies.
 
 202 The American Newspaper 
 
 Roosevelt knows the value of the press and 
 has used it wisely. A hurried glance at 
 the list of the proprietors of the big city 
 papers will show that they are owned and 
 controlled by a few millionaires who have 
 outside interests; men who own railroads, 
 mines, steamship lines, and the like. The 
 full significance of this fact is left to the 
 reader to meditate upon. 
 
 There is another aspect of this same 
 economic problem of the newspaper and 
 that is the enormous influence of the ad- 
 vertiser. The newspaper editor seeks ad- 
 vertisers as much if not more than he does 
 subscribers. The business manager has 
 more power in newspaperdom than has 
 the circulation editor. The colossal invest- 
 ment of the modern daily is not risked on 
 the fluctuations of an uncertain circulation ; 
 it is made to a large extent on the profit 
 derived from advertisements. It is the 
 advertisements which after all make the 
 paper pay. Many of our large newspapers 
 have become, first and foremost, advertis-
 
 Causes of Newspaper hifluence 203 
 
 ing agencies. A great part of their time 
 and energy is devoted to the pages of ad- 
 vertising, which to a considerable extent 
 determine the "make-up" of the rest of the 
 paper. Advertisements are always given 
 the preference, and so if there is too much 
 news, it is thrown in the waste basket while 
 the advertisements are printed. This is 
 not journalism in the higher sense of that 
 term. It shocks the decent American to 
 see many of our large papers become the 
 agency for a huge mass of cheap and sensa- 
 tional advertisements. That should be 
 left to a special sheet or to a supplement. 
 It should not be mixed with the news but 
 the practical newspaper man will tell you 
 that such a plan would be a flat failure. 
 Advertisements are spread over the pages 
 containing the news in order to catch the 
 eye of the reader. A prominent writer on 
 educational matters relates that he wrote 
 an article on the "Growing Popularity of 
 Horse-Back Riding as an Exercise," but it 
 was rejected because it gave offense to
 
 204 The American Newspaper 
 
 advertisers of bicycles and automobiles. 
 In a similar way the book reviewer must 
 not condemn too strongly the books of that 
 publishing house that advertises liberally, 
 nor must the dramatic critic abuse the 
 plays of the theatrical trust. It is a well- 
 known fact among newspaper men that 
 when advertisements are small the circula- 
 tion is small, when advertisements are large 
 the number of subscribers increases. Ad- 
 vertisers only advertise in those papers 
 which have big subscription lists, and those 
 papers which have big subscription hsts 
 can afford to publish more news than their 
 competitors and to sell their copies at a 
 lower price. The average man wants that 
 paper which can give him the most news 
 and the greatest number of advertisements 
 for the lowest price. Thus it is seen that 
 the business manager controls the policy 
 of the newspaper. The public gets what 
 it demands only in the way that the busi- 
 ness manager dictates. News is published 
 or suppressed according to when it suits the
 
 Causes 0} Newspaper Influence 205 
 
 interest of the proprietors. The editor gets 
 his orders from the business manager, who 
 gets his orders from the owner of the paper. 
 To illustrate, a story of a conversation 
 between a business manager and city 
 editor of a morning daily, may be told here. 
 
 City editor — What ! ! Not print anything about 
 the fire!! Why, the whole city is threatened — 
 biggest blaze in years! 
 
 Business manager — Yes, I know, but you see, 
 the fire started in McBingam's department store, 
 one of our largest advertisers, and I have just got 
 word from them that they would prefer that we 
 say nothing about the fire. 
 
 An anonymous "New York editor," M^ho 
 writes in a current number of the Atlantic 
 Monthly says there is no such thing in this 
 country as a "free and independent press." 
 
 A newspaper is a business enterprise. In view 
 of the cost of paper and the size of each issue, 
 tending to grow larger, every copy is printed at a 
 loss. A one cent newspaper costs six mills for paper 
 alone. In other words, the newspaper cannot live 
 without its advertisers. It would be unfair to say 
 that there are no independent journals in the
 
 2o6 The American Newspaper 
 
 United States; there are many ; but it must always 
 be remembered that the advertisers exercise an 
 enormous power which only the very strongest can 
 refuse to recognize. 
 
 If a newspaper has such a circulation that com- 
 plete publicity can be secured only by advertising 
 in its columns, whatever its editorial policy may 
 be, the question is solved. Nevertheless, within 
 the past three years the department stores have 
 combined to modify the policy of at least three 
 New York daily newspapers. One of the most 
 extreme and professedly independent of these news- 
 papers, always taking the noisiest and most popular 
 line, with the utmost expressed deference to labor 
 unions, withdrew its attack upon the traction 
 companies during the time of the subway strike, 
 on the threatened loss of its department-store ad- 
 vertising. It has never dared to criticize such a 
 store for dismissing employees who attempted to 
 form a union. In other words, this paper is not 
 independent and in the last analysis is governed 
 by its advertisers. 
 
 There is then too much evidence that 
 the bondage of the press to privilege is still 
 a real menace to our national life. The 
 main points of this question have been so 
 ably discussed by Henry George, Jr., in his
 
 Causes of Newspaper Influence 207 
 
 recent book on the Menace oj Privilege that 
 I feel I cannot do better than to quote 
 him. Mr. George holds that the press is 
 the natural mouthpiece of public opinion 
 and that knowing this, "Privilege moves 
 stealthily to get control of that mouth- 
 piece." As has just been shown this is 
 most emphatically true at the present 
 time. To continue to quote Mr. George: 
 
 So long and so many are the arms of privilege, 
 and so slow are the masses of men to overcome 
 the inertia of habit, especially the habit of think- 
 ing, that, save in particular and superficial aspects, 
 privilege is for the present, at least, safe against 
 periodical discussion. However searching the ex- 
 amination and cogent the arguments of any of 
 these monthlies and weekUes as to this or that 
 phase of privilege, not one of the flourishing ones 
 will dare to arraign the larger and wider aspects 
 for fear of hurting its business credit, which privi- 
 lege closely or remotely controls; or of offending 
 a considerable body of readers, some of whom, 
 belonging to the privileged class, might set it down 
 for a "socialist" or "anarchist" organ, and others 
 of whom by only slow degrees in thought, might 
 dub it a "crank" pubUcation.
 
 2o8 The American Newspaper 
 
 It is patent that privilege thus puts 
 distinct Hmitations on the press by attack- 
 ing it at the very outposts. A newspaper 
 costs infinitely more to publish than it ever 
 did before because it requires a larger staff 
 of reporters and artists, already alluded to, 
 to make a standard newspaper. Such a 
 paper cannot live without the support of 
 the propertied classes, and since the proper- 
 tied classes have fixed policies which are 
 chiefly self-interested policies, the news- 
 paper tends to become the voice of this 
 class. Thus the actual fact is that the 
 power of shaping public judgments and 
 educating the masses is within the control 
 of the people who can afford to pay for 
 what they wish to see in print. There is 
 no cause, however, for serious pessimism in 
 all this, as Mr. George wisely concludes: 
 
 The public is not altogether deceived. It sees 
 the livery. It reads this or that paper and makes 
 allowance for bias. This is the habit of the people. 
 It began with the free utterance of the press. 
 Every citizen exercised the same freedom to judge
 
 Causes oj Newspaper Influence 209 
 
 as the editor did to write. And thus it was that 
 De Tocqueville wrote half a century ago that "the 
 personal opinions of the editors have no weights 
 in the eyes of the public; what they seek in a news- 
 paper is knowledge of facts, and it is only by 
 altering or distorting those facts, that a journalist 
 can contribute to the support of his own views. 
 
 Thus is the power of the press hmited 
 and modified as experience develops the 
 pubhc mind. How often do we hear, as 
 a result of this loss of faith in the news- 
 paper, the remark, "Oh, well, it's only 
 newspaper talk." The hope of the nation 
 seems to be in the education of the people. 
 Provide free universal education and as- 
 similate foreign immigration and we need 
 fear little from this menace of the news- 
 paper. 
 
 When it comes to suggesting a remedy 
 
 for acknowledged journalistic shortcomings 
 
 newspaper men differ. Mr. Reedy inclines 
 
 to the view that 
 
 we shall have to return to the use of the pamphlet, 
 if we are to have any such thing as free utterance 
 of heretical opinion Heretical opinion in
 
 2IO The American Newspaper 
 
 this country is always and everywhere nothing but 
 the idea that this government has departed from 
 its original principles, in that it has built up through 
 privilege an ohgarchy of wealth, and in doing so 
 has necessarily done most outrageous violence to 
 the principle of equal rights for all. There can be 
 no privileges if there be not an expropriation of 
 others, to the holder of the privilege. Every privi- 
 lege is built upon an arrogation of the rights of 
 some individual, or of the community at large. 
 With the great newspapers closed to the man with 
 the new ideas, there is no place for him to turn, 
 except to the pamphlet. 
 
 On the other hand, Mr. Sleicher hopes 
 to reform the existing daihes. He is an 
 optimist. He pleads for 
 
 a daily newspaper that shall print less and better 
 news; that shall exercise such censorship over its 
 columns that no one's character shall be assailed, 
 no institution's standing be discredited, no vested 
 right be jeopardized, and no man or woman's 
 motives impugned until the editor has justified his 
 statements. 
 
 The "New York" editor writing in the 
 Atlantic Monthly is more an opportunist 
 than an idealist. He says:
 
 Causes of Newspaper Influence 2 1 1 
 
 Here is what the public wants: a newspaper 
 which treats its readers not as a child or a sage, 
 neither as a hero nor as a fool, but as a person of 
 natural good instincts and average intelligence, 
 amenable to reason, and one to be taught tactfully 
 to stand upon his own feet rather than to take his 
 principles ready made from his teacher. What an 
 ideal A paper which gives the senator and the 
 shop girl what they both want to read and are the 
 better for the reading. A comic cut, if its moral 
 lesson is true, is an editorial with the blessing of 
 God. 
 
 President Hadley feels that the real 
 remedy lies in the awakening of a more 
 enlightened public sentiment on the part 
 of the newspaper readers. 
 
 Each one of us [he asserts] is given a share in 
 governing the country, because it is supposed that 
 he will take an inteUigent interest in facts which 
 affect its management. If he reads his news- 
 paper primarily for the sake of murders and prize 
 fights, and only looks at the columns of public 
 news when they are made as much like reports of 
 murders and prize fights as possible, he fails to do 
 his duty as a citizen. 
 
 Farther on, President Hadley in his
 
 212 The American Newspaper 
 
 article urges, "that the newspaper reader 
 must get into the habit of seeing whether 
 the statements of fact in the paper are sup- 
 ported by evidence or not." Our country 
 can never be well governed, he maintains, 
 unless the people learn the habit of weigh- 
 ing evidence. In answer to the question, 
 Is honest journalism possible? the com- 
 mon opinion seems to be in the affirmative. 
 In conclusion, the results of this study 
 may thus be summarized : the cause of the 
 influence of the American newspaper is 
 inherent in the nation itself and the news- 
 paper is what it is because American society 
 is what it is. Given a certain type of 
 society, we have a certain kind of news- 
 paper ; an agricultural country gives us the 
 local conservative journal; the industrial 
 community a national sensational journal. 
 It is not within the province of this book to 
 discuss remedies. Yet this much may be 
 said, that if this analysis of American 
 journalism is sound, if the character of the 
 press is chiefly sensational and commercial,
 
 Causes oj Newspaper Influence 213 
 
 with only a secondary place given to the 
 cultural aspects of human thought, and if, 
 as has been claimed, the cause of this in- 
 fluence lies in the present character of the 
 American people, it is obvious that the 
 only hope for improvement lies in the eleva- 
 tion of the standards of this people, in 
 emancipation from commercialism and its 
 matter-of-fact and leveling tendencies.
 
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