yourself up for an exam. in journalism, and that I am your examiner.
Question One: The house was soon on fire; much sympathy is expressed
with the sufferers. Can you translate that into newspaper English?’
“‘Let me see,’ answered Rob, entering into the spirit of the
examination. ‘How would this do: In a moment the edifice was enveloped
in shooting tongues of flame; the appalling catastrophe has plunged the
whole street into the gloom of night’?
“‘Good. Question Two: A man hangs himself; what is the technical heading
for this?’
“‘Either “Shocking Occurrence” or “Rash Act.’”
“‘Question Three: _Pabulum, Cela va sans dire, Par excellence, Ne plus
ultra._ What are these? Are there any more of them?’
“‘They are scholarships,’ replied Rob; ‘and there are two more, namely,
_Tour de force_ and _Terra firma_.’
“‘Question Four: A. (a soldier) dies at 6 P.M. with his back to the foe;
B. (a philanthropist) dies at 1 A.M.; which of these, speaking
technically, would you call a creditable death?’
“‘The soldier’s, because time was given to set it.’
“‘Quite right. Question Five: Have you ever known a newspaper which did
not have the largest circulation and was not the most influential
advertising medium?’
“‘Never.’
“‘Well, Mr. Angus,’ said Simms, tiring of the examination, ‘you have
passed with honors.’”
Many cynical admissions by the initiate could be quoted. The question
was recently put to a young man who had a place on the staff of a
morning newspaper: “Are you not often brought to a standstill for lack
of knowledge?” “No,” he replied, “as a rule I go gayly ahead, and
without a pause. My only difficulty is when I happen to know something
of the subject.” But no one takes these sarcasms too seriously. They are
a part of the Bohemian tradition of journalism. But Bohemianism has gone
out of the newspaper world, as the profession has become more
specialized, more of a serious business. Even in his time, Jules Janin,
writing to Madame de Girardin apropos of her _École des Journalistes_,
happily exposed the “assumption that good leading articles ever were or
ever could be produced over punch and broiled bones, amidst intoxication
and revelry.”
Editors may still be ignorant, but at any rate they are not unblushingly
devil-may-care about it. They do not take their work as a pure lark.
They try to get their facts right. And the appreciation of accurate
knowledge, if not always the market for it, is certainly higher now in
newspaper offices than it used to be. The multiplied apparatus of
information has done at least that for the profession. Much of its
knowledge may be “index-learning,” but at any rate it gets the eel by
the tail. And the editor has a fairish retort for the general writer in
the fact that the latter might more often be caught tripping if he had
to produce his wisdom on demand and get it irrevocably down in black and
white and in a thousand hands without time for consideration or
amendment. This truth was frankly put by Motley in a letter to Holmes in
1862: “I take great pleasure in reading your prophecies, and intend to
be just as free in hazarding my own.... If you make mistakes, you shall
never hear of them again, and I promise to forget them. Let me ask the
same indulgence from you in return. This is what makes letter-writing a
comfort, and journalism dangerous.”
It is a distinction which an editor may well lay to his soul when
accused of being a mere Gigadibs—
You, for example, clever to a fault,
The rough and ready man who write apace,
Read somewhat seldomer, think, perhaps, even less.
Even in journalism, the Spanish proverb holds that knowing something
does not take up any room—_el saber no ocupa lugar_. Special information
is, as I often have occasion to say to applicants for work, the one
thing that gives a stranger a chance in a newspaper office. The most
out-of-the-way knowledge has a trick of falling pat to the day’s need. A
successful London journalist got his first foothold by knowing all about
Scottish Disruption, when that struggle between the Established and Free
churches burst upon the horizon. The editor simply had to have the
services of a man who could tell an interested English public all about
the question which was setting the heather afire. Similarly, not long
since, a young American turned up in New York with apparently the most
hopeless outfit for journalistic work. He had spent eight years in Italy
studying mediæval church history—and that was his basis for thinking he
could write for a daily paper of the palpitating present! But it
happened just then that the aged Leo XIII drew to his end, and here was
a man who knew all the _Papabili_—cardinals and archbishops; who
understood thoroughly the ceremony and procedure of electing a pope; who
was drenched in all the actualities of the situation, and who could,
therefore, write about it with an intelligence and sympathy which made
his work compel acceptance, and gave him entrance into journalism by the
unlikely Porta Romana. It is but an instance of the way in which a
profession growing more serious is bound to take knowledge more
seriously.
III
It is, however, what Sir Wemyss Reid called the “Wegotism” of the press
that some fastidious souls find more offensive than its occasional
betrayals of crass ignorance. Lecky remarked upon it, in his chapters on
the rise of newspapers in England. “Few things to a reflecting mind are
more curious than the extraordinary weight which is attached to the
anonymous expression of political opinion. Partly by the illusion of the
imagination, partly by the weight of emphatic assertion, a plural
pronoun, conspicuous type, and continual repetition, unknown men are
able, without exciting any surprise or sense of incongruity, to assume
the language of the accredited representatives of the nation, and to
rebuke, patronize, or insult its leading men with a tone of authority
which would not be tolerated from the foremost statesmen of their time.”
A remedy frequently suggested is signed editorials. Let the Great
Unknown come out from behind his veil of anonymity, and drop his “plural
of majesty.” Then we should know him for the insignificant and
negligible individual he is. It is true that some hesitating attempts of
that kind have been made in this country, mostly in the baser
journalism, but they have not succeeded. There is no reason to think
that this practice will ever take root among us. It arose in France
under conditions of rigorous press censorship, and really goes in spirit
with the wish of government or society to limit that perfect freedom of
discussion which anonymous journalism alone can enjoy. Legal
responsibility is, of course, fixed in the editor and proprietors. Nor
is the literary disguise, as a rule, of such great consequence, or so
difficult to penetrate. Most editors would feel like making the same
answer to an aggrieved person that Swift gave to one of his victims. In
one of his short poems he threw some of his choicest vitriol upon one
Bettesworth, a lawyer of considerable eminence, who in a rage went to
Swift and demanded whether he was the author of that poem. The Dean’s
reply was: “Mr. Bettesworth, I was in my youth acquainted with great
lawyers who, knowing my disposition to satire, advised me that, if any
scoundrel or blockhead whom I had lampooned should ask, ‘Are you the
author of this paper?’ I should tell him that I was not the author; and
therefore I tell you, Mr. Bettesworth, that I am not the author of these
lines.”
But the real defense of impersonal journalism lies in the conception of
a newspaper, not as an individual organ, but as a public institution.
Walter Bagehot, in his _Physics and Politics_, uses the newspaper as a
good illustration of an organism subduing everything to type. Individual
style becomes blended in the common style. The excellent work of
assistant editors is ascribed to their chief, just as his blunders are
shouldered off upon them. It becomes impossible to dissect out the
separate personalities which contribute to the making up of the whole.
The paper represents, not one man’s thought, but a body of opinion.
Behind what is said each day stands a long tradition. Writers,
reviewers, correspondents, clientele, add their mite, but it is little
more than Burns’s snowflake falling into the river. The great stream
flows on. I would not minimize personality in journalism. It has counted
enormously; it still counts. But the institutional, representative idea
is now most telling. The play of individuality is much restricted; has
to do more with minor things than great policies. John Stuart Mill, in a
letter of 1863 to Motley, very well hit off what may be called the
chance rôle of the individual in modern journalism: “The line it [the
London _Times_] takes on any particular question is much more a matter
of accident than is supposed. It is sometimes better than the public,
and sometimes worse. It was better on the Competitive Examinations and
on the Revised Educational Code, in each case owing to the accidental
position of a particular man who happened to write on it—both which men
I could name to you.”
Wendell Phillips told of once taking a letter to the editor of a Boston
paper, whom he knew, with a request that it be published. The editor
read it over, and said, “Mr. Phillips, that is a very good and
interesting letter, and I shall be glad to publish it; but I wish you
would consent to strike out the last paragraph.”
“Why,” said Phillips, “that paragraph is the precise thing for which I
wrote the whole letter. Without that it would be pointless.”
“Oh, I see that,” replied the editor; “and what you say in it is
perfectly true,—the very children in the streets know that it is true. I
fully agree with it all myself. Yet it is one of those things which it
will not do to say publicly. However, if you insist upon it, I will
publish the letter as it stands.”
It was published the next morning, and along with it a short editorial
reference to it, saying that a letter from Mr. Phillips would be found
in another column, and that it was extraordinary that so keen a mind as
his should have fallen into the palpable absurdity contained in the last
paragraph.
The story suggests the harmful side of the interaction between press and
public. It sometimes puts a great strain upon the intellectual honesty
of the editor. He is doubtful how much truth his public will bear. His
audience may seem to him, on occasions, minatory, as well as, on others,
encouraging. So hard is it for the journalist to be sure, with Dr.
Arnold, that the times will always bear what an honest man has to say.
At this point, undoubtedly, we come upon the moral perils of the
newspaper man. And when outsiders believe that he writes to order, or
without conviction, they naturally hold a low view of his occupation.
Journalism, wrote Mrs. Mark Pattison in 1879, “harms those, even the
most gifted, who continue in it after early life. They cannot honestly
write the kind of thing required for their public if they are really
striving to reach the highest level of thought and work possible to
themselves.” If this were always and absolutely true, little could be
said for the Fourth Estate. We should all have to agree with James
Smith, of _Rejected Addresses_ fame:—
Hard is his lot who edits, thankless job!
A Sunday journal for the factious mob.
With bitter paragraph and caustic jest,
He gives to turbulence the day of rest,
Condemn’d this week rash rancor to instil,
Or thrown aside, the next, for one who will.
Alike undone, or if he praise or rail
(For this affects his safety, that his sale),
He sinks, alas, in luckless limbo set—
If loud for libel, and if dumb for debt.
The real libel, however, would be the assertion that the work of
American journalism is done to any large extent in that spirit of the
galley slave. With all its faults, it is imbued with the desire of being
of public service. That is often overlaid by other motives—money-making,
timeserving, place-hunting. But at the high demand of a great moral or
political crisis, it will assert itself, and editors will be found as
ready as their fellows to hazard their all for the common weal. To show
what sort of fire may burn at the heart of the true journalist, I append
a letter never before published:—
“NEW YORK, _April 23, 1867_.
“There is a man here named Barnard, on the bench of the Supreme
Court. Some years ago he kept a gambling saloon in San Francisco,
and was a notorious blackleg and _vaurien_. He came then to New
York, plunged into the basest depths of city politics, and emerged
Recorder. After two or three years he got by the same means to be a
judge of the Supreme Court. His reputation is now of the very worst.
He is unscrupulous, audacious, barefaced, and corrupt to the last
degree. He not only takes bribes, but he does not even wait for them
to be offered him. He sends for suitors, or rather for their
counsel, and asks for the money as the price of his judgments. A
more unprincipled scoundrel does not breathe. There is no way in
which he does not prostitute his office, and in saying this I am
giving you the unanimous opinion of the bar and the public. His
appearance on the bench I consider literally an awful occurrence.
Yet the press and bar are muzzled,—for that is what it comes to,—and
this injurious scoundrel has actually got possession of the highest
court in the State, and dares the Christian public to expose his
villainy.
“If I were satisfied that, if the public knew all this, it would lie
down under it, I would hand the _Nation_ over to its creditors and
take myself and my children out of the community. I will not believe
that yet. I am about to say all I dare say—as yet—in the _Nation_
to-morrow. Barnard is capable of ruining us, if he thought it worth
his while, and could of course imprison me for contempt, if he took
it into his head, and I should have no redress. You have no idea
what a labyrinth of wickedness and chicane surrounds him. Moreover,
I have no desire either for notoriety or martyrdom, and am in
various ways not well fitted to take a stand against rascality on
such a scale as this. But this I do think, that it is the duty of
every honest man to do something. Barnard has now got possession of
the courts, and if he can silence the press also, where is reform to
come from?... I think some movement ought to be set on foot having
for its object the hunting down of corrupt politicians, the exposure
of jobs, the sharpening of the public conscience on the whole
subject of political purity. If this cannot be done, the growing
wealth will kill—not the nation, but the form of government without
which, as you and I believe, the nation would be of little value to
humanity.”
This was written to Professor Charles Eliot Norton by the late Edwin
Lawrence Godkin. The Barnard referred to was, of course, the infamous
judge from whom, a few years later, the judicial robes were stripped.
Mr. Godkin’s attack upon him was, so far as I know, the first that was
made in print. But the passion of indignation which glowed in that great
journalist, with his willingness to hazard his own fortunes in the
public behalf, only sets forth conspicuously what humbler members of the
press feel as their truest motive and their noblest reward.
PRESS TENDENCIES AND DANGERS
BY OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD
The passing of the _Boston Journal_, in the eighty-fourth year of its
age, by merger with the _Boston Herald_ has rightly been characterized
as a tragedy of journalism. Yet it is no more significant than the
similar merger of the _Cleveland Plain Dealer_ and the _Cleveland
Leader_, or the _New York Press_ and the _New York Sun_. All are in
obedience to the drift toward consolidation which has been as marked in
journalism as in other spheres of business activity—for this is purely a
business matter. True, in the cases of the Sun and the _Press_ Mr.
Munsey’s controlling motive was probably the desire to obtain the
Associated Press service for the _Sun_, which he could have secured in
no other way. But Mr. Munsey was not blind to the advantages of
combining the circulation of the _Press_ and the _Sun_, and has profited
by it.
It is quite possible that there will be further consolidations in New
York and Boston before long; at least conditions are ripe for them.
Chicago has now only four morning newspapers, including the
_Staats-Zeitung_, but one of these has an uncertain future before it.
The _Herald_ of that city is the net result of amalgamations which
successively wiped out the _Record_, the _Times_, the _Chronicle_, and
the _Inter-Ocean_. It is only a few years ago that the _Boston Traveler_
and the _Evening Herald_ were consolidated, and Philadelphia, Baltimore,
New Orleans, Portland (Oregon), and Philadelphia are other cities in
which there has been a reduction in the number of dailies.
In the main it is correct to say that the decreasing number of
newspapers in our larger American cities is due to the enormously
increased costs of maintaining great dailies. This has been found to
limit the number which a given advertising territory will support. It is
a fact, too, that there are few other fields of enterprise in which so
many unprofitable enterprises are maintained. There is one penny daily
in New York which has not paid a cent to its owners in twenty years;
during that time its income has met its expenses only once. Another of
our New York dailies loses between $400,000 and $500,000 a year, if
well-founded report is correct, but the deficit is cheerfully met each
year. It may be safely stated that scarcely half of our New York morning
and evening newspapers return an adequate profit.
The most striking fact about the recent consolidations is that this
leaves Cleveland with only one morning newspaper, the _Plain Dealer_. It
is the sixth city in size in the United States, yet it has not appeared
to be large enough to support both the _Plain Dealer_ and the _Leader_,
not even with the aid of what is called “foreign,” or national,
advertising, that is, advertising which originates outside of Cleveland.
There are now many other cities in which the seeker after morning news
is compelled to take it from one source only, whatever his political
affiliations may be: in Indianapolis, from the _Star_; in Detroit, from
the _Free Press_; in Toledo, from the _Times_; in Columbus, from the
_State Journal_; in Scranton, from the _Republican_; in St. Paul, from
the _Pioneer Press_; and in New Orleans, from the _Times-Picayune_. This
circumstance comes as a good deal of a shock to those who fancy that at
least the chief political parties should have their representative
dailies in each city—for that is the old American tradition.
Turning to the State of Michigan, we find that the development has gone
even further, for here are some sizable cities with no morning newspaper
and but one in the evening field. In fourteen cities whose population
has more than doubled during the last twenty-five years the number of
daily newspapers printed in the English language has shrunk from 42 to
only 23. In nine of these fourteen cities there is not a single morning
newspaper; they have but one evening newspaper each to give them the
news of the world, unless they are content to receive their news by mail
from distant cities. On Sunday they are better off, for there are seven
Sunday newspapers in these towns. In the five cities having more than
one newspaper, there are six dailies that are thought to be unprofitable
to their owners, and it is believed that, within a short time, the
number of one-newspaper cities will grow to twelve, in which case
Detroit and Grand Rapids will be the only cities with morning dailies.
It is reported by competent witnesses that the one-newspaper towns are
not only well content with this state of affairs, but that they actively
resist any attempt to change the situation, the merchants in some cases
banding together voluntarily to maintain the monopoly by refusing
advertising to those wishing to start competition.
It is of course true that in the larger cities of the East there are
other causes than the lack of advertising to account for the
disappearance of certain newspapers. Many of them have deserved to
perish because they were inefficiently managed or improperly edited. The
_Boston Transcript_ declares that the reason for the _Journal’s_ demise
was lack “of that singleness and clearness of direction and purpose
which alone establish confidence in and guarantee abiding support of a
newspaper.” If some of the Hearst newspapers may be cited as examples of
successful journals that have neither clearness nor honesty of purpose,
it is not to be questioned that a newspaper with clear-cut, vigorous
personalities behind it is far more likely to survive than one that does
not have them. But it does not help the situation to point out, as does
the _Columbia_ (S. C.) _State_, that “sentiment and passion” have been
responsible for the launching of many of the newspaper wrecks; for often
sentiment and the righteous passion of indignation have been responsible
for the foundation of notable newspapers such as the _New York Tribune_,
whose financial success was, for a time at least, quite notable. It is
the danger that newspaper conditions, because of the enormously
increased costs and this tendency to monopoly, may prevent people who
are actuated by passion and sentiment from founding newspapers, which is
causing many students of the situation much concern. What is to be the
hope for the advocates of new-born and unpopular reforms if they cannot
have a press of their own, as the Abolitionists and the founders of the
Republican party set up theirs in a remarkably short time, usually with
poverty-stricken bank accounts?
If no good American can read of cities having only one newspaper without
concern,—since democracy depends largely upon the presenting of both
sides of every issue,—it does not add any comfort to know that it would
take millions to found a new paper, on a strictly business basis, in our
largest cities. Only extremely wealthy men could undertake such a
venture,—precisely as the rejuvenated _Chicago Herald_ has been financed
by a group of the city’s wealthiest magnates,—and even then the success
of the undertaking would be questionable if it were not possible to
secure the Associated Press service for the newcomer.
The “journal of protest,” it may be truthfully said, is to-day being
confined, outside of the Socialistic press, to weeklies of varying
types, of which the _Survey_, the _Public_, and the _St. Louis Mirror_,
are examples; and scores of them fall by the wayside. The large sums
necessary to establish a journal of opinion are being demonstrated by
the _New Republic_. Gone is the day when a _Liberator_ can be founded
with a couple of hundred dollars as capital. The struggle of the _New
York Call_ to keep alive, and that of some of our Jewish newspapers, are
clear proof that conditions to-day make strongly against those who are
fired by passion and sentiment to give a new and radical message to the
world.
True, there is still opportunity in small towns for editorial courage
and ability; William Allen White has demonstrated that. But in the small
towns the increased costs due to the war are being felt as keenly as in
the larger cities. _Ayer’s Newspaper Directory_ shows a steady shrinkage
during the last three years in the weeklies, semi-weeklies,
tri-weeklies, and semi-monthlies, there being 300 less in 1916 than in
1914. There lies before me a list of 76 dailies and weeklies over which
the funeral rites have been held since January 1, 1917; to some of them
the government has administered the _coup de grace_. There are three
Montreal journals among them, and a number of little German
publications, together with the notorious _Appeal to Reason_ and a
couple of farm journals: 21 states are represented in the list, which is
surely not complete.