toward specialization in every department of life and thought. There was
a time when a pronouncement from certain men on nearly any theme would
be accepted by the public, not only with the outward respect commanded
by persons of their social standing, but with a large measure of
positive credence. One who enjoyed a general reputation for scholarship
might set forth his views this week on a question of archæology, next
week on the significance of the latest earthquake, and a week later on
the new canals on the planet Mars, with the certainty that each
outgiving would affect public opinion to a marked degree; whereas
nowadays we demand that the most distinguished members of our learned
faculty stick each to his own hobby; the antiquarian to the excavations,
the seismologist to the tremors of our planet, the astronomer to our
remoter colleagues of the solar system. It is the same with our writers
on political, social, and economic problems. Whereas the old-time editor
was expected to tell his constituency what to think on any subject
called up by the news overnight, it is now taken for granted that even
news must be classified and distributed between specialists for comment;
and the very sense that only one writer is trusted to handle any
particular class of topics inspires a desire in the public to know who
that writer is before paying much attention to his opinions.
The intense competition between newspapers covering the same field
sometimes leads to consequences which do not strengthen the esteem of
the people at large for the press at large. Witness the controversy
which arose over the conflicting claims of Commander Peary and Dr. Cook
as the original discoverer of the North Pole. One newspaper syndicate
having, at large expense, procured a narrative directly from the pen of
Cook, and another accomplished a like feat with Peary, to which could
“we, the people,” look for an unbiased opinion on the matters in
dispute? An admission by either that its star contributor could trifle
with the truth was equivalent to throwing its own exploit into
bankruptcy. So each was bound to stand by the claimant with whom it had
first identified itself, and fight the battle out like an attorney under
retainer; and what started as a serious contest of priority in a
scientific discovery threatened to end as a wrangle over a newspaper
“beat.”
Then, too, we must reckon with the progressive acceleration of the pace
of our twentieth-century life generally. Where we walked in the old
times, we run in these; where we ambled then, we gallop now. It is the
age of electric power, high explosives, articulated steel frames, in the
larger world; of the long-distance telephone, the taxicab, and the
card-index, in the narrower. The problem of existence is reduced to
terms of time-measurement, with the detached lever substituted for the
pendulum because it produces a faster tick.
What is the effect of all this on the modernized newspaper? It must be
first on the ground at every activity, foreseen or unforeseeable, as a
matter of course. Its reporter must get off his “story” in advance of
all his rivals. Never mind strict accuracy of detail—effect is the main
thing; he is writing, not for expert accountants, or professional
statisticians, or analytic philosophers, but for the public; and what
the public wants is, not dry particulars, but color, vitality, heat.
Pictures being a quicker medium of communication with the reader’s mind
than printed text, nine-tenths of our daily press is illustrated, and
the illustrations of distant events are usually turned out by artists in
the home office from verbal descriptions. What signifies it if only
three cars went off the broken bridge, and the imaginative draftsman put
five into his picture because he could not wait for the dispatch of
correction which almost always follows the lurid “scoop”? Who is harmed
if the telegram about the suicide reads “shots” instead of “stabs,” and
the artist depicts the self-destroyer clutching a smoking pistol instead
of a dripping dirk?
It is the province of the champion of the up-to-date cult to minimize
the importance of detail. The purpose of the picture, he argues, is to
stamp a broad impression instantaneously on the mind, and thus spare it
the more tedious process of reading. And if one detail too many is put
in, or one omitted which ought to have been there, whoever is
sufficiently interested to read the text will discover the fault, and
whoever is not will give it no further thought anyway. As to the
descriptive matter, suppose it does contain errors? The busy man of our
day does not read his newspaper with the same solemn intent with which
he reads history. What he asks of it is a lightning-like glimpse of the
world which will show him how far it has moved in the last twelve hours;
and he will not pause to complain of a few deviations from the straight
line of truth, especially if it would have taken more than the twelve
hours to rectify them.
This would perhaps be good logic if the pure-food law were broadened in
scope so as to apply to mental pabulum, and every concocter of newspaper
stories and illustrations were compelled to label his adulterated
products. Then the consumer who does not object to a diet of mixed fact
and falsehood, accuracy and carelessness, so long as the compound is so
seasoned as to tickle his palate, could have his desire, while his
neighbor who wishes an honest article or nothing at all could have his
also. As it is, with no distinguishing marks, we are liable to buy one
thing and get another.
The new order of “speed before everything” has brought about its changes
at both ends of a newspaper staff. The editorial writer who used to take
a little time to look into the ramifications of a topic before reducing
his opinions to writing, feels humiliated if an event occurs on which he
cannot turn off a few comments at sight; but he has still a refuge in
such modifying clauses as “in the light of the meagre details now before
us,” or “as it appears at this writing,” or “in spite of the absence of
full particulars, which may later change the whole aspect of affairs.”
No such covert offers itself to the news-getter in the open field. What
he says must be definite, outright, unqualified, or the blue pencil
slashes remorselessly through his “it is suspected,” or “according to a
rumor which cannot be traced to its original source.” What business has
he to “suspect”? He is hired to know. For what, pray, is the newspaper
paying him, if not for tracing rumors to their original source; and
further still, if so instructed? He is there to be, not a thinker, but a
worker; a human machine like a steam potato-digger, which, supplied with
the necessary energizing force from behind, drives its prods under
nature’s mantle, and grubs out the succulent treasures she is trying to
conceal.
III
Nowhere is the change more patent than in the department of special
correspondence. At an important point like Washington, for instance, the
old corps of writers were men of mature years, most of whom had passed
an apprenticeship in the editorial chair, and still held a
semi-editorial relation to the newspapers they represented. They had
studied political history and economics, social philosophy, and kindred
subjects, as a preparation for their life-work, and were full of a
wholesome sense of responsibility to the public as well as to their
employers. Poore, Nelson, Boynton, and others of their class, were known
by name, and regarded as authorities, in the communities to which they
daily ministered. They were thoughtful workers as well as enterprising.
They went for their news to the fountain-head, instead of dipping it out
of any chance pool by the wayside. When they sent in to their home
offices either fact or prophecy, they accompanied it with an
interpretation which both editors and public knew to be no mere feat in
lightning guesswork; and the fame which any of them prized more than a
long calendar of “beats” and “exclusives” was that which would
occasionally move a worsted competitor to confess, “I missed that news;
but if —— sent it out, it is true.”
When, in the later eighties, the new order came, it came with a rush.
The first inkling of it was a notice received, in the middle of one busy
night, by a correspondent who had been faithfully serving a prominent
Western newspaper for a dozen years, to turn over his bureau to a young
man who up to that time had been doing local reporting on its home
staff. Transfers of other bureaus followed fast. A few were left, and
still remain, undisturbed in personnel or character of work. Here and
there, too, an old-fashioned correspondent was retained, but retired to
an emeritus post, with the privilege of writing a signed letter when the
spirit moved him; while a nimbler-footed successor assumed titular
command and sent the daily dispatches. The bald fact was that the
newspaper managers had bowed to the hustling humor of the age. They no
longer cared to serve journalistic viands, which required deliberate
mastication, to patrons who clamored for a quick lunch. So they passed
on to their representatives at a distance the same injunction they were
incessantly pressing upon their reporters at home: “Get the news, and
send it while it is hot. Don’t wait to tell us what it means or what it
points to; we can do our own ratiocinating.”
Is the public a loser by this obscuration of the correspondent’s former
function? I believe so. His appeal is no longer put to the reader
directly: he becomes the mere tool of the newspaper, which in its turn
furnishes to the reader such parts of his and other communications as it
chooses, and in such forms as best suit its ulterior purposes. Doubtless
this conduces to a more perfect administrative coördination in the staff
at large, but it greatly weakens the correspondent’s sense of personal
responsibility. Poore had his constituency, Boynton had his, Nelson had
his. None of these men would, under any conceivable stress of
competition, have wittingly misled the group of readers he had attached
to himself; nor would one of them have tolerated any tampering in the
home office with essential matters in a contribution to which he had
signed his name. Indeed, so well was this understood that I never heard
of anybody’s trying to tamper with them. It occasionally happened that
the correspondent set forth a view somewhat at variance with that
expressed on the editorial page of the same paper; but each party to
this disagreement respected the other, and the public was assumed to be
capable of making its own choice between opposing opinions clearly
stated. A special virtue of the plan of independent correspondence lay
in the opportunity it often afforded the habitual reader of a single
newspaper to get at least a glance at more than one side of a public
question.
Among the conspicuous fruits of the new régime is the direction
sometimes sent to a correspondent to “write down” this man or “write up”
that project. He knows that it is a case of obey orders or resign, and
it brings to the surface all the Hessian he may have in his blood. If he
is enough of a casuist, he will try to reconcile good conscience with
worldly wisdom by picturing himself as a soldier commanded to do
something of which he does not approve. Disobedience at the post of duty
is treachery; resignation in the face of an unwelcome billet is
desertion. So he does what he is bidden, though it may be at the cost of
his self-respect and the esteem of others whose kind opinion he values.
I have had a young correspondent come to me for information about
something under advisement at the White House, and apologize for not
going there himself by showing me a note from his editor telling him to
“give the President hell.” As he had always been treated with courtesy
at the White House, he had not the hardihood to go there while engaged
in his campaign of abuse.
Another, who had been intimate with a member of the administration then
in power, was suddenly summoned one day to a conference with the
publisher of his paper. He went in high spirits, believing that the
invitation must mean at least a promotion in rank or an increase of
salary. He returned crestfallen. Several days afterward he revealed to
me in confidence that the paper had been unsuccessfully seeking some
advertising controlled by his friend, and that the publisher had offered
him one thousand dollars for a series of articles—anonymous, if he
preferred—exposing the private weaknesses of the eminent man, and giving
full names, dates, and other particulars as to a certain unsavory
association in which he was reported to find pleasure! Still another
brought me a dispatch he had prepared, requesting me to look it over and
see whether it contained anything strictly libelous. It proved to be a
forecast of the course of the Secretary of the Treasury in a financial
crisis then impending. “Technically speaking,” I said, after reading it,
“there is plenty of libelous material in this, for it represents the
Secretary as about to do something which, to my personal knowledge, he
has never contemplated, and which would stamp him as unfit for his
position if he should attempt it. But as a matter of fact he will ignore
your story, as he is putting into type to-day a circular which is to be
made public to-morrow, telling what his plan really is, and that will
authoritatively discredit you.”
“Thank you,” he answered, rather stiffly. “I have my orders to pitch
into the Secretary whenever I get a chance. I shall send this to-day,
and to-morrow I can send another saying that my exclusive disclosures
forced him to change his programme at the last moment.”
These are sporadic cases, I admit, yet they indicate a mischievous
tendency; just as each railway accident is itself sporadic, but too
frequent fatalities from a like cause on the same line point to
something wrong in the management of the road. It is not necessary to
call names on the one hand, or indulge in wholesale denunciation on the
other, in order to indicate the extremes to which the current pace in
journalism must inevitably lead if kept up. The broadest-minded and most
honorable men in our calling realize the disagreeable truth. A few of
the great newspapers, too, have the courage to cling still to the old
ideals, both in their editorial attitude and in their instructions to
their news-gatherers. Possibly their profits are smaller for their
squeamishness; but that the better quality of their patronage makes up
in a measure for its lesser quantity, is evident to any one familiar
with the advertising business. Moreover, in the character of its
employees and in the zeal and intelligence of their service, a newspaper
conducted on the higher plane possesses an asset which cannot be
appraised in dollars and cents. Of one such paper a famous man once said
to me, “I disagree with half its political views; I am regarded as a
personal enemy by its editor; but I read it religiously every day, and
it is the only daily that enters the front door of my home. It is a
paper written by gentlemen for gentlemen; and, though it exasperates me
often, it never offends my nostrils with the odors of the slums.”
This last remark leads to another consideration touching the relaxed
hold of the press on public confidence: I refer to the topics treated in
the news columns, and the manner of their presentation. Its importance
is attested by the sub-titles or mottoes adopted by several prominent
newspapers, emphasizing their appeal to the family as a special
constituency. In spite of the intense individualism, the reciprocal
independence of the sexes, and the freedom from the trammels of feudal
tradition of which we Americans boast, the social unit in this country
is the family. Toward it a thousand lines of interest converge, from it
a thousand lines of influence flow. Public opinion is unconsciously
moulded by it, for the atmosphere of the home follows the father into
his office, the son into his college, the daughter into her intimate
companionships. The newspaper, therefore, which keeps the family in
touch with the outside world, though it may have to be managed with more
discretion than one whose circulation is chiefly in the streets, finds
its compensation in its increased radius of influence of the subtler
sort. For such a field, nothing is less fit than the noisome domestic
scandals and the gory horrors which fill so much of the space in
newspapers of the lowest rank, and which in these later years have made
occasional inroads into some of a higher grade. Unfortunately, these
occasional inroads do more to damage the general standing of the press
than the habitual revel in vulgarity. For a newspaper which frankly
avows itself unhampered by niceties of taste can be branded and set
aside as belonging in the impossible category; whereas, when one with a
clean exterior and a reputation for respectability proves unworthy, its
faithlessness arouses in the popular mind a distrust of all its class.
And yet, whatever we may say of the modern press on its less commendable
side, we are bound to admit that newspapers, like governments, fairly
reflect the people they serve. Charles Dudley Warner once went so far as
to say that no matter how objectionable the character of a paper may be,
it is always a trifle better than the patrons on whom it relies for its
support. I suspect that Mr. Warner’s comparison rested on the greater
frankness of the bad paper, which, by very virtue of its mode of appeal,
is bound to make a brave parade of its worst qualities; whereas the
reader who is loudest in proclaiming in public his repugnance for
horrors, and his detestation of scandals, may in private be buying daily
the sheet which peddles both most shamelessly.
This sort of conventional hypocrisy among the common run of people is
easier to forgive than the same thing among the cultivated few whom we
accept as mentors. I stumbled upon an illuminating incident about five
years ago which I cannot forbear recalling here. A young man just
graduated from college, where he had attracted some attention by the
cleverness of his pen, was invited to a position on the staff of the
_New York Journal_. Visiting a leading member of the college faculty to
say farewell, he mentioned this compliment with not a little pride. In
an instant the professor was up in arms, with an earnest protest against
his handicapping his whole career by having anything to do with so
monstrous an exponent of yellow journalism. The lad was deeply moved by
the good man’s outburst, and went home sorrowful. After a night’s sleep
on it, he resolved to profit by the admonition, and accordingly called
upon the editor, and asked permission to withdraw his tentative
acceptance. In the explanation which followed he inadvertently let slip
the name of his adviser. He saw a cynical smile cross the face of Mr.
Hearst, who summoned a stenographer, and in his presence dictated a
letter to the professor, requesting a five-hundred-word signed article
for the next Sunday’s issue and inclosing a check for two hundred and
fifty dollars. On Sunday the ingenuous youth beheld the article in a
conspicuous place on the _Journal’s_ editorial page, with the
professor’s full name appended in large capitals.
We have already noted some of the effects produced on the press by the
hurry-skurry of our modern life. Quite as significant are sundry
phenomena recorded by Dr. Walter Dill Scott as the result of an inquiry
into the reading habits of two thousand representative business and
professional men in a typical American city. Among other things, he
discovered that most of them spent not to exceed fifteen minutes a day
on their newspapers. As some spent less, and some divided the time
between two or three papers, the average period devoted to any one paper
could safely be placed at from five to ten minutes. The admitted
practice of most of the group was to look at the headlines, the table of
contents, and the weather reports, and then apparently at some specialty
in which they were individually interested. The editorial articles seem
to have offered them few attractions, but news items of one sort or
another engaged seventy-five per cent of their attention.
In an age as skeptical as ours, there is nothing astonishing in the low
valuation given, by men of a class competent to do their own thinking,
to anonymous opinion; but it will strike many as strange that this class
takes no deeper interest in the news of the day. The trained
psychologist may find it worth while to study out here the relation of
cause and effect. Does the ordinary man of affairs show so scant regard
for his newspaper because he no longer believes half it tells him, or
only because his mind is so absorbed in matters closer at hand, and
directly affecting his livelihood? Have the newspapers perverted the
public taste with sensational surprises till it can no longer appreciate
normal information normally conveyed?
Professor Münsterberg would doubtless have told us that the foregoing
statistics simply justify his charge against Americans as a people; that
we have gone leaping and gasping through life till we have lost the
faculty of mental concentration, and hence that few of us can read any
more. Whatever the explanation, the central fact has been duly
recognized by all the yellow journals, and by some also which have not
yet passed beyond the cream-colored stage. The “scare heads” and
exaggerated type which, as a lure for purchasers, filled all their needs
a few years ago, are no longer regarded as sufficient, but have given
way to startling bill-board effects, with huge headlines, in
block-letter and vermilion ink, spread across an entire front page.
The worst phase of this whole business, however, is one which does not
appear on the surface, but which certainly offers food for serious
reflection. The point of view from which all my criticisms have been
made is that of the citizen of fair intelligence and education. It is he
who has been weaned from his faith in the organ of opinion which
satisfied his father, till he habitually sneers at “mere newspaper
talk”; it is he who has descended from reading to simply skimming the
news, and who consciously suffers from the errors which adulterate, and
the vulgarity which taints, that product. But there is another element
in the community which has not his well-sharpened instinct for
discrimination; which can afford to buy only the cheapest, and is drawn
toward the lowest, daily prints; which, during the noon hour and at
night, finds time to devour all the tenement tragedies, all the palace
scandals, and all the incendiary appeals designed to make the poor man
think that thrift is robbery. Over that element we find the vicious
newspaper still exercising an enormous sway; and, admitting that so
large a proportion of the outwardly reputable press has lost its hold
upon the better class of readers, what must we look for as the resultant
of two such unbalanced forces?
Not a line of these few pages has been written in a carping, much less
in a pessimistic spirit. I love the profession in whose practice I
passed the largest and happiest part of my life; but the very pride I
feel in its worthy achievements makes me, perhaps, the more sensitive to
its shortcomings as these reveal themselves to an unprejudiced scrutiny.
The limits of this article as to both space and scope forbid my
following its subject into some inviting by-paths: as, for instance, the
distinction to be observed between initiative and support in comparing
the influence of the modern newspaper with that of its ancestor of a
half-century ago. I am sorry, also, to put forth so many strictures
without furnishing a constructive sequel. It would be interesting, for
example, to weigh such possibilities as an endowed newspaper which
should do for the press, as a protest against its offenses of
deliberation and its faults of haste and carelessness, what an endowed
theatre might do for the rescue of the stage from a condition of chronic
inanity. But it must remain for a more profound philosopher, whose
function is to specialize in opinion rather than to generalize in
comment, to show what remedies are practicable for the disorders which
beset the body of our modern journalism.
NEWSPAPER MORALS
BY H. L. MENCKEN
I
Aspiring, toward the end of my nonage, to the black robes of a dramatic
critic, I took counsel with an ancient whose service went back to the
days of _Our American Cousin_, asking him what qualities were chiefly
demanded by the craft.