better service, the mail-order house may occasionally undersell the home
merchant, the glory of the city’s lights may dazzle; but, at the end of
the week, home and home institutions are best; so only one publication
gives the news we most wish to know,—the country paper. The city
business man throws away his financial journal and his yellow “extra,”
and tears open the pencil-addressed home paper that brings to him
memories of new-mown hay and fallow fields and boyhood. Regardless of
its style, its grammar, or its politics, it holds its reader with a grip
that the city editor may well envy.
In these times the country editor is, like the publisher of the city, a
business man. Scores of offices of country weeklies within two hundred
miles of the Rockies (which is about as far inland as we can get
nowadays) have linotypes or type-setting machines, run the presses with
an electric motor, and give the editor an income of three thousand
dollars or more a year for labor that allows many a vacation day. The
country editor gets a good deal out of life. He lives well; he travels
much; he meets the best people of his state; and, if he be inclined, he
can accomplish much for his own improvement. Added to this is the joy of
rewarding the honorable, decent people of the town with good words and
helpful publicity, and the satisfaction of seeing that the rascals get
their dues,—and get them they do if the editor lives and the rascals
live, for in the country town the editor’s turn always comes. It may be
long delayed, but it arrives. If he use his power with honesty and
intelligence, he can do much good for the community.
In the opinion of some this danger threatens: the increased rapidity of
transportation, the multitude of fast trains, and the facilities for
placing the big city papers within a zone of one hundred miles of the
office of publication, mean the large representation of particular
localities, or even the establishment of editions devoted to them. The
city paper tries to absorb the local patronage through the competent
correspondent who practically edits certain columns or pages of the
journal. In the thickly settled East this is more successful than in the
West, where distance helps the local paper. But the zone is widening
with every improvement in transportation of mails, and soon few sections
of the country will be outside the possibilities of some city paper’s
enterprise in this direction.
When this happens, will the local weekly go out of existence and its
subscribers be attached to the big city paper whose facilities for
getting news and whose enterprise in reaching the uttermost parts of the
world far outstrip the slow-going weekly’s best efforts? It is not
likely. The county-seat weekly to-day, with its energetic correspondent
in the town of Centreville, adds to its list in that section because it
gives the news fully and crisply; but it does not drive out of business
the Centreville _Palladium_, whose editor has a personal acquaintance
with every subscriber and who caters to the home pride of the community.
It is probable that the _Palladium_ will be more enterprising and will
devote more attention to the doings of the dwellers in Centreville in
order to keep abreast with the competition; but it cannot be driven out,
nor its editor forced from his position by dearth of business. The life
of a forceful paper is long. One such paper was sold and its name
changed eighteen years ago; yet letters and subscriptions still are
addressed to the old publication. A hold like that on a community’s life
cannot be broken by competition.
IV
The evolution of the country weekly into the country daily is becoming
easier as telephone and telegraph become cheaper, and transportation
enables publishers to secure at remote points a daily “plate” service
that includes telegraph news up to a few hours of the time of
publication. The publishing of an Associated Press daily, which twenty
years ago always attended a town’s boom and generally resulted in the
suspension of a bank or two and the financial ruin of several families,
has become simplified until it is within reach of modest means.
Instead of the big city journals extending their sway to crush out the
country paper, it is more probable that the country papers will take on
some of the city’s airs, and that, with the added touch of personal
familiarity with the people and their affairs, the country editor will
become a greater power than in the past. For it is recognized to-day
that the publication of a paper is a business affair and not a matter of
faith or revenge. If the publication be not a financial success, it is
not much of a success of any kind.
The old-time editor who prided himself on his powers of vituperation,
who thundered through double-leaded columns his views on matters of
world-importance and traded space for groceries and dry goods, has few
representatives to-day. The wide-awake, clean-cut, well-dressed young
men, paying cash for their purchases and demanding cash for advertising,
alert to the business and political movements that make for progress,
and taking active part in the interests of the town, precisely as though
they were merchants or mechanics, asking no favors because of their
occupation, are taking their places. This sort of country editor is
transforming the country paper and is making of it a business enterprise
in the best sense of the term,—something it seldom was under the old
régime.
This eulogy is one often quoted by the country press: “Every year every
local paper gives from five hundred to five thousand lines for the
benefit of the community in which it is located. No other agency can or
will do this. The editor, in proportion to his means, does more for his
town than any other man. To-day editors do more work for less pay than
any men on earth.”
Like other eulogies it has in it something of exaggeration. It assumes
the country editor to be a philanthropist above his neighbors. The new
type of country editor makes no such claim. To be sure, he prints many
good things for the community’s benefit,—but he does it because he is a
part of the community. What helps the town helps him. His neighbor, the
miller, would do as much; his other neighbor, the hardware man, is as
loyal and in his way works as hard for the town’s upbuilding. In other
words, the country editor of to-day assumes no particular virtue because
his capital is invested in printing-presses, paper, and a few thousand
pieces of metal called type. He does realize that because of his
avocation he is enabled to do much for good government, for progress,
and for the betterment of his community. Unselfishly and freely he does
this. He starts movements that bring scoundrels to terms, that place
flowers where weeds grew before, that banish sorrow and add to the
world’s store of joy; but he does not presume that because of this he
deserves more credit than his fellow business men. He is indeed fallen
from grace who makes a merit of doing what is decent and honest and
fair.
It is often remarked that the ambition of the country editor is to
secure a position on a city paper. I have had many city newspapermen
confide to me that their fondest hope was to save enough money to buy a
country weekly in a thriving town. At first thought it would seem that
the city journalist would fail in the new field, having been educated in
a vastly different atmosphere and being unacquainted with the conditions
under which the country editor must make friends and secure business.
But two of the most successful newspapers of my acquaintance are edited
by men who served their apprenticeship on city dailies, and finally
realized their heart’s desire and bought country weeklies in prosperous
communities. They are not only making more money than ever before, but
both tell me that they have greater happiness than came in the old days
of rush, hurry, and excitement.
So long as a country paper can be issued without the expenditure of more
than a few hundred dollars, so long as the man with ambition and money
can satisfy his desire to “edit,” the country paper will be fruitful of
jocose remarks by the city journalist. There will be columns of odd
reprint from the backwoods of Arkansas, and queer combinations of
grammar and egotism from the Egypt of Illinois. The exchange editor will
find in his rural mail much food for humorous comment, but he will not
find characterizing the country editor a lack of independence, or a lack
of ability to look out for himself. The country editor is doing very
well, and the trend of his business affairs is in the direction of
better financial returns and wider influence. He is a greater power now
than ever before in his history, and he will become more influential as
the years go by. He will not be controlled by a syndicate, or modeled
after a machine-made pattern, but will exert his individuality wherever
he may be.
The country editor of to-day is coming into his own. He asks fewer
favors and brings more into the store of common good. He does not ask
eulogies nor does he resent fair criticisms; he is content to be judged
by what he is and what he has accomplished. As the leader of the hosts
must hold his place by the consent of his followers, so must the town’s
spokesman prove his worth. Closest to the people, nearest to their home
life, its hopes and its aspirations, the country editor is at the
foundation of journalism. Here and there is a weak and inefficient
example; but in the main he measures up to as high a standard as does
any class of business men in the nation,—and it is as a business man
that he prefers to be classed.
SENSATIONAL JOURNALISM AND THE LAW
BY GEORGE W. ALGER
I
So much has been said in recent years concerning the methods and
policies of sensational journalism that a further word upon a topic so
hackneyed would seem almost to require an explanation or an apology.
Current criticism, however, for the most part, has been confined to only
one of its many characteristics,—its bad taste and its vulgarizing
influence on its readers by daily offenses against the actual, though as
yet ideal, right of privacy, by its arrogant boastfulness, mawkish
sentimentality, and a persistent and systematic distortion of values in
events.
This, the most noticeable feature of yellow journalism, is indicative
rather of its character than of its purpose. In considering, however,
the present subject,—sensational journalism in its relation to the
making, enforcing, and interpreting of law,—we enter a different field,
that of the conscious policies and objects with and for which these
papers are conducted. The main business of a newspaper as defined by
journalists of the old school is the collection and publication of news
of general interest coupled with editorial comment upon it. The old-time
editor was a ruminative and critical observer of public events. This
definition of the functions of a newspaper was long ago scornfully cast
aside as absurdly antiquated and insufficient to include the myriad
circulation-making enterprises of yellow journalism. These papers are
not simply purveyors of news and comment, but have what, for lack of a
better term, may be called constructive policies of their own. In the
making of law, for example, not content with mere criticism of
legislators and their measures, the new journalism conceives and
exploits measures of its own, drafted by its own counsel, and introduced
as legislative bills by statesmen to whom flattering press notices and
the publication of an occasional blurred photograph are a sufficient
reward. Not infrequently measures thus conceived and drafted are
supported by specially prepared “monster petitions,” containing
thousands of names, badly written and of doubtful authenticity, of
supposed partisans, and by special trains filled with orators and a
heterogeneous rabble described in the news columns as “committees of
citizens,” who at critical periods are collected together and turned
loose upon the assembled lawmakers as an impressive object lesson of the
public interest fervidly aroused on behalf of the newspaper’s bill.
The ethics of persuasion is an interesting subject. It falls, however,
outside the scope of this article. It is impossible to lay down any hard
and fast rule by which to determine in all cases what form of newspaper
influence is legitimate and what illegitimate. The most obvious
characteristic of yellow journalism in its relation to lawmaking is that
it prefers ordinarily to obtain its ends by the use of intimidation
rather than by persuasion. The monster petition scheme just referred to
is merely one illustrative expression of this preference. When a
newspaper of this type is interested in having some official do some
particular thing in some particular way, it spends little of its space
or time in attempting to show the logical propriety or necessity for the
action it desires. It seeks first and foremost to make the official see
that _the eyes of the people are on him_, and that any action by him
contrary to that which the newspaper assures him the people want would
be fraught with serious personal consequences. The principal point with
these papers is always “the people demand” (in large capitals) this or
that, and the logic or reason of the demand is obscured or ignored. It
is the headless Demos transformed into printer’s ink. If by any chance
any official, so unfortunate as to have ideas of his own as to how his
office should be conducted, proves obdurate to the demands of the
printed voice of the people, he becomes the target for newspaper
attacks, calculated to destroy any reputation he may previously have had
for intelligence, sobriety of judgment, or public efficiency, his
tormentor, so far as libel is concerned, keeping, however, as Fabian
says, “on the windy side of the law.”
An amusing illustration of this kind of warfare occurred in New York
some years ago, when for several weeks one of these newspapers published
daily attacks upon the President of the Board of Police Commissioners,
because he refused to follow the newspaper theories of the proper way of
enforcing, or rather not enforcing, the Excise Law. The newspaper took
the position that, while the powers of the Police Department were being
largely turned to ferreting out saloon-keepers who were keeping open
after hours or on Sundays, the detection of serious crimes was being
neglected, and that a “carnival of crime,” to use the picturesque
wording of its headlines, was being carried on in the city. Finally, in
one of its issues the paper published a list of thirty distinct criminal
offenses of the most serious character,—murder, felonious assault,
burglary, grand larceny, and the like,—all alleged to have been
committed within a week, in none of which, it asserted, had any criminal
been captured or any stolen property recovered. Events which followed
immediately upon this last publication showed that the newspaper had
erred grievously in its estimate of this particular official under
attack. A few days later the Police Commissioner, Mr. Roosevelt,
published in the columns of all the other newspapers in New York the
result of his own personal investigation of these thirty items of
criminal news, showing conclusively that twenty-eight of them were
canards pure and simple, and that in the remaining two police activity
had brought about results of a most satisfactory kind. Following this
statement of the facts was appended an adaptation of some fifteen or
twenty lines from Macaulay’s merciless essay on Barrère,—perhaps the
finest philippic against a notorious and inveterate liar which the
English language affords,—so worded that they should apply, not only to
the newspaper which published this spurious list of alleged crimes, but
to the editor and proprietor personally. The carnival of crime ended at
once.
It is, of course, impossible to determine accurately the extent of
newspaper influence upon legislation and the conduct of public officials
by these systematic attempts at bullying. Making all due allowance,
however, there have been within recent years many significant
illustrations of the influence of yellow journalism upon the shaping of
public events. Mr. Creelman is quite right in saying, as he does in his
interesting book, _On the Great Highway_, that the story of the Spanish
war is incomplete which overlooks the part that yellow journalism had in
bringing it on. He tells us that, some time prior to the commencement of
hostilities, a well-known artist, who had been sent to Cuba as a
representative of one of these papers and had there grown tired of
inaction, telegraphed his chief that there was no prospect of war, and
that he wished to come home. The reply he received was characteristic of
the journalism he represented: “You furnish the pictures, we will
furnish the war.” It is characteristic because the new journalism aims
to direct rather than to influence, and seeks, to an extent never
attempted or conceived by the journalism it endeavors so strenuously to
supplant, to create public sentiment rather than to mould it, to make
measures and find men.
The larger number of the readers of the great sensational newspapers
live at or near the place of publication, where the half-dozen daily
editions can be placed in their hands hot from the press. The news
furnished in them is, for the most part, of distinctively local
interest. In their columns the horizon is narrow and inexpressibly
dingy. Detailed narrations of sensational local happenings, preferably
crimes and scandals, are given conspicuous places, while more important
events occurring outside the city limits are treated with telegraphic
brevity. These papers constitute beyond question the greatest
provincializing influence in metropolitan life.
The particular local functions of sensational journalism which bring it
in close relation to the courts result from its self-imposed
responsibilities as detective and punisher of crime and as director of
municipal officials. So far as the latter are concerned, yellow
journalism has apparently a good record. Many recent instances might,
for example, be cited where these newspapers, acting under the names of
“dummy” plaintiffs, have sought and obtained preliminary or temporary
injunctions against threatened official malfeasance, or where they have
instituted legal proceedings to expose corrupt jobbery. As to the actual
results thus accomplished, other than the publicity obtained, the
general public is not in a position to judge. Temporary injunctions
granted merely until the merits of the case can be heard and determined
are of no particular value if, when the trial day comes, the newspaper
plaintiff fails to appear, the case is dismissed, and the temporary
injunction vacated. On such occasions, and they are more frequent than
the general public is aware, the newspaper takes little pains to inform
its readers of the final results of the matter over which it made such
hue and cry months before.
But, however fair-minded persons may differ as to the results actually
obtained by these newspaper law enterprises in the civil courts, there
is less room for difference of opinion as to the methods with which they
are conducted. They are almost invariably so managed as to convey to the
minds of their readers the idea that the decision obtained, if a
favorable one, has not come as the result of a just rule of law laid
down by a wise and fair-minded judge, but has been obtained rather in
spite of both law and judge, and wholly because a newspaper of enormous
circulation, championing the cause of the people, has wrested the law to
its clamorous authority. The attitude of mind thus created is well
exemplified in a remark made to me by a business man of more than
ordinary intelligence, in discussing an injunction granted in one of
these newspaper suits arising out of a water scandal: “Why, of course
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 newspapers have made about it. He knows where his
bread is buttered.”
II
One of the great features of counting-house journalism is its real or
supposed ability in the detection and punishment of crime. Whether this
field is a legitimate one for a newspaper to enter need not be discussed
here. It goes without saying that an interesting murder mystery sells
many papers, and if as a result of skillful detective work the guilty
party is finally brought to the gallows or the electric chair, it is a
triumph for the paper whose reporters are the sleuths. While such
efforts, when crowned with success, are the source probably of much
credit and revenue, there are various disagreeable possibilities
connected with failure which the astute managers of these papers can
never afford to overlook. While verdicts in libel suits are in this
country generally small (compared with those in England), and the libel
law itself is filled with curious and antiquated technicalities by which
verdicts may be avoided or reversed, nevertheless there is always the
possibility that an innocent victim of newspaper prosecution will turn
the tables and draw smart money from the enterprising journal’s coffers.
The acquittal of the person who has been thrust into jeopardy by
newspaper detectives is obviously a serious matter for the paper. On the
other hand, there are no important consequences from conviction except,
of course, to the person condemned. Is it to be expected that the
newspaper, under such circumstances, will preserve a disinterested and
impartial tone in its news columns while the man in the dock is fighting
for his life before the judge and jury? Is it remarkable that during the
course of such a trial the newspaper should fill its pages with ghastly
cartoons of the defendant, with murder drawn in every line of his face,
or that it should by its reports of the trial itself seek to impress its
readers with his guilt before it be proved according to law? that it
should send its reporters exploring for new witnesses for the
prosecution, and should publish in advance of their appearance on the
witness stand the substance of the damaging testimony it is claimed they
will give? that it should go even further, and (as was recently shown in
the course of a great poisoning case in New York City, the history of
which forms a striking commentary on all these abuses) actually pay
large sums of money to induce persons to make affidavits incriminating
the defendant on trial?
Unfortunately, too often these efforts receive aid from prosecuting
officers whose sense of public duty is impaired or destroyed by the itch
for reputation and a cheap and tawdry type of forensic triumph.
Despicable enough is the district attorney who grants interviews to
newspaper reporters during the progress of a criminal trial, and who
makes daily statements to them of what he intends to prove on the morrow
unless prevented by the law as expounded by the trial judge. A careful
study of the progress of more than one great criminal trial in New York
City would show how illegal and improper matter prejudicial to the
person accused of crime has been ruled out by the trial court, only to
have the precise information spread about in thousands upon thousands of
copies of sensational newspapers, with a reasonable certainty of their
scare headlines, at least, being read by some of the jury.