Syndicate, for instance, whose theatres could not be kept open a week
without newspaper publicity. The Theatrical Syndicate's policy seems to
be to single out any paper that becomes too critical and give it an
absent-advertisement treatment. At the present moment this medicine is
being prescribed in several of our large cities. But let all the
publishers form a publishers' trade union as it were, and whenever an
advertisement is withdrawn, appoint a committee of investigation, and
if the committee reports that the withdrawal of the advertisement was
done for any improper reason, then let all the papers refuse to print
an advertisement of the play, or allow their critics to mention it
until the matter is satisfactorily adjusted. This would bring the
advertisers to their knees in a moment.
The papers have the whip hand if they will only combine, but they are
all so jealous of one another that probably any real combination is a
long way off. Still there are indications of a gentleman's agreement in
the air, for all other interests are combining and they will be forced
to follow suit.
And what will the public do then, poor thing? A newspaper trust will
certainly be as inimical to the public welfare as any other combination
doing business in the fear of the Sherman law. Indeed it would be more
dangerous, for a periodical trust would practically control the
diffusion of intelligence, and that no self-respecting democracy would
or should allow. But this is borrowing trouble from the future.
Fourth and last. We come back to the old, old remedy, which if
sincerely applied would solve most all the ills of society. I refer to
personal integrity, to character. Despite what may be said to the
contrary, integrity is the only thing in the newspaper profession, as
in life itself, that really counts.
The great journalists of the past, whatever their personal
idiosyncrasies, have all been men of integrity; the great journalists
of to-day are of the same sterling mould; and the journalistic giants
of to-morrow--and the journalists of the future will be giants--must
also be men of inflexible character.
There has never been a time in all history when so many and so
important things were waiting to be done as to-day. The newest school
of sociology tells us that the human race in its spiral progress onward
and upward through sweat and blood, misery and strife, has at last
reached the point where, emerging from the control of the blind forces
of an inexorable environment, it is about to take its destiny into its
own control and actually shape its future. From now on, evolution is to
be a psychical rather than a physical process. The world is on the
threshold of a new era. We see the first faint dawn of universal peace
and of the brotherhood of man.
Fortunate that editor whose privilege it is to share in pointing out
the way.
_The Riverside Press_
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A
End of Project Gutenberg's Commercialism and Journalism, by Hamilton Holt