Making a newspaper

Contents

CHAPTER

I. The American Newspaper

II. Newspaper Office Organization

Chapter I The American Newspaper

The average American, while he does not perhaps often realize it, regards the newspapers of his country much as he regards the Liberty Bell and Bunker Hill. In the Liberty Bell and Bunker Hill he sees symbols of independence and democratic government. In the newspapers he sees concrete examples of that priceless possession, free speech. Holding the newspapers thus apart from the ordinary, he is willing to overlook the fact that they are in reality pure business ventures conducted for the purpose of making money, and consider them as representing not men but principles. The American is proud of his newspapers, and while there is here and there an example which he may not defend, he is ever ready to praise them and, if need be, fight for them as a whole. There is nothing which will make the eagle shriek louder than the shadow of a muzzle for the press.

Newspapers are read everywhere in America, for the editor, like the missionary and the school-teacher, is ever on the lookout for new territory; but the most persistent readers are found in the larger cities. Here a newspaper is a daily necessity. Even the newly arrived, long down-trodden immigrant cannot wait until he learns to read English, but must have a daily journal printed in his native tongue. Apparently the thirst for information is in the air. In the crowds that ride to the offices, stores, and factories in the morning there is scarce a man or a woman who does not carry a paper, and in the home-going crowds those who are not reading, or carrying papers as evidence that they intend to read, are so few that unless sought for they are overlooked. Were one to make inquiry, too, he would learn that many of these insistent readers continue their search for news all day long. New editions aggregating hundreds of thousands of copies are issued in the largest cities at intervals of an hour or so from early morning until late at night, and the newsboys never cease making sales. On Sunday the newspaper reading goes on with unusual energy. Knowing that their patrons will have plenty of time on their hands, the publishers enlarge their papers for this day to four or five times their ordinary size, and having done this, print about twice the usual number of copies. There are plenty of persons in America who do little else on Sundays than pore over newspapers.

Like most things American, the American newspaper is continually changing. Fifteen years ago it was not exactly what it was ten years before, and at the present time there are newspapers conducted along lines that were undreamt of fifteen years ago. If an old-time editor had attempted to enlarge the circulation of his paper by using bill-poster type for headings, printing colored pictures, and giving away tin whistles, chewing gum, false faces, and kites, he would have been looked upon as crazy, and the probabilities are that he would have been restrained by his relatives and friends. To-day there are editors who are doing these very things, and in twelve months some of them are disposing of as many papers as some of the famous old editors one hears about sold in half as many years. As a result of some of the new methods introduced into newspaper work, the term newspaper has of late years taken on a new meaning. The old-style newspaper was a publication which was intended to appeal to grown men only, and men of staid habits, at that. It printed the news, but it made no pretense of providing light or easy reading. It ignored one-half the adult population entirely — the women — in bidding for readers, and took no account whatever of the children ; apparently the editors proceeded on the theory that the women could let the papers alone if they did not like them, and that the children were beneath notice. The new-style paper is conducted on a different plan. Instead of taking a high and mighty attitude it strives to please by offering something to everybody. The solid news is given as in the old-style papers, but the stories are written so that they are entertaining; there is a continued story ; a whole page of sporting news is presented ; the chess-lover gets a column ; the man who likes town talk is considered; the fisherman is told where the fish are biting; pictures are provided for those who like them; in short, all tastes are remembered. And a particular effort is made to please the women. Every bit of current news in which it is thought they will be interested is exploited at length, and this is supplemented by the talk of women's clubs, fashion notes, recipes, and dress patterns. To the children an appeal little less insistent is made. For them there are funny pictures, jokes, puzzles, descriptions of games, and frequently — this with the Sunday edition — coupons entitling them to dolls, boxes of paints, and other articles that might be expected to appeal to juvenile hearts. The new-style newspaper, when it does what its editors strive to make it do, delivers a universal appeal and once gaining access to a home becomes a household necessity. To a certain extent it becomes the daily instructor and entertainer for the whole family.

Of course, most newspapers, coming in between the two extremes, are examples of neither the old nor the new school, and the great range of possibilities accounts in part for the difference of opinion that is shown to exist when the question "What is a newspaper ?" is asked. There are definitions almost without number forthcoming. With few exceptions, however, they can be divided into three classes. According to one definition, and this is given by persons who always read the editorial columns carefully, a newspaper is a molder of public opinion. Those who are of this mind speak of the "Power of the Press,'' and the "Fourth Estate," and among them are most of the individuals who write lengthy letters to the editors and in print are known as "Fairplay," "Justice," or "Pro Bono Publico." When one of these persons discloses himself he is usually found to be well past middle age. A second definition comes from those persons who devote themselves almost exclusively to the news columns. These, and they form a large majority of the newspaper readers, make the assertion that a newspaper is a recorder of current events. This definition is as safe as it is simple, for no one can deny that a newspaper is a recorder of events, even while insisting that it is other things as well. The third definition is given by persons, forming a comparatively small class, who make themselves heard frequently, although not often in print. These assert positively and aggressively that a good many newspapers are scandal-mongering busy-bodies, and the most vehement of them declare that were they so minded they could produce convincing evidence in proof of their assertions. Not infrequently, one speaking of newspapers in this strain leads others to suspect that some particular occurrence has led to the forming of the opinion expressed. Therefore, to avoid the possibility of creating a wrong impression, a person should not rail against newspapers unless he is in a place where he is especially well known, or else not known at all.

There are in almost every large city journals which answer to each of the definitions given, and every person would do well to remember this, and not become too insistent when advancing his views. Anyone familiar with New York newspapers can name one of them which is acknowledged to be a molder of public opinion, but does not enjoy a reputation for the completeness of its news except among its regular readers ; another which influences very few with its editorials, but is prized by its patrons because it presents its news in an attractive manner and rarely misses anything of consequence; and still a third which cannot raise much objection when it is called a scandal-monger. As it is in New York so it is elsewhere. But in just which class a particular newspaper is placed depends to a considerable extent upon the person making the classification. A newspaper which one person considers a model is to another a dull, uninteresting publication, while what the second person may regard as embodying the best qualities of modern journalism may by the first be regarded as embodying the very worst. There is no unanimity of opinion when the division is only a question of good or bad. Every type of newspaper has its admirers, and were a dozen men to be selected in any large city to classify their local journals, the chances are that they would never come to an agreement, each having in his mind different standards of excellence.

Newspaper workers, the men who make the newspapers, counting the cost, the aim, and the labor involved, say that without making fine distinctions there are three kinds of journalism in America. There is first the kind which merely records — the common, or garden variety. This brand recites what occurs in plain sight, but on dull days, when fires and accidents are few and the local politicians are quiet, it fills its columns with material which can be procured in profusion through the expenditure of no greater effort than the wielding of a pair of shears. Against this kind of journalism not much can be said. But there is nothing to say for it.

There is another kind of journalism which records the everyday occurrences about which everyone wants to know, but, not content with this, acts as a disseminator of general information and deals with causes and effects as well as events. It does what most individuals cannot do because of a lack of time or opportunity — keeps watch on the men who serve the public, guards the public purse, and restrains those who would infringe on the public rights — tells of public improvements that are under way and suggests others, and heralds, in words that everyone can understand, great inventions and wonderful discoveries. Where it can it tells what is going to occur. It tells what the scientists, the educators, the law-makers, the artists, and the writers are doing, and contrasts the past with the present. Continually it makes known that which is useful and instructive, as well as that which is only entertaining. In brief, it presents a picture of the world's progress.

The third kind of journalism, which is of comparatively recent origin, might be regarded as not completed but only in process of formation. This is the so-called yellow journalism, which got its name in 1897 when the leading exponent of the school was exploiting with much ostentation a series of colored ^pictures in which the foremost character wore a yellow dress. One of the long-established papers coined the term "yellow journalism," using the word yellow in its slang interpretation, which is, cowardly, mean, contemptible.

The first kind of journalism, that which records only, flourishes best in small towns, and is not often found in large cities. Most of the papers which represent this type are nothing more than bread-winners, pure and simple. By their owners and their editors they are looked upon as mediums through which a living is to be gained, and as good livings are rarely gained through them, they are seldom regarded with affection. Hardly ever do the workers employed on them do their very best ; the news columns they regard as nothing more than necessary evils, which must be maintained because without them there would be no advertisers, and more important, no livings. This kind of journalism needs no more attention here.

The second kind — that which endeavors to present a picture of the world's progress — is an ideal rather than a reality. There are a few papers which come close to it, some very close; but a great many which aim to attain it fall far short. Some reach the ideal in their news columns, but through bias or self-interest, print editorials which keep them from the goal. Others fall short because they fail to tell of the commonplace occurrences. Still others, the majority, fail now in one thing, now in another. Details are their undoing, and their owners and their editors, perhaps more than any others, spy out the weak places and the mistakes. There are probably no editors who see their papers as ideals. But this second kind of journalism might be called the standard.

Within recent years whenever daily journalism is discussed, the third kind — yellow journalism — gets the lion's share of attention. In fact, a talk on journalism almost always becomes a talk on yellow journalism. The other kinds get a few words, but they are lumped together and considered as a negative. Magazine writers handle yellow journalism in every conceivable manner, college professors and ministers talk about it, and everyone who has fault to find with the public print holds it responsible. It is an extremely popular topic of conversation; even the ragged newsboys wonder, starting their day's work, what brand of sensation it will permit them to cry.

Yellow journalism originated through a desire to gain readers and advertisers, and it produced results. Its original disciples have readers by the hundred thousand and they have about all the advertising that they can well handle. More than this, they are not afraid of losing either readers or advertisers. The advertisers they know they can hold as long as they have readers, and the readers they hold in a tight embrace. The yellow journals stole their early patrons from no other publications. Instead, they offered something attractive to persons not in the habit of reading, and thus created a demand where none had existed. And even now the bulk of the yellow journals go either into the hands of those persons upon whom matter-of-fact stories and subdued headlines make no impression, or those who, while depending upon other papers for information which can be accepted as true, elect to look at pictures, read sensations, and acquire mild doses of philosophy in the form of out-of-the-ordinary editorials, as a kind of relaxation. To please persons in either class is by no means an easy task ; they demand thrills every day and they will not tolerate dullness or pedantry. Because of this the yellow journals have room for none other than particularly active journalists. Their foremost editors are always stars in their calling, and the under editors and the reporters are almost universally men of education who possess more than average skill. Most of these are attracted to the yellow journals by higher pay than they can get elsewhere, and it is a well-known fact that since the advent of this style of journalism newspaper salaries have been raised in most of the leading cities. With money the yellow journals are prodigal in all departments. They pay good salaries, good enough to capture almost every worker they want, and they rarely think of expense when it is a question of getting news.

That the men who make the yellow journals approve of all they do is not to be asserted. The reporters who manufacture the "signed statements," and get up scares about the "Black Hand," treat these things as 'huge jokes, and a good many of them look upon yellow journalism in the same light. The artists and heading builders, too, often regard it in the same way, and frequently extend themselves just to see how foolish

I o Making a Newspaper

they can be. The editors do not like everything about yellow journalism — the red, yellow, and green inks, the double reading headlines, the exaggeration, and the bombast — but they do not consider it a subject for raillery; at least they do not so acknowledge. Their contention is that they go to extremes to attract readers, but that in doing this they gain wide followings, and are thus enabled to right wrongs, protect the weak, and strive with effect for the public good. That the yellow journals really do some of these things cannot be denied. Since they have come into existence it has ceased to be an ordinary occurrence for the officers of banks gone to ruin through neglect, to say to the despoiled depositors : "We are sorry for you, but we can do nothing," and for ambitious scoundrels proof against mere criticism to infringe on the public rights, confident that they are safe because no one who is competent will take the trouble to interfere. For selfish ends or not, the yellow journals have put a damper on these performances and a lot more like them.

And it is worth remarking that the yellow journals are not so obtrusive as they were a few years ago. The worst have toned down, and some papers, undoubtedly once among the leaders, are now yellow only on exceedingly rare occasions; first-class newspapers, they offend no oftener by over-doing than do their most captious contemporaries by suppressing. Toned down, yellow journalism is more fallacious than vicious, and its most prominent earmarks are impudence and impertinence. And even at its worst yellow journalism was not as bad as it was pictured. To listen to some of its enemies one would have thought that it instigated murder, riot, theft, and arson without end, and that it was responsible for most of the crimes of every sort committed. In reality, most of the criticism consisted of generalities that meant little or nothing. Adhering to facts, instances where yellow journalism has done worse than exaggerate and offend by exposing things that might better have been hid from view are hard to find.

In a rather roundabout way there has crept into the newspaper field in America, in the last few years, the same tendency that has made itself so manifest in manufacturing — the tendency toward domination by a comparatively small number. There are no newspaper trusts and there are not now any more consolidations and mergings of different publications taking place than ever before, but all the same the principle of the survival of the fittest is making trouble for many publishers. Odd as it may appear the new move is being brought about by the growing efficiency of the steam and electric railroads of the country, and the extension of the rural mail delivery system. With the adding of every new train and the improvement of every new time-table, the building of every new trolley road, and the establishment of every new mail route, the big city papers are enabled to reach out further, and, wherever they reach, the local papers suffer, their readers forsaking them for the better and usually cheaper importations. There is not a paper published in any city between New York and Boston that has not in the last ten years been hurt by the papers of these two cities, and in some of the small towns the local papers have had inroads made on their business that have come nigh wrecking them. All through Pennsylvania the same conditions exist, the small town papers being affected by the appearance in their territory of the Philadelphia and Pittsburg publications. Nor are the small cities and towns the only places where the call for newspapers is in part supplied from outside. The great city of Brooklyn does not boast of a single morning paper, the New York papers supplying the entire demand, and so thoroughly do the Pittsburg papers dominate their section of the country that Allegheny, a city having a population of over 125,000, cannot support an English daily, either morning or evening. Jersey City and Newark both have excellent local papers, publications that are enterprising .and efficient, but with the New York morning papers landing in these cities long before dawn and the evening papers coming in at every hour of the day, the papers of both places have to be content with less than they deserve, although they wage constant warfare with the papers of the smaller New Jersey cities that are nearby.

The country weeklies, too, find themselves every year subject to greater competition. Many that were published close to large cities have been forced to the wall, and many others have been compelled to lower their subscription price until, once great money-makers, they now do little more than earn bare livings for their owners. Fifteen years ago $2.00 a year was not considered an exorbitant price for a country weekly. Now $1 a year is all that most country papers — there are over 12,000 of them in the United States — dare ask. The saving grace of the country weekly published near a large city is the job office.

There are in the United States at the present time over 2300 daily publications, and in the aggregate they issue every day above 15,000,000 papers, enough to supply one copy to every five inhabitants. In some cities the aggregate circulation compared with the population would indicate that there were four copies printed to every six persons, but this is an exaggeration explainable when one thinks of the conditions in a place like Pittsburg, where the newspapers have almost as many readers outside of the actual city as they have in it. Evening dailies outnumber morning dailies about two to one, and in the smaller cities the evening papers are increasing the more rapidly largely because the evening papers are less susceptible to outside competition. It must be here pointed out that while there are over 2300 dailies published in the United States, some of these are printed in foreign languages or are neighborhood or class publications, such as financial reviews and stock-yard reports, which do not make a universal appeal for patronage. This is particularly true in Manhattan and Bronx boroughs, which are ordinarily considered as making up the city of New York. In these boroughs there are 47 daily publications, but of this number there are only 15 printed in English which aim to present the news of the world and are circulated broadcast. Outside of New York the difference is not so great, but in every large city the special publications exist. How many English daily newspapers, using the word in its generally accepted sense, there are in the country it is impossible to determine, for there is no line of demarcation, some of the class publications presenting fairly complete accounts of certain kinds of general news, but whatever the number, there are about 175 printed in cities having over 100,000 inhabitants, and when a young man at the present time talks about "going in for journalism," his ultimate aim is, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, one of these papers. The big city daily is now the thing.

Among old-time newspaper workers it is often said that the foundation of distinctive American journalism was laid in 1835, when James Gordon Bennett started to publish the New York Herald. Previous to that time the editors of the country thought more of molding public opinion than they did of presenting the news, and their highest ambition apparently was to become involved in editorial controversies. When an editor felt called upon to tell how the country should be run, or to lambaste another editor, the news was allowed to go, and even when his mind was at peace he kept his dignity. The Herald from the start was run on a different principle. It aimed first to give the news, and the editor did not wait for the news to be brought to him; he went out and got it, and when it became necessary he went pretty far. That he had the right ideas as to what the people wanted was quickly shown. Starting with a capital of less than five hundred dollars he had his paper firmly established within a few years, and in the early forties he was well on the highway of success. The innovations introduced by the Herald caused the editors of the long-established papers to scoff, but by degrees they had to make concessions and in self-defense join in the work of presenting Facts; and once the new ideas were installed competition in the modern sense was quick to follow.

The War of the Rebellion had much to do with converting the American people into a nation of newspaper readers. The controversy over the Slavery question and the stirring events leading up to hostilities stimulated interest and made many readers, but after the fighting began the demand for information became universal. Contributing its quota of soldiers, every hamlet thereafter had a direct interest in what was going on at the front. And the demand for news gave American journalism fresh impetus, for no paper, however small, could fail to hear the cry for information of camps and battles, the killed and the wounded. The large city papers, enabled through the increased circulation, and the growing receipts from advertising, to make expenditures that a few years before would have been impossible, responded by sending reporters to the front, and making use of the electric telegraph, heretofore employed sparingly; the papers printed in small towns contented themselves with clipping the great news from the large city publications, but this they supplemented with letters written by soldiers well known to all their readers. By the close of the war there were few persons indifferent to the news, and no papers which did not realize that news was considered before comment.

But journalism would never have attained the position it occupies either in America or elsewhere, had it not been for improvements in the art of printing. Even after the first quarter of the last century had passed the newspaper printing press was nothing more than a machine built on the lines of the familiar letter copying press. The type form was inked with a hand roller, and after the sheet of paper had been adjusted the impression was made by forcing down the press's top. Only one impression was made at a time, and each sheet had to go through the press twice to be printed on both sides. In those days a paper could not have gained a circulation of much over 1000, even had the demand existed, for this was close to the limit of the press's capacity. The ordinary cylinder press such as is seen now in small country newspaper offices, although in an improved form, came into use about

1830. In this press the type forms, two pages at a time, are laid on a flat bed and moved backward and forward under a heavy revolving drum, the paper being fed by hand from a table built at one end. With mechanical power this press has a capacity of about 1500 an hour. In 1846 came the forerunner of the modern press, a method then being discovered of attaching the type form to the drum instead of to the press bed. Following this came the process of stereotyping which permitted the reproduction of the types in a curved plate which could be attached to a revolving cylinder, to which a half-dozen men could feed sheets of paper. Then, in 1871, came the web press, with stereotyped plates fastened to several cylinders and the paper feeding in from a spool, or web. In the modern web-perfecting press, which is really a number of presses built together, the blank paper passes into the machine from several spools, and the papers come out printed on both sides, pasted, folded, and cut all ready for distribution. There are to-day in use presses which the builders say can print 192,000 eight-page papers in an hour.

The typesetting machine, long the dream of inventors, did not come until late in the century, and even then it did not come in the form expected, for the pioneer machine, still the leader, instead of setting types such as are used by hand workers, casts through the use of brass matrices solid lines of reading matter. As late as 1880 the government census report dealing with printing, after speaking of the many improvements made, said : "The ingenuity of man has not yet invented a substitute for the setting of type by hand, the method of composition remaining precisely the same as it was when printing was first invented." In

1886, Ottmar Mergenthaler, of Baltimore, announced that he had accomplished the feat, but four years later the hand compositors were still contending that the new-fangled contrivances would soon be relegated to the scrap heap, while the majority of publishers were holding off to see what would happen. In 1894 only 200 of the machines were in use. In 1906, in the United States alone their number was over 10,000, while about half as many more were found in England. Each machine can do as much work as five average hand compositors. Since Mergenthaler announced his invention other machines have been placed on the market, and in the United States there is now scarcely a daily paper published in a town of over 25,000 inhabitants which depends upon hand composition.

The new-style presses, the stereotype plates, and the mechanical compositors neither alone nor together, however, would have made possible the newspaper as it exists had not the manufacturers of paper made wonderful progress. As late as 1862 the paper ordinarily used by newspapers cost twenty-four cents a pound. It was made from cotton rags, and the increasing demand for rags having pretty well equaled the supply the outlook was for higher prices. Relief came when it was discovered that serviceable paper could be made from wood pulp, and since this, reading is within the reach of all. To-day the newspapers get their blank paper in rolls weighing about a half a ton at a cost of a fraction over two cents a pound, and spend the money that would have gone for paper in getting news.