CHAPTER V
WHAT TO PRINT—THE PROBLEM OF HOW TO INTEREST AND INFORM THE READER
In his meditations over newspaper possibilities the late Joseph Pulitzer found himself reasoning that the existing newspapers were written above the understanding of the multitudes and consequently were not read by them. Hundreds of thousands of the metropolitan district population read no daily newspaper because the prices of the sheets were high and because editorial utterances were “over their heads,” were too profound, too argumentative, too scholarly. Mr. Pulitzer pictured to himself a newspaper so simple of speech and so simple of editorial expression that this vast population could understand it. He purchased the New York World, reduced its price, tried to make it appeal to the masses, and before long he had attained a very great circulation and a very great fortune.
Now, Mr. Pulitzer accomplished this result by contemplating his newspaper from the viewpoint of the reader rather than from that of the editor. He gave the people something they had wanted. Giving the public what it wants is the surest way of securing a horde of readers. His reading matter was mild; the typography spectacular. He attracted attention with headlines a foot high and with letter press that looked like thickly woven barbed wire fence. One half the page was daubed with blotches of black type and the other half was smeared with red ink. But typographical eccentricity alone does little harm; it’s a question of taste.
Mr. Pulitzer had made his great success on the lines indicated above and was breathing easily. It was not until another man came along who outdid Mr. Pulitzer in multiple exaggerations of the same game that the country saw the most riotous journalism ever known anywhere. Mr. Pulitzer’s early efforts at sensationalism were as a smoking ash barrel when compared with the Vesuvius of volcanic flame and melted lava that followed. That Mr. Hearst would collect a bigger mob of readers was inevitable, but Mr. Pulitzer lost no readers and gained many. Both establishments kept up the contest as long as circulations continued to grow; but with the pause of the rocket rise things began to simmer down to a less spectacular splendor of insanity. The inflammation of the imagination subsided and gradually they approached the routine and the respectability of the other newspapers.
It was the same old story—the story so familiar to every journalist of ripening years—of building up a newspaper circulation by spectacular methods and then relapsing into ordinary goodness with a deliberation so gradual that the reader does not notice the change. For every editor knows that the more details of sin, vice, and crime he crams into his newspaper the more copies of that newspaper will be sold; and every editor knows that the most subtle temptation that besets him is the temptation to print the things that should not be printed and that temptation is the more acute because he knows that the people want to read them. Aye! there’s the rub! The people want the sensational stuff. The very sensational newspapers sell three or four times as many copies as do the conservative ones. The proportion is even larger in London and Paris. In our large cities almost all the newspapers of great circulation began the building up process by audacious sensationalism; as they became prosperous they became moderate.
Joseph Addison of long-ago literary fame recognized the public liking for sensation. He says in The Spectator: “At the same time I am very sensible that nothing spreads a paper like private calumny and defamation.” And the Rev. Lyman Abbott, in rebuking the sensational press, was moved to remark: “Is the defense of the newspaper that it must give the public what it wants a good one? Most certainly no!—no more than the selling of whiskey, opium, stale fish or decayed vegetables. The editor is or ought to be a public teacher.” The popular taste that demands this sensational sort of newspaper stimulant attracted the notice of Lafcadio Hearn, who remarks: “Everywhere there is a public of this kind to whom lachrymose emotion and mawkish sentiment give the same kind of pleasure that black, red, and blazing yellow give to the eyes of little children and savages.”
Conversely, the Christian Science Monitor is read by thousands of persons for the reason not so much that it represents a religious emotion as that it prints wholesome news free from spasm. “It reflects the true balance of the world’s work and refuses to see only the evil and morbid happenings in it and let it appear that they are the preponderant forces of the world’s efforts. Thus it emphasizes the decent things, the heroic things, the things worth while.” With fairly good service the Christian Science Monitor presents the news of the day, and it especially appeals to parents who wish to keep the tart news reports of the secular press from their children.
What to print? That is a query that has disturbed many an editor’s nightcap. So much depends on the editorial purpose. If the editor seeks to have a wholesome influence, seeks to do good, seeks a reputation for honesty of purpose and honesty of community service he naturally will stick to a conservative course; for somehow, exaggeration and sensationalism, not to mention falsehood, do not seem quite to harmonize with moral precepts; nor do they inspire confidence in the editor’s influence. The conservative sheets are duller, but they are trusted the more—and public confidence is a mighty fine foundation on which to build a healthy circulation.
Many persons read the same newspaper for years and years. They become used to its ways, to its arrangement of news and topics; and they have confidence in its integrity. It comes to be almost a spiritual consolation to them. They swear by it and they believe in it just as they believe in their pastor or their family physician. This is especially true of readers in the smaller cities and villages although it prevails everywhere. Now, it behooves the editor to nurse this attitude, for once it gets hold on a community it is hard to dislodge. It grows like a river after spring rains, slowly but surely increasing in volume and in strength. The people bought Greeley’s Tribune because they believed that Greeley was honest. They were willing to be influenced by what he said. For the same reason Bowles’s Springfield Republican became popular and prosperous. Throughout the country we have repeated instances of newspapers having the confidence of the community because they are honestly conducted.