We are much more interested in accounts of the ball games, the prize fights, the contests of any sort that we have seen than we can be in those not seen.
To the man or woman in society the news of society is infinitely more than mere gossip. The society man of any pretension must know what society folk are doing, must be informed of their every movement. His newspaper gives the hint for many letters. He must congratulate the family whose daughter’s engagement is announced. He must sympathize with the bereaved. Society news has the personal note, and personalities sell newspapers. Cram your sheet with them, young man!
We are living in a commercial age, a money-making age. People are thinking as never before of money accumulation and business expansion. The journalistic tendency of the hour is to exalt the practical and minimize the sentimental. War has made us money mad. We note a growing fascination for articles of the practical, of how great fortunes are developed, of how money is made and lost, of how the poor become rich and the rich become poor—stories of business construction involving millions, of the application of invention to everyday needs. This kind of narrative includes the recital of personal successes, how the quick-witted boy becomes a captain of industry, how Nature’s forces are utilized and Nature’s secrets are turned to practical account. The details of how great success or great wealth has been achieved never have failed to fascinate mankind.
All fiction has been saturated with stories of money-seeking because the topic is so interesting. Nevertheless fiction can but feebly compete with the realities of the present. The tales of great gambling in Wall Street, of card conquests at Monte Carlo, of new gold discoveries, of money made in real-estate speculations, of gigantic swindling operations, of big winnings on the racing track, of mental smartness in money-getting, of big success in any quest for cash—you cannot give the public too much of this kind of matter if you wish to sell your sheet.
But, if you ask me to describe the kind of news for which the people surge and struggle around the bulletin boards—the most popular kind of news printed anywhere—I must reply that it is found in the details of a conquest, a fight, whether between men with their fists, or dogs, or armies, politicians or polo players, football teams or racing horses, church choirs or kitchen cabinets.
I remember so well that in my boyhood days my own little village held its breath to await details of the world’s champion prize fight between John C. Heenan, of America, and Tom Sayers, of England. Not since that day has interest in prize fights languished. The fist fight between John L. Sullivan and James Corbett quadrupled the circulation of next-day newspapers. Repeatedly the big New York Madison Square Garden has been crowded to its roof with enthusiasts who paid from fifteen to fifty dollars to see two men batter each other. Fifty thousand persons see the big football games, and fifteen millions read about them.
So great is the interest in baseball contests the newspapers are compelled to print from seven to ten columns a day in description of them. The same conditions exist to a triflingly less degree only with contests in tennis, rowing, polo, yachting, horse racing, golf—any event, especially in athletics, involving a fight for supremacy. I know of one New York newspaper that confidently counts on an increase of eighteen or twenty thousand in circulation with the opening of the baseball season. There seems to be no limit to popular interest in the details of any kind of contest, especially one that has been lavishly advertised.
Business usually languishes every four years while the fight for the Presidency proceeds, and the newspapers print hundreds of columns about it. The squabbles, the encounters, the fights in sports, in business, in politics, in the courts, among doctors and educators, in the churches even—they all absorb the people almost to the limit of human interest. The young man in journalism should get wise to this interest.
Whatever is nearest the heart, whatever is uppermost in mind—that is what we want to read about. We are changeable creatures in thought, in purpose, and in habit. The new always is fascinating. The smart editor recognizes the love of change; accordingly he exalts the new. More than that, he anticipates interest that is to develop, foresees changes in government policies, the introduction of new methods, the outcome of scientific discovery. He prepares his readers accordingly.
Man’s great interest is in his business, in his money-making. Frequently the newspapers are of especial service to him. In many lines of business they are a necessity. The manufacturer of goods, for instance, searches every column for information bearing on the raw product that enters into them, the price, the supply, the demand, weather conditions that may influence, the condition and the cost of transportation, the effect of legislation, the menace of competition—anything that has influence on the making and delivery of his product. Quick information is priceless to him.