The Young Man and Journalism

by Chester Sanders Lord

Almost all of us feel that we must know about the artists, the singers, the actors, and we love to talk about them, yet what we say we almost surely have read in some newspaper. You get an intelligent idea at your breakfast table of the new opera that did not end until midnight, of the new play produced on the night preceding, of the speeches and the spirit of the banquet that did not end until after you were in sleep, of the conflagration that destroyed some well-known building during the night, of the railroad accident that destroyed scores of lives. And these are the things that you talk about during the day. They unconsciously influence your thoughts and your actions even when read casually.

The busy man is rather easily led along or into the editor’s way of thinking especially when the topic is new to him. He is not a trained or analytical thinker at best, hasn’t time to reflect much on the subject, cannot invent a new line of thought in opposition to the editor’s because of unfamiliarity with the subject, has no quick way of getting additional information. Maybe he instinctively balks at the editorial conclusion, but probably the editor is right, he reasons, and he passes to something more interesting.

The next article may be a continuation of comment on a subject written about two days before. It becomes a bit more familiar. He half recognizes the argument. He half accepts it now as his own, has “thought of that before,” so he approves. Reiteration has influenced him; a third presentation clinches him. Reiteration is a most subtle means of influencing public opinion. The man who reads the same thought a few times in different diction comes to accept it as his own thought. It is an unconscious influence.

It is little consolation to the editor that his articles are hastily read; so much the more reason, on the contrary, for making them striking and for making their meaning the more easily understood.

People like to see their own beliefs reflected in their newspaper; regard the editorial utterance as a confirmation of it; welcome a new argument in its favor; like to read it to a neighbor; come to look on the sheet as a personal champion.

All newspapers have great influence one way or another. They reach the people to an extent not reached by any other influence, for everybody of any account reads them. Consider for a moment. Rarely does a clergyman find himself addressing a congregation of more than five hundred persons; rarely, indeed, does the public lecturer speak to a thousand persons; and seldom, in the heat of a campaign, does the political orator find five thousand persons within the reach of his voice. Yet a little editorial paragraph, placed conspicuously on the editorial page of the New York Times, will be read by more than six hundred thousand persons. A million and a half newspapers are printed in New York city every morning, and nearly two millions every afternoon, not counting those printed in other languages than the English language of which there are nearly a million more. About the same proportion of newspapers to population prevails throughout the chief cities of the United States.

“I never read the editorials” we all have heard many a newspaper reader say. “I simply scan the editorials,” we hear others remark. Almost all editorial articles are hastily read, and so is the entire sheet for that matter. You have only to watch the process to be convinced. The busy man opens his newspaper to the editorial page as he would open a book, holds it open and high, one page grasped by the left hand and the other by the right. He scans the leading article, reads the first two or three sentences and if attention is not instantly attracted flashes his eye down to the beginning of the next paragraph, and so on. The greater the number of paragraphs in the article the more quick attention it gets. The sensational sheet editors know this and they make many paragraphs in every article.

The profound heavy articles with three or four paragraphs only to the column get scant attention except from readers especially interested in the topic. They are looked at for an instant only. In that instant the reader decides whether he is interested in the topic. Usually he is not. His eye skims along to the next article with same result. Then he may encounter something that he wants to know more about. But it is half a column long. “I’ll read it when I get time,” he says to himself, as his eye jumps over to the opposite page—a news page—and he begins to absorb the headlines. These he treats in the same hasty manner and in about three minutes he has finished the two pages and has turned over to the next two.

He reads all in the same way. He may pause over a particular article but usually the reading is of short duration. He has absorbed perhaps the spirit of the headings and maybe the few lines of introduction to the articles that have had his attention. He is ready with an opinion, but that opinion is the opinion of the man who wrote the caption or the introduction. The hasty reader has given the subject not the slightest original thought. Nevertheless he is influenced by it. It is recognized that almost everything we read has its direct or its unconscious influence.