The American daily newspapers have certainly more money to spend than any other press in the world, although, owing to the severity of competition among themselves, I doubt whether so much comes back to them in profit. But when it comes to enterprize in procuring news the money any New York paper is prepared to spend is sufficient to take away one’s breath. This was the policy inaugurated by the first William Gordon Bennett on the New York Herald (1835) and subsequently carried even to greater lengths by Joseph Pulitzer in the New York World (1860), when he bought it from Jay Gould. Of all newspaper men probably Pulitzer came nearer to claim the possession of a special genius for the work than any other man. He kept control over both the management and editorial conduct of his paper in every detail through a long life even after he became blind and wherever he might happen to be in his wanderings round the world in his yacht. While at first the conduct of his paper seemed to aim at nothing better than mere success and sensationalism there became clear in him a genuine democratic passion, which redeemed many faults. More than once he was known to take in his paper the unpopular and almost the impossible course, justifying himself ultimately by holding his own. His gift of political prophecy was considered by other newspaper men to be uncanny. When he died he left a large sum of money to found a school of journalism in New York.
The Herald still holds its own as the chief general paper of New York on the Republican side while the World is not far behind as a Democrat paper. Beside them is the sensational New York American, which is the New York link in the chain of Hearst papers, which stretches through Philadelphia and Chicago in perhaps ten cities over to the San Francisco Examiner in the West. Hearst is still an unfathomed problem in the newspaper world as no one yet knows what his ultimate aim may be. Equipped originally with millions he has added to them by successful newspaper enterprize. He has political ambitions but whether he will pursue them on ordinary lines or turn aside to revolution it is too soon to say.
Of sedate papers we have the Tribune (1851) Horace Greeley’s old organ during the war, now owned by Mr. Whitelaw Reid; the Times (1851), once celebrated under Gilbert Jones for his successful defeat of Oakey Hall and the City ring, now in the hands of an enterprizing Chattanooga journalist, Ochs; and finally the Sun (1833), the most brilliant of American journals, once very bitter against this country, now settled down to be rather an outspoken friend of ours with reactionary tendencies at home. It was the first cheap paper in America and under Charles A. Dana achieved a great reputation.
One of the bright stars in the firmament of the American press is the old New York Evening Post, founded in 1766. Its editors had well-known names—John Bigelow, Carl Schurz, and Horace White. At a time when it was sinking into somnolence after the war it was bought by Henry Villard and placed under the control of E. L. Godkin, who had just triumphantly established the Nation. Another successful Irishman, Godkin, became one of the most remarkable men in America. No one exceeded him in the courage with which he attacked knavery and jobbery of all kinds not occasionally and sensationally, but steadily day by day. Before he died he made the Nation, afterwards edited by William Lloyd Garrison, one of the chief purely literary papers in the world, and the Evening Post the most powerful foe to corruption and upholder of pure politics and finance in America. The present editor, Mr. Ogden worthily continues these traditions.
The American press outside New York is so vast that only a fragmentary notice of it is possible. In Boston the old-fashioned literary paper is the Transcript (1830); there are also the Herald (1836) and the successful popular and democratic paper started in 1872 by General Taylor the Globe. One of the most influential papers in America at one time was the Springfield Republican (1824). In Washington the Post (1877) and in Philadelphia the Public Ledger (1836) and the Press (1857) are the best known. Chicago has a very rich and progressive press of which the following are the best known, the Tribune (1847); the Examiner started by Hearst; the Inter-Ocean and the Record-Herald. I would dwell longer on the American press if I had not already rather closely described the organization of a typical American daily in the chapter on newscollecting and reporting.
There is no space remaining for even the briefest review of the vast technical press of America, in some ways her most remarkable achievement. In all commercial respects, artistic production, energetic management, comprehensive information they leave all other countries far behind. To mention only the engineering papers, they have an old established general paper, the Iron Age, which is at home in every market in the world, and the only really international organ existing, the American Machinist, published every week simultaneously in New York, London and Berlin.
CHAPTER X
JOURNALISM AND JOURNALISTS
In the narrow sense it might be said that journalism could hardly exist before journals, but that would be essentially inaccurate. Journalism is the art of writing for immediate practical effect, just as rhetoric was the art of speaking for the same purpose. In ancient times public speaking had an immeasurably greater influence than now owing to the existence of small city states, where the governing assembly could remain within the reach of one voice. With the growth of the Roman empire and the decay of the power of the Roman Senate the current power of the written word began to grow at the expense of the spoken one and it certainly dominated opinion under the aristocratic governments of the middle ages. But it was the art of printing, which made periodical publication possible, and turned the tables on political speaking to such an extent, that public orations are not now primarily directed to the ears of those, who hear them, but to the eyes and understanding of those, who read them next morning.
But there was journalism before Gutenberg. Something of the spirit of it is present in the oldest script in the world, written perhaps 2000 years before Christ and preserved in the Prisse MSS. in the national library in Paris. There we find an old priest recording his regrets, that the world was not as it was when he was young, that the golden age was over and that modern times were degenerate. Conservative papers please copy. Julius Cæsar had the essence of it in his Veni, vidi, vici and the whole of his De Bello Gallico was nothing more than the most admirable special and war correspondence, intended to keep his name before the Roman people and to induce them to contrast the sacrifices he was making for the glory of the empire with the corrupt luxury of the senatorial party at home.