At the time of which I am writing, the Associated Press was the only organization in the country that could render such service, and every newspaper venture lacking its franchise was foredoomed to failure.
The Pulitzer Revolution
But a newspaper revolution was impending and presently it broke upon us.
In 1883 Mr. Joseph Pulitzer bought the World and instituted a totally new system of newspaper conduct.
His advent into New York journalism was called an "irruption," and it was resented not only by the other newspapers, but even more by a large proportion of the conservative public.
In its fundamental principle, Mr. Pulitzer's revolutionary method was based upon an idea identical with that suggested by Mr. John Bigelow when he told me there were too many newspapers for the educated class. Mr. Pulitzer undertook to make a newspaper, not for the educated class, but for all sorts and conditions of men. He did not intend to overlook the educated class, but he saw clearly how small a part of the community it was, and he refused to make his appeal to it exclusively or even chiefly.
The results were instantaneous and startling. The World, which had never been able to achieve a paying circulation or a paying constituency of advertisers, suddenly began selling in phenomenal numbers, while its advertising business became what Mr. Pulitzer once called a "bewildering chaos of success, yielding a revenue that the business office was imperfectly equipped to handle."
It is an interesting fact, that the World's gain in circulation was not made at the expense of any other newspaper. The books of account show clearly that while the World was gaining circulation by scores and hundreds of thousands, no other morning newspaper was losing. The simple fact was that by appealing to a larger class, the World had created a great company of newspaper readers who had not before been newspaper readers at all. Reluctantly, and only by degrees, the other morning newspapers adopted the World's methods, and won to themselves a larger constituency than they had ever enjoyed before.
All this had little effect upon the afternoon newspapers. They had their constituencies. Their province was quite apart from that of the morning papers. A circulation of ten or twenty thousand copies seemed to them satisfactory; any greater circulation was deemed extraordinary, and if at a time of popular excitement their sales exceeded twenty thousand they regarded it not only as phenomenal but as a strain upon their printing and distributing machinery which it would be undesirable to repeat very often.
But the revolution was destined to reach them presently. At that time none of the morning newspapers thought of issuing afternoon editions. The game seemed not worth the candle. But presently the sagacity of Mr. William M. Laffan—then a subordinate on the Sun's staff, later the proprietor and editor of that newspaper—saw and seized an opportunity. The morning papers had learned their lesson and were making their appeal to the multitude instead of the select few. The afternoon newspapers were still addressing themselves solely to "the educated class." Mr. Laffan decided to make an afternoon appeal to the more multitudinous audience. Under his inspiration the Evening Sun was established on the seventeenth day of March, 1887, and it instantly achieved a circulation of forty thousand—from twice to four times that of its more conservative competitors.