"I got a lot of good pointers. For instance, I'd been a bitter opponent of the 'funnies.' But I put them back when I learned that people really wanted them. You see, I was getting a good cross section of the likes and dislikes of all my customers and my prospects.
"After the 'funnies' were in—and after various other changes had been made—I sent my four scouts back once more to tell of the improvements. Then we checked the new reports with the old ones. There was plenty of deadwood. I knew there would be. But there was enough good live stuff to furnish food for thought.
"Some needed changes couldn't be made right away. Many people preferred a competing paper because it carried more department store ads. Well, I couldn't do anything about that for the moment. But I could and did improve the sports page, put in more home-stuff for the women, more society news, funnier 'funnies' and so on. Those were things our readers wanted which I could gradually give them.
"Then it was time to tackle the advertising problem. I had my ammunition. Carried a bunch of reports around with me. Told the merchants frankly what I was up to. Showed them the reports from women who said they'd subscribe if we had more advertising as well as the reports from those who did subscribe for certain good reasons.
"And I quoted a rate on what we were worth at the time, not on what I knew we could do in the future. I didn't begrudge a full day spent in one small store, if that small store advertised the stuff I felt was wanted by the people I wanted for readers.
"Well, they came 'round one by one—the stores and the people. And I think the results prove that I was keeping busy on the right tasks—the tasks on which the welfare of my business depends—and not on the tasks that mean only increased volume.
"How does it affect my readers? That is my yardstick for measuring everything about my business. That is my guide to whether or not I should worry. If a little error in last night's paper has the power to affect my readers' opinion of the paper, then it's my job to run it down to earth, find out how it happened—and see that it never happens again. But if there's a big advertising contract in the offing which won't affect the permanent standing of the paper in any way whatsoever—except to increase the number of dollars that come clinking into the coffers—I don't give thirty seconds of my time to it. I hire a sales manager to do that. That's his job. The other's mine.
"I'll spend a week with my managing editor trying to figure out a way to get our afternoon editions on the street a few minutes earlier. It may involve some minor change in the pressroom running into only a few hundred dollars—but it does affect our permanent place in the sun. On the other hand, the managing editor can go ahead and spend $5000 of my good money on something that has nothing to do with our readers' interest, and all I'll do is okay the expenditure. He'll do the worrying this time."
You and I aren't interested in the way this publisher went about building up his newspaper. That is to say, we don't care anything about his female quartette who went around and sang the paper's praises. His methods were sound, of course, and merit attention. But our interest right now is in his division between the tasks he watched personally and the tasks he left his business manager or his managing editor to work out for themselves.
Strip off the publishing scenery—just as a moment ago we stripped off the individual characteristics of a totally different business—and you find that HIS DIVISION IS APPLICABLE NOT ONLY TO ANY BUSINESS, BUT TO ANY SINGLE JOB. Which means once more that that's the way the successful manager of a steel mill or of a peanut stand will divide the tasks which confront him from nine to five every day.