“No. It’s his web, in a way; but he is n’t spinning it. It’s being spun for him and for us. All our readers identify us completely with his policies. If I say anything editorially, it commits the Governor. People take it for granted that we ‘re his mouthpiece. It is n’t fair to him or to us.”
“Does he take advantage of it?”
“We—ell; I don’t know. He does n’t mean to. Every now and then, though, something will come up where he wants us to do this or not to do that—always some unimportant thing—because of its influence on more important things that we ‘re both interested in.”
“As for instance?”
“Take all this boosting, press-agent stuff that comes along and that Embree wants in,” replied Jeremy. “Sometimes it’s political. Sometimes it’s personal. Sometimes it’s the German stuff that Wymett used to talk about. I’ve got to admit that Embree’s view is always for the practical good of the paper. By following his advice, we’ve held sulky advertisers more than once. But I know this, I’m doing for him—and for the politics of it—and for the paper itself, in a way, I guess—what I would n’t do for any advertiser. And sometimes it’s been a matter of principles. Not very important, maybe, but principles just the same. Compromise, Andy.”
“Life’s mostly compromise, I guess. There’s a little more of it in the newspaper game than in other lines because the newspaper touches life at more points than any other business.”
“I’ve always thought,” pursued Jeremy, “that when I came to own a newspaper it would be independent if it was n’t anything else. Well, look at The Guardian!”
“Ay-ah. I’m looking at it. What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s ducking a little here, and dodging a little there, and trying to be cautious about this issue and polite about that man, and so on. That is n’t my notion of being independent.”
“What is? I guess we’re as cocky as any paper in the country. You can’t tell all the people to go to hell all the time,” pointed out the general manager, reasonably.