This was written to Professor Charles Eliot Norton by the late Edwin Lawrence Godkin. The Barnard referred to was, of course, the infamous judge from whom, a few years later, the judicial robes were stripped. Mr. Godkin’s attack upon him was, so far as I know, the first that was made in print. But the passion of indignation which glowed in that great journalist, with his willingness to hazard his own fortunes in the public behalf, only sets forth conspicuously what humbler members of the press feel as their truest motive and their noblest reward.
PRESS TENDENCIES AND DANGERS
BY OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD
The passing of the Boston Journal, in the eighty-fourth year of its age, by merger with the Boston Herald has rightly been characterized as a tragedy of journalism. Yet it is no more significant than the similar merger of the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Cleveland Leader, or the New York Press and the New York Sun. All are in obedience to the drift toward consolidation which has been as marked in journalism as in other spheres of business activity—for this is purely a business matter. True, in the cases of the Sun and the Press Mr. Munsey’s controlling motive was probably the desire to obtain the Associated Press service for the Sun, which he could have secured in no other way. But Mr. Munsey was not blind to the advantages of combining the circulation of the Press and the Sun, and has profited by it.
It is quite possible that there will be further consolidations in New York and Boston before long; at least conditions are ripe for them. Chicago has now only four morning newspapers, including the Staats-Zeitung, but one of these has an uncertain future before it. The Herald of that city is the net result of amalgamations which successively wiped out the Record, the Times, the Chronicle, and the Inter-Ocean. It is only a few years ago that the Boston Traveler and the Evening Herald were consolidated, and Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans, Portland (Oregon), and Philadelphia are other cities in which there has been a reduction in the number of dailies.
In the main it is correct to say that the decreasing number of newspapers in our larger American cities is due to the enormously increased costs of maintaining great dailies. This has been found to limit the number which a given advertising territory will support. It is a fact, too, that there are few other fields of enterprise in which so many unprofitable enterprises are maintained. There is one penny daily in New York which has not paid a cent to its owners in twenty years; during that time its income has met its expenses only once. Another of our New York dailies loses between $400,000 and $500,000 a year, if well-founded report is correct, but the deficit is cheerfully met each year. It may be safely stated that scarcely half of our New York morning and evening newspapers return an adequate profit.
The most striking fact about the recent consolidations is that this leaves Cleveland with only one morning newspaper, the Plain Dealer. It is the sixth city in size in the United States, yet it has not appeared to be large enough to support both the Plain Dealer and the Leader, not even with the aid of what is called “foreign,” or national, advertising, that is, advertising which originates outside of Cleveland. There are now many other cities in which the seeker after morning news is compelled to take it from one source only, whatever his political affiliations may be: in Indianapolis, from the Star; in Detroit, from the Free Press; in Toledo, from the Times; in Columbus, from the State Journal; in Scranton, from the Republican; in St. Paul, from the Pioneer Press; and in New Orleans, from the Times-Picayune. This circumstance comes as a good deal of a shock to those who fancy that at least the chief political parties should have their representative dailies in each city—for that is the old American tradition.
Turning to the State of Michigan, we find that the development has gone even further, for here are some sizable cities with no morning newspaper and but one in the evening field. In fourteen cities whose population has more than doubled during the last twenty-five years the number of daily newspapers printed in the English language has shrunk from 42 to only 23. In nine of these fourteen cities there is not a single morning newspaper; they have but one evening newspaper each to give them the news of the world, unless they are content to receive their news by mail from distant cities. On Sunday they are better off, for there are seven Sunday newspapers in these towns. In the five cities having more than one newspaper, there are six dailies that are thought to be unprofitable to their owners, and it is believed that, within a short time, the number of one-newspaper cities will grow to twelve, in which case Detroit and Grand Rapids will be the only cities with morning dailies. It is reported by competent witnesses that the one-newspaper towns are not only well content with this state of affairs, but that they actively resist any attempt to change the situation, the merchants in some cases banding together voluntarily to maintain the monopoly by refusing advertising to those wishing to start competition.
It is of course true that in the larger cities of the East there are other causes than the lack of advertising to account for the disappearance of certain newspapers. Many of them have deserved to perish because they were inefficiently managed or improperly edited. The Boston Transcript declares that the reason for the Journal’s demise was lack “of that singleness and clearness of direction and purpose which alone establish confidence in and guarantee abiding support of a newspaper.” If some of the Hearst newspapers may be cited as examples of successful journals that have neither clearness nor honesty of purpose, it is not to be questioned that a newspaper with clear-cut, vigorous personalities behind it is far more likely to survive than one that does not have them. But it does not help the situation to point out, as does the Columbia (S. C.) State, that “sentiment and passion” have been responsible for the launching of many of the newspaper wrecks; for often sentiment and the righteous passion of indignation have been responsible for the foundation of notable newspapers such as the New York Tribune, whose financial success was, for a time at least, quite notable. It is the danger that newspaper conditions, because of the enormously increased costs and this tendency to monopoly, may prevent people who are actuated by passion and sentiment from founding newspapers, which is causing many students of the situation much concern. What is to be the hope for the advocates of new-born and unpopular reforms if they cannot have a press of their own, as the Abolitionists and the founders of the Republican party set up theirs in a remarkably short time, usually with poverty-stricken bank accounts?
If no good American can read of cities having only one newspaper without concern,—since democracy depends largely upon the presenting of both sides of every issue,—it does not add any comfort to know that it would take millions to found a new paper, on a strictly business basis, in our largest cities. Only extremely wealthy men could undertake such a venture,—precisely as the rejuvenated Chicago Herald has been financed by a group of the city’s wealthiest magnates,—and even then the success of the undertaking would be questionable if it were not possible to secure the Associated Press service for the newcomer.