Yet they agree fairly well with the replies of Scott's Chicago business and professional men. They were asked, not what features interested them most, but why they preferred one newspaper to another. Nearly seventy-one percent based their conscious preference on local news (17.8%), or political (15.8%) or financial (11.3%), or foreign (9.5%), or general (7.2%), or editorials (9%). The other thirty percent decided on grounds not connected with public affairs. They ranged from not quite seven who decided for ethical tone, down to one twentieth of one percent who cared most about humor.
How do these preferences correspond with the space given by newspapers to various subjects? Unfortunately there are no data collected on this point for the newspapers read by the Chicago and New York groups at the time the questionnaires were made. But there is an interesting analysis made over twenty years ago by Wilcox. He studied one hundred and ten newspapers in fourteen large cities, and classified the subject matter of over nine thousand columns.
Averaged for the whole country the various newspaper matter was found to fill:
{ (a) War News 17.9
{ { Foreign 1.2
{ (b) General " 21.8 { Politics 6.4
I. News 55.3 { { Crime 3.1
{ { Misc. 11.1
{
{ { Business 8.2
{ (c) Special " 15.6 { Sport 5.1
{ Society 2.3
II. Illustrations 3.1
III. Literature 2.4 { (a) Editorials 3.9 IV. Opinion 7.1 { (b) Letters & Exchange 3.2
V. Advertisements 32.1
In order to bring this table into a fair comparison, it is necessary to exclude the space given to advertisements, and recompute the percentages. For the advertisements occupied only an infinitesimal part of the conscious preference of the Chicago group or the college group. I think this is justifiable for our purposes because the press prints what advertisements it can get, [Footnote: Except those which it regards as objectionable, and those which, in rare instances, are crowded out.] whereas the rest of the paper is designed to the taste of its readers. The table would then read:
{War News 26.4-
{ {Foreign 1.8-
I. News 81.4+{General News 32.0+ {Political 9.4+
{ {Crime 4.6-
{ {Misc. 16.3+
{
{ {Business 12.1-
{Special " 23.0- {Sporting 7.5+
{Society 3.3-
II. Illustrations 4.6-
III. Literature 3.5+
IV. Opinion 10.5- {Editorials 5.8-
{Letters 4.7+
In this revised table if you add up the items which may be supposed to deal with public affairs, that is to say war, foreign, political, miscellaneous, business news, and opinion, you find a total of 76.5% of the edited space devoted in 1900 to the 70.6% of reasons given by Chicago business men in 1916 for preferring a particular newspaper, and to the five features which most interested 67.5% of the New York College students in 1920.