SUGGESTIONS

  1. Observe carefully the “make-up” of representative newspapers in different parts of the country.
  2. Study the “make-up” of your own paper.
  3. Display the important news in a conspicuous position on the front page.
  4. Arrange the front page to secure as much symmetry as possible.
  5. Put the most important news story in the last, or outside, column of the first page.
  6. Place the second best story in the first column of the front page.
  7. Break over into the inside pages front-page stories of more than a column in length.
  8. Alternate large and small heads at the top of the columns for contrast.
  9. Remember that the upper right hand quarter of the first page is the most conspicuous.
  10. Group on separate pages market, society, sporting, state, foreign, and other distinct kinds of news.
  11. See that all guide lines are taken out when the type is assembled in the form.
  12. Don’t use any matter before it is “released.”
  13. Have some good two or three line “fillers” on hand.
  14. Don’t “hold over” or “kill” really live news matter.
  15. Remember that the number of street sales depends considerably upon the “make-up” of the front page.

CHAPTER XIV

THE FUNCTION OF THE NEWSPAPER

The Newspaper Worker and His Work. Any discussion of newspaper writing and editing would be incomplete if it did not consider the function of the newspaper and the relation of the newspaper worker to that function. In this presentation of methods of newspaper making the object has been to explain and to exemplify current practices in journalism rather than to discuss the ultimate purpose and results of such methods. It is evident, however, that unless the reporter and the editor, consciously or unconsciously, set up for themselves ideals based on their conception of the function of the newspaper, they have no standards by which to measure the character of their work. Merely to accept existing methods without analyzing them to determine their results, is to overlook their underlying purpose. Not until a reporter or an editor realizes the effect that his news story or his headline produces upon the opinions, and hence upon the lives, of the thousands of persons who read it, does he appreciate the full significance of his work. Ideals and standards for any kind of work appeal much more strongly to the average worker when he knows the ultimate effect of what he is doing.

The Newspaper and the Community. Like all other undertakings, public and private, newspaper making tends to conform to the current ideals and tastes of the community. As far as it is a private business enterprise, it is influenced by the conditions and the practices prevailing in the business world. As a medium of information and publicity, it is measured by the standards of the community in which it circulates. It is a product of its environment, and at the same time it is a force in creating that environment.

Conditions in newspaper making to-day are the outgrowth of the journalism of preceding generations. The changes that have produced these conditions are to a considerable extent the results of social, political, and economic forces. A brief survey of the development of newspaper editing and publishing, with special reference to present problems in journalism, will help to a better understanding of the function of the newspaper of to-day.

Growth of the Business Element. In the last seventy-five years in this country, the editing and the managing of newspapers have undergone a significant development. From being a comparatively simple undertaking, newspaper publishing has become a big, complex, highly organized enterprise. In 1835 it was possible for one man, James Gordon Bennett, Sr., to start the New York Herald with a cash capital of $500, and to perform the greater part of the work connected with its publication, for the owner-editor’s duties ranged from editorial writing to keeping books, from gathering police news to making out bills, and from commenting on conditions in Wall Street to writing advertisements. The first instance of ownership of a newspaper by an incorporated stock company came ten years later when Horace Greeley and Thomas M’Elrath, editor and business manager respectively of the New York Tribune, decided to share their personal ownership of that paper with five assistant editors and with the five employees of the business and mechanical departments who had been connected with the Tribune for the longest time. This joint ownership plan Greeley and his assistants hoped would in time result in the “still further application of the general principle that the workman should be his own employer and director, and should receive the full reward of his labor.” The amount raised by this stock company, $100,000, was considered at that time a very large sum to be devoted to newspaper publishing. How rapidly the conditions of newspaper making changed is shown by the fact that less than thirty years after the New York Tribune was incorporated with its shares at $100 each, these shares sold for as much as $10,000 each, and in 1869, less than thirty-five years after the New York Herald began with $500 cash capital, Bennett refused an offer of $2,000,000 for his paper. Within the lifetime of these two great editor-publishers newspaper making had become a big business enterprise.

Newspapers Require Large Capital. During the last quarter of a century the amount of capital required for success in newspaper publishing has been further increased by the need for huge presses, expensive linotypes and other type-casting machines, and more elaborate stereotyping apparatus, as well as for better news service, new special features, and more numerous illustrations. Expensive additions to the mechanical equipment and other exigencies often make it necessary for the newspaper company, like other business enterprises, to secure financial assistance by borrowing considerable sums from banks. Such has become the magnitude of the business side of the newspaper that ownership by stock companies is the rule to-day instead of the exception as it was in 1845. Not infrequently the majority of the stock of a newspaper is held by one man or in one family, and one person, often known as the publisher-owner, directs the publishing. In large cities the amount of capital required to establish and maintain a daily newspaper is so great that the publisher-owner must be a man of considerable wealth. Stock in newspaper companies, however, is not held exclusively by those directly connected with the paper. From the point of view of the stockholders of a newspaper company, who are not directly connected with the newspaper and who are interested in it largely if not entirely as an investment, the important consideration is that the newspaper shall be profitable, that dividends shall be adequate and regular. In short, newspaper publishing has become a large business undertaking subject to the conditions of big business enterprises.