The Newspaper Industry

THE old American ideal of the press was undoubtedly that represented to the eye by the Franklin hand printing press, supplemented in the popular mind with some such figure as Ben Franklin himself in his shirt-sleeves, pulling the long sweep of the lever, bringing the flap with the sheet down upon the type on its bed, and applying the pressure, producing a single impression. It was not at all out of keeping with the editorial functions in this tradition for Franklin to have set the type, after writing his leader, and to have handled the inkingballs or roller before thus going to press. The editor had wholly, solely, and really edited the paper that he was now sending forth to his countrymen, summoning them to the duty of citizens as he saw it. It was a personal and individual, and very prominent and responsible, relation that he held to the community as a public man. The editor of the olden time was, as we say now, “the whole thing; ” this because his machinery was of the simplest character. His press was hardly more important or more complex than the wheelbarrow in which the single clerk of the establishment trundled the edition for mailing, after writing the wrappers, to the post office. At the present day the machinery of a newspaper fills a whole basement and subbasement, the clerical force whole floors, of a great city building, and the editor — who knows who or where the real editor is, or how much the nominal editor really edits ? The fact is that the editor and the editorial are nowadays but means to the circulation and advertising, — the main objects to be kept in view, — and the publisher, the manager of the circulation and the advertising, is supreme. The newspaper has become an industry, a business conducted for the usual ends of business, with public teaching and influence but a by-product.

Consider the revelations of the last census as to increase and profits of this new form of industrial enterprise. There are, it appears, over 15,000 establishments for the publication of periodicals, an increase of twenty-four per cent in the decade since the previous census. About 400 are started every year, or more than one for every day of the year including Sundays. Of the 15,000 existing journals, about 2200 are dailies and 13,000 weeklies. Considerably more than half of the whole number of these publications are really very unimportant, as but 6000 out of the 15,000 have more than 1000 circulation. The aggregate of the capital invested is about $192,500,000. Now about $50,300,000 are paid out in wages, and $50,200,000 for material ; and the value of the product is stated to be $223,000,000. Here is a profit on the capital invested, if the United States census is to be relied on, enormous after reckoning in also the advertising receipts. What wonder that, as a “business proposition,” the newspaper is exceedingly attractive to capital, and that the pecuniary object far outweighs the political, — in short, that the press has grown to be so fancy an “ industrial ” that it might well have already become a “trust,” and been completely lost to public benefit and behoof.

It was in the year 1898, the year of what the original “yellow journal ” claimed as “the Journal’s war, ” that the development of “yellow journalism ” rose to national and even international importance as the direct and immediate inspiration of the war on Spain. The parent stock on which had been grafted this flaunting saffron efflorescence, now running wild and luxuriant, was a class of journals that just before had appeared in the larger cities of the country, East and West, —published, not as newspapers generally had hitherto been established, to advance political ends and champion public causes, but primarily, indeed solely, for the profits to be made in the publishing of them. In this development of “modern journalism ” a great change was accomplished before anybody realized it, or at all events reckoned upon the gravity of the necessary consequences. The initiative had been transferred from editor to publisher ; the editor no longer hired the publisher, — the publisher hired the editor. The projectors of this new sort of newspaper substituted means for end ; put the cart before the horse. They eschewed politics and all taking sides on serious questions, and set themselves to being merely “newsy,” “gossipy,” and entertaining. Their tactics were all directed frankly and openly to one objective point, — the large circulation that brings advertising into the counting-room.

In their editorial proclamations in especially prominent type they asserted nothing so frequently or so emphatically as the growth of their circulation and advertising business. In these papers the public press abdicated its public character and functions, and practically became a mechanical industry and commercial enterprise. Now industrial and commercial enterprise is nothing base. But journalism had hitherto pretended to be a profession ; not business prestige, not commercial success, but intellectual abilities and moral qualities, gave it its force and vitality. To be sure, the designation of “The Fourth Estate,” which the newspaper press has proudly assumed without knowing exactly what it means, was originally borne by the lowest classes, the proletariat, —that order of society which is one degree lower than the commons or third estate. The editor may not ever have been the most important of forces in the state, the politician of high or low degree who used him may have always outranked him in public consideration; but the journalist was at least thus associated with the statesman in the affairs of government, and ostensibly, at least, voiced public opinion on matters of highest moment.

But the new type of American newspaper had no opinions. The countingroom conception of the newspaper is one never offending with opinions to displease anybody, one so conducted if possible as to turn no business away from the door. The old-fashioned editor was wont to assume, sometimes very amusingly it is true, the rôle of Sir Oracle. The journalist of the new development contentedly occupies the position of manufacturer and distributer of a salable print. He vaunts his journalistic sagacity in placing himself on the level of the smiling Boniface, and his newspaper on a parity with the “American plan ” hotel bill of fare; you don’t expect every guest to eat everything in the list, he says, but you intend everybody to find whatever he wants there. The American people did not always respect Horace Greeley’s enthusiasms, — sometimes hooted at his foibles. The English even took the liberty of putting very distinguished radical editors like Leigh Hunt and John Wilkes into prison. Perhaps Ben Franklin and the great Doctor Samuel Johnson, as editors, were not to be taken seriously always, and they would doubtless have agreed to this themselves. But such journalists of the elder day were dignity itself, any one of them you please a Pericles of distinction, leadership, and power, compared with the editor of a modern newspaper with its mainspring in the counting-room. Indeed, the editor of such a paper can hardly be said to exist in the old sense of the word; the sheet is practically minus a real editor, and hence of course has no editorial opinion. In the old place of editor is the business manager for the capital stock of the enterprise, and any opinions are what the business demands in the view of the one really responsible man, to wit, the business man whose main function it is to make contracts for advertising, for paper supply, for fifty-thousand-dollar presses, and for the huge labor force of the establishment, mechanical and intellectual, to earn dividends of twenty to fifty per cent. His chief responsibility, however, lies in his supervision of the editors, so that their indiscretions may not reduce the circulation or offend important interests.

How many newspapers are there of this kind? you ask. How many newspapers are not of this kind ? would be an easier question to answer. You can name on the fingers of one hand existing American dailies really edited by editors, or which have editors known of at all outside of their own local circles. In what has called itself “modern journalism ” the news outlay and material development have so enormously increased the cost of carrying on newspapers that great investments of capital are called for, such as can ordinarily be commanded only by joint-stock companies. Every corporation’s capital is, of course, its prime concern; “ corporations [having] no souls.” Hence the managing director of the capital at stake in the enterprise is necessarily a most important man, — the most important man. It is for him to know and report to the stockholders the effect of the editorial course of the paper upon its business returns and business prospects. Consequently it is upon his judgment that the editor’s views are to be supported or reversed by the capital invested. The editor necessarily becomes his subordinate, holding his place during what is determined by the business manager to be good behavior. The only exceptions to this obvious businesslike rule are those journals the capital of which is owned or controlled by the editors, and such in modern journalism are few and far between.

What is naturally to be looked for, in the way of leadership in public thought from a press inspired and controlled by business men? The stream cannot rise higher than its source. If the ethics of business be based on the modernized Golden Rule, “ Do your neighbor, or he will do you; ” or, as that eminent business authority, David Harum, phrases it, “Do unto others what they would do to you, and do it fust,” it can hardly prove socially or morally upbuilding. With the ear of shrewd business management close to the ground, the business-managed and business - seeking press will not vary much from the dead level of the average masses of business men. It is a fact of record where the business class stood in the anti-slavery agitation. It is an only too well-attested fact of business experience that it is a dangerous thing for a business man’s credit and standing as a business man to allow himself to take a very active part, making public speeches, or by committee work showing any deep or intense interest, in public affairs; it is inferred that he must be neglecting his business. Even if he confines his energies in a political way to forwarding the success of one or the other of the two orthodox parties, he must do it only in the conventional ways and in moderation. If he espouses the cause of any reform which is to cut into the privileges of public-service corporations, capitalizing public utilities, let him look to it that he is not rated by his business friends as at least softheaded in going in for limiting, instead of seeking to participate in, the spoliation of the public. But to join in any radical forward movement or lend his name, even, to broad social or philanthropic philosophies, is to earn the reputation of being a “crank ” and consorting with Socialists and Anarchists, — all one to the average business mind.

With the press in the hands of business men, therefore, its abdication of leadership in the style of the Thunderer and of the famous journals of the past in this country is a foregone conclusion. It may have been absurd for the elder journalism to style itself the “Vox Populi, ” with the implication that it was by that token the “Vox Dei.” One smiles to note at the top of the front page of some time-stained sheet of other days the legend: —

But this bounce was at least the survival of a noble ideal, — a fiction that was evidence of, and a tribute to, the civic sense of responsibility which is the broad base of the national ethics of a self-governing people. In place of such legends nowadays you shall find, in large letters and black-face figures, strenuous sworn affidavits as to the monthly increase in circulation and yearly gain in columns of “want ads.” The modern journal à la mode, frankly organized for business gain, is periodically carried off its feet into double-leaded editorials setting forth its business prosperity in tabulated statistics. Such purely commercial considerations are injected into the midst of its comment on public questions, and the latter are dealt with in ordinary type because they are of minor importance to the pecuniary rewards of the publishing corporation, in the scheme of commercial journalism. Of course there will be the usual quantum of matter that looks like editorials, but on examination it is found to be what might well be patented under the name of editorialene. Editorialene shrewdly selects men of straw to trample upon. It enunciates axiomatic platitudes with a ponderous affectation of wisdom. It “socks it to the satraps ” of a safe distance in the past and a safe geographical remoteness. It also twitters sprightly commonplaces about minor moralities. But you will seek it in vain for direct, courageous, helpful dealing with the burning questions, the political and social and local issues really engrossing the best minds of the community, on the one side among high-priced legal talent, and on the other among reformers, and demanding to be handled without gloves for the good of the city and the safety of the state. If a “gas deal” threatens to mortgage the future of a prime necessity of life to dividend charges on shoals of stock-issues, or a railway combination to monopolize the transportation of a city or of a vast region, the modern journalism will find space, in spite of any “pressure of news,” for the arguments of corporation lawyers at so much per column on either side, but its own editorial on the question, if indeed it pretends to have any, will be elaborately sinuous, flat, and foisonless. This it is to manage a journal with approved business sagacity. Of course, the Republican papers will conventionally attack the Democrats, and Democratic journals attack the Republicans, as Jay Gould’s railroad policy was to be Republican in Republican counties, and Democratic in Democratic counties ; but this perfunctory beating of noisy drums only helps them keep silence upon the issues that are really pressing on the actual living and well-being of the people.

In a press managed by business men for business, you will not have these troublesome and divisive questions stirred up. You will never see the great liquor-selling interest, for instance, disturbed in any way to hurt. The advertising of the large grocery establishments is too important a matter in newspaper receipts to be jeopardized. On none of the great social or political questions do men absorbed in business pursuits feel very keenly so long as their own immediate business prospects are not interfered with. The most ordinary tradesman will wax hot instantly if a dollar of his own seems to be at risk, as in some clashing of employers with employed. But on sociological questions in general the business end of the paper is content to assert its possession of the power to stop all discussion of innovating principles. It has no emotions or convictions to prevent its adherence to “ whatever is, ” or, if a forward step be no longer avoidable, to opportunist measures; and it stolidly denies those to whom principles are as the breath of their nostrils, and the forwarding of social progress the gratification that serves to inspire their lifework instead of the gaining of wealth, the exercise of their best powers in discussion of movements for the public weal. Of the great Pennsylvanian motto, “Addition, Division, Silence,” — the greatest of these was silence.

And silence is the stronghold of the business-run press of the country to-day. “Hero Funston, ” with characteristic cunning and audacity, put it into words when he demanded of the United States Senate to “shut up, ” under penalty of a general hanging of talkers until all was over in the Philippines. The Associated Press had obeyed this behest before it was uttered, and the country has had vouchsafed to it, under the dictation of that commercial and political machine, almost no material on which to base judgment of events or educate public opinion. That silence has been broken at last on events of two years’ ago does not contravene this charge or condone this dereliction of duty. Happily in the weekly journals is to be found the antidote for this pernicious dry rot of silence on great issues. There one finds, for instance, the latest paper of President Schurman, the first Commissioner of the first Philippine Commission, in which he touches on this very point in these burning and memorable words: —

“For the all-important function of education we are dependent almost entirely upon agitation and discussion.

“When, therefore, I hear men in these opening years of the new century reprobate discussion of the greatest of public affairs, when even civil and military officials, in spite of the assurance of the government that the pacification of the Philippines is now practically complete, conjure their fellow citizens to hold their tongues and swallow a Philippine policy of force and silence, I feel that, however brave and patriotic these spokesmen may be, they are champions of a new faith which is treason to democracy, and which, if it ever prevailed, would be death to the American republic. Even if free speech and unlimited discussion in the United States had the effect throughout all the Philippine archipelago of rendering the natives dissatisfied with our present military and semi-military government, and inspired them with the love and hope of liberty and independence, so that larger armies would be needed to keep them in colonial subjection, — that, ay and more than that, would be preferable and infinitely preferable, to our renunciation of the principle of free speech, of the sovereignty of public opinion, of government of the people, for the people, and by the people, which is the soul and glory of our republic.

“To attack or belittle popular government, to decry free speech and discussion by which it lives and acts, is to plunge the sword into our mother’s bosom, because the outgoings of her heart of charity render some remote ward too hopeful and independent to suit our temporary convenience. We can live without the Philippines, but the republic cannot endure without free discussion. The people have a right to talk and will talk whatever their servants, civil or military, may choose to say about it. Had these servants of the sovereign people, who now pose as masters, more wisdom and sagacity, they would perceive that in a free republic it is only a policy of despair which would hide behind a conspiracy of silence.”

The classic tyrants took care to provide bread and circus shows for the people while robbing them of participation in the politics of the day; and to make up for its suppression of the data of intelligent public opinion, modern journalism gives its patrons a sort of continuous performance of vaudeville. The London Evening Sun celebrated April Fool’s Day in the “modern” fashion. Dan Leno, the comedian, was given editorial charge of the sheet for the day, and it appeared dressed in motley garb. Leno received £150 for his day’s editorial work. Think what it means that the congressional debates are no longer a regular feature of the daily papers of this country, as the parliamentary reports are still of the English papers. What is given of Congress appears under headings aiming to lure the reader with the idea that it is something else. Unless there has been a scene of fisticuffs in Senate or House, one may have to search long to find any mention of Congress at all. All through the recent exciting debates in the Senate on the Philippines, touching on the very foundation principles of the republic, the daily congressional report, except in the case of the Tillman-McLaurin episode, or in the interchange of witticisms between Senators Bailey and Depew about the ladies, was less than half a column in length, on the average, and the absorbingly interesting and all-important examination of the generals and civil officials from the islands was even more drastically abbreviated by the Associated Press, in spite of all protests, for the daily papers of the country. At the same time whole pages were devoted to tattle of Jenkinses detailed to describe the furnishings of the visiting German prince’s car, table, and bedrooms, with copious full-page illustrations, and lists and portraits of both notables and nobodies assisting at the respective local functions through which his royal highness rushed to his returning steamship. Compared with the great London daily papers, the chief New York dailies are essentially local sheets. To be sure, much happens in the great city and on a grand scale. Boston constructed her model municipal underground railway system without even interrupting the use of the streets for a day or an hour, while New York’s subway has progressed through a series of awful catastrophes. But in the absence of such events the gambling losses of a young multi-millionaire, his farewell supper as a bachelor to his young friends, his scrape with the police for reckless automobile driving, are equally good fish for the metropolitan daily’s net. It apparently doubts the interest of its public in the betrayal to the beet-sugar interest of our national pledges to Cuba, but the murder of — or by — a young woman of doubtful character will exhaust all the resources of its “reportorial, ” detective, and photographic staffs.

This yellow journalism is plainly commercial, and therefore the direct and natural outgrowth and flowering of the journalism for commercial ends. The step having been taken away from the original purpose of the press, to instruct and appeal to public sentiment on matters of political importance, we have brought up in journalistic vaudeville. If the purpose of publishing newspapers is not to lead, or to teach or preach or advocate or champion, but to avoid doing these very things and to draw in the pennies of the untaught and the unthinking, in order to build up circulation and advertising, then the frivolous must be thoroughly done. So the most popular of the newspapers of the largest cities are printing puzzles, colored pictures, music, dishing up in sensational type the startling, the painful, the shocking, and the funny. In voluminous supplements old stories from scrapbooks and cyclopædias are rehashed, appealing to the childish love of the marvelous. Worst of all, the brute instinct and passion for battle, destruction, and destructive enginery are fed by copious illustrations of ramping battleships, torpedo explosions, pugilistic “knock-outs,” football “oafs” in muddied heaps,—all this cheek by jowl with pictures of saints and martyrs and surpliced choir boys and Easter and Christmas carols, for the Christmas advertising and Easter fashions are two of the great harvests of the year for the modern journalism. Yellow journalism is simply the business journalism of the modern development at the top notch. It differs only in degree, not in kind, from the more respectable journalism which for business abdicates the old function and dignity and duty of the press in leadership, and instead of fronting the mob, follows it. Not that the yellow journal is not duly strenuous in its shrieking. It shrieks so continually, and on so many diverse subjects, so evidently for the sake of the shrieking and to attract attention thus to itself, so obviously without sincenty, conviction, or moral purpose, that it can lead in no particular direction. For example, the original “yellow, ” still the leading paper of this class, whose worked-up hysteria over Cuba, with photographic pictures of the reconcentrados in all stages of starvation, at last communicated itself epidemically to the country and to Congress, and brought on a war which it is now known was not necessary to the freeing of Cuba, but was a great thing for the yellow journalism, — this “great daily” stands for both Militarism and Populism at once. It shrieked loud and long, after the little war with the big consequences, for a navy large enough to wipe out all the fleets of the world and a standing army to match, with new military and naval national universities, at the same time that it was shrieking for the throttling of bureaucracy, the smashing of plutocracy, and the municipalization of city lighting and transportation and all other public utilities; for the protection of the weak against predacious power, and in the same breath for the forcible retention of everything grabbed from the weak. Imperialism and Socialism, pounded out by the big bass drums of two competing brass bands perched upon the same stand, do not tend to lucid reflection on political programmes in the popular mind. The commercial impulse to add every possible attraction and impossible combination to the variety shows maintained in its tall towers of Babel is manifestly the rationale of such journalism.

Now between the timorous inanity of the respectable commercialized press and the insanity of the yellow journalism, where is the chance for light and leading for this newspaper - reading country ? If the salt has lost its savor, wherewith shall this great democracy get the relish for public issues necessary for the proper digestion of the elements of the exacting problems of self-government? It is possible that as a consequence of the smothering of free and independent editorial expression by the characteristic and necessary conservatism of the commercial instincts of the counting-room, representing the capital involved in the vast plants of daily newspapers, public opinion will have to turn to the weekly press. Here the large amount of stockholders’ capital required to maintain an example of modern journalism may be dispensed with. About one tenth of the capital needed for a daily will suffice for a weekly. The editor need not be a millionaire, or the tool of a millionaire, to own his paper and so really edit it. For bare safety $500,000 must be in hand before the modern sort of a daily paper can be started, while for a well appearing weekly $50,000 would answer at a pinch for the trial and see the paper through the perils of infancy, if it prove to be really a useful addition to the community.

There are not wanting signs that some such shifting of the strength and dignity of the press that really represents the best public opinion of the country has already set in and reached considerable proportions. One of these signs is to be discovered in various attacks that have recently been made on the weekly press. Far-sighted tactics have been resorted to to limit the advantages of the weeklies in the United States mails. For years, under the leadership of Congressman Loud of California, chairman of the Committee on Postal Affairs, the attempt has been renewed to cut off large classes of cheap publications from the enjoyment of the low rates allowed to newspapers as second-class matter. It has been repeatedly demonstrated that the true cause of the so-called deficit in the post-office department is not the amount of cheap printed matter carried at second-class postage rates, but the disadvantageous contracts made with the railroads for carrying the mails. It has been fully shown that twice as much per mile per ton is paid the railroads for carrying the mails as they receive from passengers, and many times as much as they charge for carrying the express companies’ tonnage. It has been repeatedly shown that the annual rate paid by the government for the use of a postal car is enough to pay in six months for the construction of the car itself. It has been shown that the annual payments to railroads by the post office to be made for a series of years have been on certain routes estimated on mails artificially swollen for a few months for the purpose of securing high figures. And yet all the consequences of corrupt postal outlays is shouldered off upon the weekly press. The so-called Loud bill, which has been thus far regularly defeated on its recurrent appearances, enlists the support of the daily press by appealing to its commercial interest as against the weekly press, — a shortsighted selfishness, as whatever induces the reading habit must benefit the daily press. This same Congressman Loud is on record in more than one of his committee reports in favor of abandoning the post-office service altogether, and giving to private enterprise the rest of what business advantages he cannot manage under existing arrangements to throw to the well-intrenched and most ably generaled express corporations with their almost incredible profits.

A wholly new, and really very startling and significant, incident in the warfare on the weekly press was the ruling of Third Assistant Postmaster-General Madden, within the past twelvemonth, that weekly journals edited by cranks, two that advocate Socialism, for instance,— and there is no reason in logic why such as advocate Single Tax, or Anti-Vaccination, or Anti-Vivisection, should not come under the same category, — shall be denied the privileges of the newspaper mail rates. This intrepid reformer has thus placed under a ban intended to make their distribution impracticable two widely circulated sheets with tenets which he could not approve, on the ground that they were virtually advertising-circulars, because they are devoted to “ advertising ” certain ideas. This sounds like Gilbertand-Sullivan opera bouffe, but it is the official action of the present Third Assistant Postmaster-General. If it be one of the necessities ahead in our new departure in national evolution to destroy the independence of the press and smother the expression of public opinion, or rather to prevent the formation of any public opinion, this Mr. Madden, otherwise unknown to fame, will have earned a high place on the roll of glory containing the heroes of the American war on Spain and the Philippines.

But this preposterous assumption is no real danger; it is too absurd. The real danger lies in the atrophy of public opinion induced by a press conducted for commercial ends, and without sensibility to delicate promptings of national honor, without resentment of palpable social injustice, without any ideal so dear to it as commercial prosperity. What was enforced by Napoleon III. upon the newspapers of France has come to pass in this country by the surrender to commercialism. “Agitation is forbidden,” wrote Bagehot, describing French conditions after “thirteen years of Cæsarism, ” “and it is agitation alone that teaches. The speculative thought of France has not been killed by the Empire, — it is as quick, as rigorous, as keen as ever; but though still alive it is no longer powerful, — it cannot teach the mass. The Revue is permitted, but newspapers — effectual newspapers — are forbidden. . . . The daily play of the higher mind upon the lower mind is arrested.” Despotism is no less despotism for being many - headed, with an aggressive representative (perhaps unwittingly so) of the imperialistic commercialism ruling the hour in each newspaper office, clothed with the authority to hold down the editor to the safe, commonplace editorial output of commerce. “Enlightenment be-” Thackeray’s Jupiter Jeames is made to say, “I want the fool of a thick-headed reader to say ‘ Just my own views,’ else he ain’t pleased and maybe he stops his paper. ” The New York Evening Post, the other day, pointed out that with one or two honorable exceptions the American press was completely silent for days after the terrible revelations of the ordered killing of men, women, and children — “above the age of ten ” —by our army in Samar. “Dry minds, which feel no glow of faith in them,” says Bagehot, “ often do not know what their opinions are.” It is the business of the business man to keep his mind “dry,” and the journalism that is in the business man’s hand can manifestly give to the community nothing of the commanding, high-souled spirit, — guiding, enlightening, and, above all, leading, and inspiring with faith in itself, which that sage and practical English political philosopher, concerned always with problems of self-government similar to our own, rates as of the highest value in self-government, — “the intense emotion of conviction.”

Brooke Fisher.