British and American Newspapers
NOVEMBER, 1919
BY CHARLES H. GRASTY
I
I HAVE been asked by the editor of the Atlantic Monthly to write an article comparing daily journalism in America and Great Britain.
Broadly, the differences between journalism in America and in Great Britain and France are those of the people themselves. We had a habit of dismissing French journalism rather summarily, but there is one thing of which both London and New York could make a limited adaptation. The leading articles in the Paris press are a mixture of editorial opinion and news-interpretation. This feature is to some extent supplied in the London press by the leaders on the editorial page. I should personally like to read daily such a paper as the Temps or the Journal des Débats. On the other hand, the French papers have little news enterprise as we understand such enterprise, and our press, by accepting subsidies from political and private interests, would suffer a greater loss of public respect than does the press of Paris, where the practice is more or less countenanced. I do not mean to say that all papers in Paris are subsidized, but certainly all suffer from the fact that many of them are.
The British press has several marked advantages over ours. I should perhaps put first that it has a big and interesting world to talk about. The interests of the British Empire, with its naval and governmental connections to make them real, are wide and varied. The newspaper reader may look at the map with an interest that is more than academic. I remember when I acquired a controlling interest in the Baltimore News, something over twenty-five years ago, I asked the head of the Washington Star to give me the secret of the success of that paper. He replied, ‘ I can do it almost in a sentence. If that corner drug-store over there should burn down and on the same day an earthquake should kill 10,000 people in Greece, the fire would have a column in the Star and the earthquake a stick.’
To the British, an event in Kamschatka or Chittigong is worth printing, and is perhaps editorialized about. Americans who have been in London might say that the British papers practically ignore American news. That is because there are not enough Americans to justify giving space to American news as such, and the British themselves have not been interested. One reason why I am in favor of the League of Nations is that it will tend to increase the interest of our people in the world beyond seas.
Of even greater advantage to the press is the British system of government. Government by public opinion is very real. Parliament is the agent of the people: they have the power of enforcing their views at any moment. I do not say that this is a better system than ours. Perhaps it is too much of a ‘ push-button control,’and needs checks and balances to prevent too ready a use. Certainly it is less adapted to war than our system, but it is a great thing for the press. Matter about the government is ‘hot stuff,’to describe it in journalese. A big debate in the House of Commons has the sporting interest of a prize-fight: it is for blood and not mere ‘ hippodrome.' The ministry may fall. If it does, a new one must be provided largely by newspaper readers. Reports of our Congressional debates are so dead that readers will not look at them, consequently newspapers cannot print them. They are futile, and no other man will shy away from futility as quickly as the American. The process by which changes are accomplished in the United States is indirect, indefinite, clumsy, and tedious.
Thus we in America are driven to find ways to interest and educate our reading publics. Our British brethren have those ways ready made for them. Criminal and kindred matter is thus forced to the front. I doubt if we print a greater volume of it than does the British press, but it is more in the foreground. This affects the character of the paper. Form thus becomes actually a matter of substance. The British papers all use the same kind of matter, but it is snugly tucked away, always on the same page and under modest headlines, where the British reader never fails to find it. I should say that this class of matter is more carefully read in British than in American papers. The fact that the American papers, or the general run of them, fling it in our faces certainly deters many people from reading it. But this practice puts a stamp of vulgarity and bad taste on the paper that adopts it.
Lacking parliamentary debates and interest in world-news, and having acquired the bad habit of thinking that there must be something big, whether or no, every morning or every evening, we are too much inclined to ‘play’ sensations from the police stations and the courts. The London papers may have a high degree of life without any sensationalism at all. For this and other reasons London papers are better made up than ours, and they are not so ready to sacrifice order for window-dressing. Even our best papers mass their big stories on the front page. This makes it necessary to run continued lines, which are vexatious, and which tend to prevent newspaper reading in an orderly and thorough way.
As the London papers give their first page to advertisements, they are not tempted to follow our bad example. One often hears from Americans criticism of this practice, but there are points in its favor. First-page advertising renders impossible an over-emphasis which is one of our vices. I can testify personally to the fact that a regular reader gets used to this make-up and finds it most satisfactory. There is a certain reserve about it. One feels that he is not being overwhelmed by clamorous exploitation. It seems idiotic to have to be dictated to by make-up and headline artists as to the value of news.
It is surprising how otherwise sober American papers have been drawn into the fashions initiated by the ‘yellows.' Every reasonable person is conscious of the impossibility of making the impression that is sought to be created by the headlines, namely, that the world is coming to an end every day. My own experience in writing for sober papers is that I hear much more from an article modestly inserted on the second or third page than from one exploited on the first, especially if there is a continued line. The British have a way continuing an article to the bottom of the next column, which saves tops of columns for display. There are some signs of importing this extreme display of ours into London, but it is hoped that the end of the war will bring with it a return to the soberer methods. I am afraid that our extremes in this matter have already had a widespread effect in teaching people to read headlines only. I do not want to comment light-heartedly, for a thing that has gone so far must have some deep reason. Perhaps it is American to want to know the big things quick and to have them writ large. I should like very much to see some well-established American newspaper go back to the old way and give it a thorough trying-out. With our insistence on telling the whole story in the headlines as well as in the body of the article, we should at least eliminate the conflict between the two. To the outsider it often seems as if the headline writer had only skimmed through the copy and had no thoroughgoing idea of what it contained. An insider knows the difficulties that must be contended with — the unavoidable hurry and counting of letters and words, and the general confusion of the daily-newspaper office, especially around press-time. After all allowance is made, however, the headline seems to me to be one of the points of inferiority in the British-American comparison.
I consider the London papers on the average better written than ours. Especially is this true of editorials, or leaders, as they are called over there. The men who go out after the news are not up to our average as human beings. I think that they are outrageously treated by the public, and they would not stand it if they had the same independence and sense of equality that Americans in their class have. A good reporter in an American city is a member of the community who is entitled to respect. Intrinsically he should belong to the same general class as statemen and diplomats, and he really is a greater influence in the world than many diplomats and statesmen. But in England ‘press men,’ as they are called, are patronized by their inferiors.
Naturally, in an old country like England writing is more of a profession than in America. Writers are bred from generation to generation. In conceding superiority on the average, I except the editorial writing that one may find in a few of our American papers, which is of a high literary quality and perhaps excels in force. I am not sure that, taking the country as a whole, our journalism has sought to develop editorial writing in the English sense. I have often heard the late W. R. Nelson, founder of one of our greatest provincial papers and a man whom in some respects I would put above any English editor, say that a newspaper should always be promoting its reporters to editorial-writing positions. Several very accomplished editorial writers were developed by the literary and intellectual traditions and environment of that particular paper, but Mr. Nelson preferred directness and simplicity, and finally got around to an editorial page without any long articles at all. His idea was to tell his readers in a few sentences exactly what his paper stood for.
He was a master in his judgment of the American people, and perhaps his opinions on editorial writing were sound, for such a clientèle as he served in the Middle West. But every London paper has leaders that are intellectually respectable both in the thought and in the presentation. I do not mean that there is literary affectation. The effort is mainly in the direction of sound reasoning. Often there is a pictorial quality in the English leader that makes the points more easily understood. I recall a single sentence in the Morning Post’s editorial on the Asquith Cabinet just before it came to grief: ‘Asquith folds his hands; Sir Edward Grey wrings his hands; and all the rest rub their hands.' A column of fine writing would not have driven the point home so well at that particular moment.
The editorial work of Ian D. Colvin in the Morning Post is worth the price of the paper every morning. One seldom agrees with it, but it is always delightful and often instructive. The Post is a ‘stand-pat’ paper that hates and wards off everything that is progressive. But it is very difficult to be at once pious and interesting, and if a newspaper wishes to do the kind of thing that we all used to enjoy so much in the New York Sun, it must hold a brief for the devil. The Morning Post, by the way, is one of the most interesting of the British dailies. It is owned by a woman — Lady Bathurst. It has a tradition of presenting the news in a form most satisfying to a normally intelligent person. One values it as much for what it leaves out as for what it publishes. One will get in that paper an old-fashioned story about a current event, which is just what such a reader wants. If is published for a powerful but small constituency. Perhaps its circulation is over 50,000, but not much. It numbers among its readers a very large proportion of what is known as the ruling class. The qualifications for membership in that class are social as well as political. Deride such people as you will; they still have a solid and farreaching influence in England. But the Morning Post as a newspaper enterprise cannot be counted in the same class with some of its competitors.
II
Lord Northcliffe is the master in Fleet Street. As I see him in his relations to journalism and the British press, his success is largely because of, first, his belief in the masses and, what is a part of the same thing, his sense of trusteeship of the public interest; second, his audacity; third, his energy; and fourth, his nose for news. His papers are literally bursting with prosperity. There is a reason. Others who have been purely sensationalists at bottom have had short periods of success, but Northcliffe goes on to greater and greater achievements. It is true, as Lloyd George said, that the Times is merely a threepenny edition of the Daily Mail, but it is extremely doubtful whether in all its long career the Times has ever really wielded more influence than it does to-day. The wellknown witticism hits the bull’s-eye. ‘The Times is not the paper it used to be,’ said somebody, many years ago. ‘It never was,’replied someone else.
I have no desire to advertise Lord Northcliffe unduly; he does not need it; he does it for himself and everybody else does it for him; but one cannot talk about British journalism without talking about Lord Northeliffe. Fundamentally, Lord Northcliffe, like Mr. Ochs of the New York Times, has a passion for the news, and this forms the mainspring of the success of both papers. The publication of the news without fear or favor is very closely allied to a sense of public trusteeship to which I have just now referred. ‘ Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make ye free.’ If the news is printed frankly and fearlessly, there will not be much need of reformatory activities. Abuses are usually a growth of suppression.
There are many things to criticize in the leader of the British press, but I think that he must be credited with the essential qualities that go to make a great newspaper man. Everyone gives him credit for success, but few are willto admit — what I believe — that vision and ideality are at the bottom of it. In the summer of 1914, I was playing golf at old St. Andrews with a Glasgow shipbuilder. While we were waiting on the tee, the conversation turned to the Northcliffe press. He became much excited and denounced Lord Northcliffe with extreme bitterness. I was rather used to that kind of talk and let it pass for a while; but finally I said that I was a friend of Lord Northcliffe and admired him very much. Whereupon the Glasgow man refused to play golf with me any more, and picked up his clubs and marched off in high dudgeon.
Britain has, in my opinion, gained much from Northcliffe’s journalistic activities, but she has undoubtedly paid a price for it. I do not know of any man with printing presses who hits out so quick and so hard. Certainly we have no such man in this straight-fromthe-shoulder country of ours. He takes no pains to adjust his journalistic manner to the old-world manner by which he was surrounded. I use the past tense, for in the last ten years the Northcliffe press has destroyed almost every vestige of the beautiful English manner which gave to British public life a grace and dignity almost doge-like. With the absorption by the Northcliffe press of so great a proportion of what is vital — or, to put it less sweepingly, what is strenuous — in English daily journalism, old traditions of dignity and deference are disappearing with the noble old parks. Lord Northcliffe is a reporter at heart, and no matter what large task he may have on hand, his nose for news is always in good working order. He has sympathy with and understanding of the masses. He is an extraordinary business man as well as a great adventurer. ‘Be bold, be evermore bold, be not too bold,’ might be his motto. He has no morbid sensibilities. Perhaps his combination of qualities could not exist if he were handicapped by a bump of reverence. At any rate, he has no such thing. If he makes a mistake, — and he makes many a one, — he does not show, even if he feels, remorse. Defeat does not bring discomfiture to him. He goes right on, a picture of the typical persistent John Bull.
Once only in my long observation of him have I noticed that self-consciousness in the Northcliffe press that appears when someone has ‘got your goat.’ That was during his illness last winter, when he had delegated the editorial authority to others. Mr. Lloyd George went from Paris to the House of Commons for the specific purpose of attacking Northcliffe. He did it in the highest style of the art. There was neither a spirited come-back nor the indifference which serves the same purpose. It was a curious episode. Spectacularly Lloyd George easily won, but Northcliffe really got the decision. The Northcliffe press was trying to do two things. It was hammering the Conference, to make it impossible for Lloyd George to soften the hard terms that had been agreed on for Germany, as well as to help France in her effort for a greater degree of security. That was the immediate objective. I doubt if Lord Northcliffe’s heart was in it, for it involved shooting around President Wilson’s feet more than he could have liked. But he was deeply disturbed over the British election which had brought forth the Lloyd George Ministry in association with a dominating Tory party in the House.
He reckoned that the situation was one full of possibilities of mischief to an England vibrant with radicalism. France’s security had little to do with the case, directly; but on that side Lloyd George was open to attack; and the Northcliffe press sought, by a flank movement, to weaken the Prime Minister, preparatory to facing him around from the Tory allegiance toward the popular demand for a peaceful revolution. It is possible that the promotion of Northcliffe’s younger brother, Rothermere, and Lord Burnham to viscounties, thus depriving Viscount Northcliffe of the distinction of holding, among journalists, the first place in the peerage, was an item in Llyod George’s refusal. The game is played that way in British politics.
Northcliffe’s course herein aptly illustrates his methods and his singular power of politico-journalistic insight. Lloyd George had not taken any chance on winning for the Coalition, and to this end, in the matter of nominations for seats, he had given a blank check to Sir George Younger, the Tory manager. The latter had appropriated for his party every Coalition seat he could lay his hands on. He so out-traded the managers of the other parties that in the landslide the Tories gained something very like supremacy in the new House. Now the Harmsworth brothers, Northcliffe and Rothermere, divide in politics, Northcliffe being Unionist and Rothermere Liberal; but there is no politics with Northcliffe where journalistic matters are concerned — a thoroughly sound position for an editor. Northcliffe was flabbergasted at the anomaly and the danger of a fundamentally Conservative Government, although headed by Lloyd George, in the face of what he regarded as a popular mood of extreme Radicalism. Firstly, he wanted to bring conditions into parallel, to prevent serious trouble in the country; and secondly, he wanted to line up the Northcliffe press on the side where there were the most people. He does not like to be separated from the crowd; and it is only fair to say that in that particular he follows the most practical journalistic and political examples. In neither field has an effort for broad results been successfully addressed to the élite.
A survey of Fleet Street by anyone having a knowledge of newspaper conditions will show the extent to which Northcliffe has been helped by his competitors. Of course, it is always thus, more or less; but Northcliffe has been singularly favored. He has had indeed one very strong competitor in the Telegraph. That paper is headed by a very fine man, Lord Burnham. He is moderate and just, but he is not a fighter. The Telegraph is a good newspaper, but it is less aggressive in going after the news than the Northcliffe press. I have already referred to the Morning Post. It, as well as the Telegraph, was handicapped during the time that the Times sold for a low price by having the same price.
In the half-penny field the Chronicle under Robert Donald was an excellent paper, but did not attempt to offer an aggressive competition to the Daily Mail. It had the disadvantage of an ownership not connected with the management, which afterward resulted in Donald’s losing control of a property he had so well managed.
The News is owned by a large commercial interest. Mr. A. G. Gardiner, its editor, is a man of great intellectual gifts, and has frequently attacked Northcliffe in a way that another man might have felt. But while a newspaper owned by rich people and with a socialistically inclined editor may have a limited success, it cannot seriously challenge such a paper as the Daily Mail. While such a man as Gardiner is reasoning well and writing in the best literary style, Northcliffe is opening up new channels in which to push his enterprise, going for news hot-foot, and keeping in warm-blooded touch with the great undercurrents of public feeling and thought.
An American newspaper-man wonders at the backwardness of the evening papers in London. Some day there will be a great evening paper in London. There are intrinsically no reasons why the evening papers should remain merely bulletins for the journals of the following morning. The same causes that have led to the development of so many fine evening properties in America will operate in London when the same methods, sufficiently modified and adapted, are applied in London. The Westminster Gazette is edited by a man of conscience and judgment, J. A. Spender, but it is commonly supposed to be subsidized by the Liberal party funds. Certainly, Mr. Spender’s excellent editorials do not show independence of that party. The other evening papers are somwhat leaner in news, and lack the distinction of the Westminster Gazette editorials.
With the exception of the Observer, edited by Mr. Garvin, and owned and controlled by Waldorf Astor, and leaving out the pictorial press, there is not much to say of the Sunday papers.
There is a paper published outside of London that is perhaps the greatest mouthpiece of Liberalism in the world — a paper that deserves and enjoys the respect of the public regardless of parties and temperaments. The Manchester Guardian is a newspaper of high ideals and common sense — a very rare combination. Its news-content is most excellent, and its editorials are well written in the sense that they are well reasoned and expressed in plain and intelligible language. I doubt if any other paper in England has so much direct influence on the thought of its readers. It is a true leader of public opinion. There has recently been an effort to have an edition of this paper established in London, and I know of no journalistic enterprise that would be productive of so much good. The Guardian in London would not only confer direct benefit, but would have a sobering and wholesome effect on the Northcliffe press, which, with its admitted activity in the public interest, needs the restraining influence of the kind of competition that would be offered under such an editorship as that of Mr. C. P. Scott.
III
An American has an embarrassment of knowledge in detail and less perspective when he turns to the American side of the journalistic picture. As a managing editor of the Kansas City Times some years ago, and as controlling owner of the Pioneer Press and Dispatch in St. Paul, and the Evening News and the Sun in Baltimore, for some years a director of the Associated Press, and latterly as an officer and correspondent of the New York Times, I am familiar with many phases of American journalism. In what I have written about the British journalism within the sphere of which I have been in the five years of war, I have freely conceded to it certain points of superiority. The point of superiority that first looms up on the American side is one that would strike a man whose business it has been to build, but not a pure critic. The relation of our journalism to its chief source of support — mercantile advertising — is free from danger and confusion. I regard this danger as the greatest that presents itself in the development of independent journalism. I do not mean to cast any reflection whatever on the merchants who patronize the newspapers. On the contrary I think they behave with great restraint toward the journalistic institution for which they so largely furnish the sinews of war. Nor do I think they would be pleased at bottom if they could break down journalistic standards and reduce that profession to the status of a pure business.
It is a fact, however, that in England the relation is entirely different. I do not say that the advertiser demands any share in the conduct of newspapers there, but the relation is certainly one that I would feel very uncomfortable and anxious about if I were running a paper in London. The newspapers there have just begun to develop the advertising business as we know it over here. Within a few years the department stores in London will make full use of the advertising columns of the newspapers. Unless there is a change in present practices, it is inevitable that British journalism will be confronted by the greatest single menace to which daily journalism can be exposed. Only recently in a libel suit in London the fact was brought out that newspapers rather habitually accepted pay for advertising that appeared as reading matter.
It is often difficult to tell what is advertising and what is reading matter in a London paper. Until recently, when, led by an American, Mr. H. Gordon Selfridge, the big shops began to use large advertising, the newspapers have been relieved of the consequences of their methods through the fact that no merchant has spent enough money to tempt him to tamper with the newspaper which carried his business. London has all of this pressure yet to meet and resist. We have gone through with it on this side of the water, and newspapers have become freer and freer from anything like advertising domination. It is frankly admitted that in the cities newspapers are dependent for their profits on the business of a few big department stores. It would seem to be a perilous position. It is an inverted pyramid, but it has been kept rightside up.
I am of opinion that extra-journalistic domination from any other quarter is impossible; but the advertiser can get at the newspaper, especially one that has not yet reached the goal of success, in most convenient ways. I can give an instance from my personal experience. In 1905, after I had had the Baltimore News for thirteen years and success seemed to be sure, one fine afternoon all the department-store advertising which had been in the paper in bulk for some years suddenly disappeared. The management had always been rather cold-hearted toward the advertiser, in view of its conviction that independence of all outside influence was necessary in the conduct of the paper; and the raising of the advertising rate had furnished to our customers an excuse for an organized movement to discipline us. Their meetings were secret and we were able to obtain but little information. Such as we could obtain we published, and we made a candid but moderate statement of the position in which we found ourselves. If an organization of this kind could be formed and maintained, it meant that any paper could be destroyed by its large local advertisers.
Some of my conservative friends from other cities, in a spirit of kindness, came to Baltimore and urged me not to keep up a fight of this kind, but to try to come to terms in private. I believed in the other method and was anxious to demonstrate the soundness of independence as a newspaper policy and the stability of newspaper property. At the end of a few weeks the merchants who were boycotting us were themselves boycotted by their customers to such an extent that they voluntarily surrendered. The only thing that we did to protect ourselves was to publish the facts, and this we did in no intemperate spirit. We did not work up any counterboycott by private means. It convinced me, and I think a good many others, that, if a newspaper were on the right terms with its public, no movement by advertisers could prevail against it.
I believe this to be an advantage that is very generally enjoyed by daily newspapers in America. Our best papers stand in a firm and sound relationship to the people, and in spite of the superiority in so many respects of British journalism, I do not believe that on the whole it approaches ours in this fundamental respect. I would not undertake to give the whys and wherefores wisely or dogmatically, but some of the reasons are obvious.
We serve a larger and more homogeneous public. Between the people and the press in England there stands a ruling class. There are relatively more millions of people in England who do not read at all. Our masses are more alive to newspaper influences. England is more of a political democracy than we, but it is a social aristocracy. The greater portion of England is willing to wear the brand of inferiority. I do not know of any country in which, at least before 1914, position and money bought so much for their possessor.
We have no similar submerged class; in fact, we may be said to have none, now that foreign elements have been assimilated. Nobody here is willing to acknowledge inferiority, and that is the main point. Our press addresses freemen, not only theoretically, but in practice. And very alert freemen. They are quick and shrewd. It is easier to aggregate individual opinion into public opinion here than it is there. In spite of the better material that the British press is able to give its public, as I have pointed out, we are able in America through education and equality more easily and more fully to develop and bring to bear the forces of public thought. It thus results that our newspapers are more conscious of their trusteeship, and fidelity to their trusteeship finds a surer reward. There arises a relation between readers and newspapers that I have not found on the other side, where faith and optimism are lacking. In nearly every American city there is at least one paper that enjoys the confidence and affection of the community. There is reciprocal usefulness, the good newspaper receiving solid support and using its strength to promote the welfare of its community. It must be admitted that the progress of our journalism in this direction was more or less affected by the wave of sensationalism that swept over the country. There are evidences that this movement has run its course and that our representative newspapers are going back to old standards.
Many readers will remember the beginnings of the movement away from partisan and personal journalism toward the higher standards of independence. This movement began in the provincial cities, at the time when the morning paper was supreme. The morning paper had not lived up to its opportunities. Most of these papers were at that time used by their editors for personal or political purposes and were deficient in ethics. Most of them were sold for five cents.
As The morning field was occupied, newspapers forty or fifty years ago began to choose the evening field. The general dissatisfaction with the character of the existing papers suggested to the new men different policies, and they turned pretty generally to civic activities on non-partisan lines. In order to avail themselves of the upward gravitation of cheapness, they made a price of two cents, and in some cases one cent.
For a period of twenty years or more the success of these newspapers encouraged similar enterprises throughout the country, and such papers as the Chicago Daily News, the Kansas City Star, the Indianapolis News, the Detroit News, the Washington Star, the Buffalo News, the Baltimore News, and many others forged to the front and affected the character of American journalism. The public confidence which rewarded the optimism and honesty of newspapers that accepted public service as their standard was at the bottom of the great advertising development upon which American journalism now rests. It was natural that papers entering homes and bringing the news into the family circle should, as time went on, become the medium of information between the merchant and the housewife. Confidence in the reading-matter columns of the newspapers was gradually and subtly extended to the advertising columns, and the shrewd merchant was not slow to avail himself of this great instrumentality for the expansion of his business.
This development of journalism has had no parallel in England. There has never been in that country advertising of store news on any such scale as we have had it here. I can remember the time when advertising in newspapers was a kind of favor from the merchant to the paper. The merchant was not serious about it, and did not believe in it. He usually carried a ‘standing card,’ as it is called. He liked to see his own name and it did not cost much. There is still a great deal of advertising of this kind in British newspapers. ‘Peter Jones, Draper, Oxford Circus. Spring Styles Now Ready,’ is a type of advertisement which one still sees much of in the columns of the London daily.
This is not serious advertising, and in my opinion it survives because the British papers have not yet approached the subject of department-store advertising in the same way that the American paper has. In America we have almost got rid of the impression among advertisers that people read their advertisements by chance and because they happened to be in some conspicuous position. Advertising charges cannot be paid on any such basis as that. There must be recognition of the fact that there is a large public which wants advertising because it is advertising. Women especially desire information as to what sales are going on in the stores. They wanl items and prices from which to make up their shopping lists. Until the London papers draw the line sharply between reading matter and advertising, they will never come into their own as mediums for the merchants; and until real advertising matter is included, they will be lacking in an interest that is very general and is needed to round out the daily newspaper.
As long as one of the most respectable and conservative newspapers in London can accept a guinea for a notice in its society column, and, to drop into our good print-shop slang again, ‘get away with it,’London journalism has not yet put itself in the relationship with the reader that good newspapers in America enjoy.
I have spoken of a class of newspapers throughout the country that may be regarded as the bone and sinew of our journalism. I may be permitted to put into my comparison an American newspaper to which I think will be generally conceded the position of leadership in our journalism; in fact I think that, all things considered, the New York Times is now the foremost English-speaking paper. It certainly prints more news than any other, and no British paper excels it in quantity or quality of matter. The London Times today spends more money than it ever did for cable news, but the expenditures of the New York Times on that head are vastly greater. Our Times has been built up by conservative methods, and its success is a source of encouragement to legitimate newspaper enterprise.
It has seemed to me that greed for news, if I may use such an expression in speaking of such a paper, has been one of the largest elements in its success. As Mr. Ochs and Mr. Van Anda have been at one in their effort for ‘All the news that’s fit to print,’ so Mr. Ochs and Mr. Miller have been similarly at one in the editorial conduct of the paper. Moderation and reasonableness make a great policy to go with news enterprise. It is a fine thing, and, as all practical men know, a difficult thing, to maintain over the years a policy of fair play, of hearing both sides in the news columns. Regardless of what the Times has favored in its editorial columns, it has always printed the news, and a finer thing could be said of no paper. It has been the better able to maintain this policy because the Times never crusades. Therefore it never gets excited. It keeps before it always its main business of printing the news. Its standard has been one of sterling worth, and the fact that it has avoided self-exploitation and exaggeration of all kinds has made public confidence, when once gained, very solid.
The old London Times, especially under the Delane editorship, spoke with greater authority on government affairs. The last thing that the New York Times would wish would be any kind of underground connection with officials, which would be necessary if it were to speak for any government, or to occupy such a position as the London Times used to. It does speak in a peculiar way for average sense and average virtue. Mr. Miller is a man of great learning, he is a true scholar and philosopher, as well as a man who knows the world on the practical side. If he had chosen, he could have ministered to the intellectual élite, but this would have vastly limited the usefulness and development of the paper. While the Times represents no class, it admittedly has the best audience in America, considering both character and numbers. With such a paper and many other strong representatives in the field of journalism, America need not flinch at any comparison with England.
IV
I want to speak of what seems to me a serious blemish on our journalism. I am constantly struck by its failure to develop a sense of responsibility in its dealings with the individual. In a general way, the press appreciates its obligations to the public interest. The average editor accepts in practice the principle of public trusteeship. Ideality is much more common in the newspaper office than is known or admitted by the layman. I believe that much of the cynical attitude toward newspapers arises from newspaper disregard of what is due from the printing-press to the individual. Many men who in their private relations would not think of doing deliberate injustice show in the conduct of newspapers a Hunnish contempt for the rights of the individual. It is often as if a big motor-car ran over a pedestrian, and the driver did not even take the trouble to stop and ask the name, much less pick up the victim.
I know from intimate association that American journalism, by and large, has ideals. It is patriotic. It recognizes public duty. It makes sacrifices. It is truly representative of American spirit and altruism. Its faults are those of our young and virile civilization. No one who watched the course of the newspapers during the war period — before and after we entered — could fail to be impressed by the really fine spirit and leadership of the press. In face of the fact that we had a large German population,—and one that, by reason of its intelligence and prosperity and average good citizenship, formed an important body in the newspaper constituency,— the press was practically solid against Germany from the first. When America came into the war, our public showed such a degree of spirit and loyalty that cases of disloyalty stood out by contrast and were branded with the mark of infamy. But the fact is that treachery was very rare in America, and much of the credit is due to the press.
I do not sympathize with the patronizing attitude of the club-window toward the press. Its faults are largely those of the public it serves. Nor does it, in my opinion, often consciously pander to depraved tastes, as is so often alleged. Certain sections of the press are guilty of this fault, but I think that the press as a whole is less open to the charge of debased commercialism than other professions and businesses. I believe that journalism will keep abreast, perhaps a little ahead, of public demand for improvement. But I have never been able to understand why newspapers with a high standard of public duty should be so lacking in ordinary decency to the individual. I speak somewhat feelingly. Two years ago I cabled my paper a statement of the tonnage destruction by submarine which for months I had been trying to induce the naval authorities to make public. The figures appeared in the paper as 1,600,000 tons a month. The next day a statement was printed conspicuously to the effect that the correct figures were 600,000, and that the error was one of cable-transmission. Included in the correction was a cable from the British Admiralty censor saying that my dispatch had gone through his office with the correct figures, and it would have been impossible for me, even if I had wished, to cable 1,600,000.
The same afternoon, a New York paper which enjoyed a peculiar prestige in American editorial rooms commented on the previous day’s dispatch as if I had perpetrated a fake, completely ignoring the corrections published in the morning. Months later, a weekly paper which objected to something else I had written, because it contradicted statements previously published by it, impeached my testimony by charging me with unreliability in the publication of the submarine statistics. I cabled this paper at once, begging it to set me and itself right, as its reflection upon me was entirely unfounded. My request was in good temper. I told the editor where he could put his hands on the irrefutable proof of my innocence in five minutes. I pointed out that my service was going to many papers at distant points, and that a charge of this sort would injure me greatly in my work. The paper curtly refused my request, leaving me the alternative of bringing a libel suit in war-time, or resting under a widely disseminated reflection on my reliability — my chief stock in trade as a correspondent. What this editor did, no man with the slightest pretensions to decency would think of doing in his personal relationships. He would be cut in his club for doing the like thing.
The pose of infallibility is too common in the newspaper office. No one but the editor and his associates is deceived. Everyone knows that the newspaper is but a rough approximation; it cannot in the nature of things be an accurate history of the day’s doings. Newspapers would occupy much better place in public regard if this fact were kept Constantly in the foreground. I always felt uncomfortable and unhappy as a newspaper editor and owner at the unavoidable cruelties involved in the effort to print the news from day to day. A newspaper must rely largely upon hearsay testimony, which is notoriously unreliable. No two witnesses in a court and under oath will give precisely the same testimony about a given state of acts. For years I printed daily on my editorial page a correction column to which every person with a grievance had access. Most of my assistants, especially the old fellows, were bitterly opposed to the scheme, but it worked well. It measurably righted the inevitable injustice to innocent people, and it was a wholesome deterrent of reportorial carelessness. Of course, this does not go far enough: there should be full and prompt reparation in all cases of error; but the general adoption of such a column would tend to remove one of the chief sources of suspicion of journalistic motives and methods. The editor should be a gentleman professionally as well as personally.
V
I realize how insufficiently the comparison between English and American journalism has here been covered. It is a big subject. For example, the varying estimate of the press of the two countries as to what constitutes news is an article in itself. As a reader, I value most in the English paper what it leaves out. We expand big news more. The signing of the Peace Treaty is given three or four sticks on the back page of the Temps, under a two-line head; the London paper gives it two columns; while we print a whole page.
We seem always to be tremendously excited about the world’s doings. The British paper takes it all much more quietly. We are more keen on ‘human-interest matter.’ Is n’t it that our cousins are grown-up, while we are more youthful?
Take our Sunday papers. They have with a few exceptions ceased to be newspapers. Except for the front and editorial pages, a Sunday paper might be printed the following Sunday. Some of them are printed on the previous Wednesday; and one may buy a Chicago Sunday paper in Arizona of a Sunday morning. Features, gossip, and the Comic Supplement are the pabulum.
I wonder if critics realize the compulsion of popular demand? In Baltimore I tried to make the Sun on Sunday a newspaper like the other six issues. I could make no progress. Comparatively little demand existed for such a paper. Our competitors were beating us because Sunday was the natural producer of big revenue in such a city. For months I rode around on Sundays, investigating. I bought advertised dogs and birds in order to get into the twostory house where live the grown-up ‘little children,’ who constitute the Kingdom of Heaven of the successful newspaper — the people who follow newspaper leadership and read advertising. Everybody I saw considered the Comic indispensable. I had to adopt it, and my paper finally became the leader in the Sunday field. Before I put comics in the evening edition, I was horrified and awakened to find that the best-thinking man in town read the funny pictures printed by my competitor. ‘You ought to buy “Abie the Agent,” ’ he said. ‘I enjoy it more than anything I see in any paper.’ There is a great difference in point of view inside and outside the newspaper office. Perhaps criticism is better off not to have its sympathies with practical difficulties appealed to.
To sum up, I should say that the American press enjoys the confidence of the public in a greater degree than the British, for the reasons I have stated. There, as here, with some notable exceptions, the power has ceased to reside altogether in the editorial page. I am prepared to believe that a greater influence can be brought to bear by the Northcliffe press to-day than was ever before exercised by a single editor in the history of daily journalism. The thing is accomplished by what may be called an atmospheric disturbance. The English public has developed a certain nervosity (perhaps Northcliffe has done it), and movements in sections of the community are carried on by a sort of hue and cry. It is England rather than France that nowadays, on the surface, yields to excitation, although there is stability beneath. The overthrow of the Asquith government and the demotion of Kitchener were two of the greatest feats of ‘main strength and awkwardness’ ever known in journalism. The method was rough, but it had great sagacity and strength behind it.
If it may be said of English-speaking journalism that there is far greater distrust of the accuracy with which news is given than used to be the case, the statement needs examination and explanation. This phenomenon has occurred in the face of increasing educational opportunities for the people.
The apriori philosopher would naturally suppose that popular education was based on the reading of newspapers, and that education and confidence in the press should move with fairly equal stride. Superficially, however, the public does not demand of the press a continually higher standard. May it not be that the comparative loss of confidence comes from the increase of popular knowledge? There is less blind belief and a greater spirit of inquiry. Buckle insists that doubt is the progressive force in the world. Formerly a thing was believed because it was in print. I admit that the argument works both ways, but the decline of this faith is in my opinion due more to the diffusion of knowledge than to deterioration in journalism. The people are beginning to see that daily journalism partakes of the unreliability of human testimony in general.
The printing press formerly served the intellectual élite. Its merits conformed to the service rendered and the class addressed. One can admit deterioration in certain directions, but is there not standing ground for a very large counter-claim? Where before there was one reader, there are now a dozen. Good newspapers have been produced and sold for a cent. One may lament that journalistic enterprise has sought its conquests too much in the direction of cheapness, quantity, and large circulations, but after all, nothing in modern life is a greater marvel than a paper like the New York Times at one cent or two cents. There were, and still are, many fine papers at a low price that are educating the people out of their narrowness and ignorance. And as these new people emerge, they first demand quantity and cheapness.
Perhaps the universal opportunity for a modicum of learning has grown, through its very universality, a less valued, but not necessarily a less valuable prize. Is not the whole process one of democratization? The peaks are lower, the common level is higher, the whole prospect loses in picturesqueness. The elect grieve when distinction fades out. A wider common knowledge does not compensate for the decline in dignity and reverence which seems to follow the rise of Democracy. I am in deep water when I suggest such a thing, but it seems to me that we have suffered in poetry and painting and in religious spirit as we have come out into the garish daylight. But my point is that journalism has been affected as everything else has, and should not be set aside for special criticism.
There remain several interesting contrasts to consider. The steadily increasing capitalism of newspapers, particularly in England, will be righted by competition. Capitalism has had a sudden opportunity and has brazenly seized it. The newspaper heart is not there, and the unfit capitalist cannot hold as against the craftsman and expert. The average capitalist, unless he was born an editor, and found it out only when he entered journalism, is apt to think of it in terms of pure business. I would rather back absolute inexperience to succeed in a daily newspaper than the typical experience acquired in business. Large experience shows that the less the director of the daily newspaper puts his heart in the counting-room, the greater will be the ultimate flood of dollars. The countingroom must be run in orderly fashion, of course, but it is the functional side, whereas the organic side is upstairs. There may be a golden egg every day downstairs, but the hen that lays it roosts above.
Sensationalism may succeed for a time, or temporary prosperity be attained by unworthy methods; but given a field of suitable size and not overfilled, trained and enlightened effort in daily journalism, if sufficiently equipped with faith and financial resources to go through the preliminary struggle, will usually succeed in America. Some find it ‘a man-killing job,’ but it seems to me to be the greatest work-a-day task that an ambitious person with ideals can find — helping a community and at the same time making a worldly success for one’s self. It is a vocation for optimists. Idealism is the very stuff of journalistic success