American Newspaper

C >> Charles Dudley Warner >> American Newspaper


On the face of it nothing is so vapid and profitless as column after
column of this reading. These "items" have very little interest, except
to those who already know the facts; but those concerned like to see them
in print, and take the newspaper on that account. This sort of inanity
takes the place of reading-matter that might be of benefit, and its
effect must be to belittle and contract the mind. But this is not the
most serious objection to the publication of these worthless details. It
cultivates self-consciousness in the community, and love of notoriety; it
develops vanity and self-importance, and elevates the trivial in life
above the essential.

And this brings me to speak of the mania in this age, and especially in
America, for notoriety in social life as well as in politics. The
newspapers are the vehicle of it, sometimes the occasion, but not the
cause. The newspaper may have fostered--it has not created--this hunger
for publicity. Almost everybody talks about the violation of decency and
the sanctity of private life by the newspaper in the publication of
personalities and the gossip of society; and the very people who make
these strictures are often those who regard the paper as without
enterprise and dull, if it does not report in detail their weddings,
their balls and parties, the distinguished persons present, the dress of
the ladies, the sumptuousness of the entertainment, if it does not
celebrate their church services and festivities, their social meetings,
their new house, their distinguished arrivals at this or that
watering-place. I believe every newspaper manager will bear me out in
saying that there is a constant pressure on him to print much more of
such private matter than his judgment and taste permit or approve, and
that the gossip which is brought to his notice, with the hope that he
will violate the sensitiveness of social life by printing it, is far away
larger in amount than all that he publishes.

To return for a moment to the subject of general news. The characteristic
of our modern civilization is sensitiveness, or, as the doctors say,
nervousness. Perhaps the philanthropist would term it sympathy. No doubt
an exciting cause of it is the adaptation of electricity to the
transmission of facts and ideas. The telegraph, we say, has put us in
sympathy with all the world. And we reckon this enlargement of nerve
contact somehow a gain. Our bared nerves are played upon by a thousand
wires. Nature, no doubt, has a method of hardening or deadening them to
these shocks; but nevertheless, every person who reads is a focus for the
excitements, the ills, the troubles, of all the world. In addition to his
local pleasures and annoyances, he is in a manner compelled to be a
sharer in the universal uneasiness. It might be worth while to inquire
what effect this exciting accumulation of the news of the world upon an
individual or a community has upon happiness and upon character. Is the
New England man any better able to bear or deal with his extraordinary
climate by the daily knowledge of the weather all over the globe? Is a
man happier, or improved in character, by the woful tale of a world's
distress and apprehension that greets him every morning at breakfast?
Knowledge, we know, increases sorrow; but I suppose the offset to that
is, that strength only comes through suffering. But this is a digression.

Not second in importance to any department of the journal is the
reporting; that is, the special reporting as distinguished from the more
general news-gathering. I mean the reports of proceedings in Congress, in
conventions, assemblies, and conferences, public conversations, lectures,
sermons, investigations, law trials, and occurrences of all sorts that
rise into general importance. These reports are the basis of our
knowledge and opinions. If they are false or exaggerated, we are ignorant
of what is taking place, and misled. It is of infinitely more importance
that they should be absolutely trustworthy than that the editorial
comments should be sound and wise. If the reports on affairs can be
depended on, the public can form its own opinion, and act intelligently.
And; if the public has a right to demand anything of a newspaper, it is
that its reports of what occurs shall be faithfully accurate,
unprejudiced, and colorless. They ought not, to be editorials, or the
vehicles of personal opinion and feeling. The interpretation of, the
facts they give should be left to the editor and the public. There should
be a sharp line drawn between the report and the editorial.

I am inclined to think that the reporting department is the weakest in
the American newspaper, and that there is just ground for the admitted
public distrust of it. Too often, if a person would know what has taken
place in a given case, he must read the reports in half a dozen journals,
then strike a general average of probabilities, allowing for the personal
equation, and then--suspend his judgment. Of course, there is much
excellent reporting, and there are many able men engaged in it who
reflect the highest honor upon their occupation. And the press of no
other country shows more occasional brilliant feats in reporting than
ours: these are on occasions when the newspapers make special efforts.
Take the last two national party conventions. The fullness, the accuracy,
the vividness, with which their proceedings were reported in the leading
journals, were marvelous triumphs of knowledge, skill, and expense. The
conventions were so photographed by hundreds of pens, that the public
outside saw them almost as distinctly as the crowd in attendance. This
result was attained because the editors determined that it should be,
sent able men to report, and demanded the best work. But take an opposite
and a daily illustration of reporting, that of the debates and
proceedings in Congress. I do not refer to the specials of various
journals which are good, bad, or indifferent, as the case may be, and
commonly colored by partisan considerations, but the regular synopsis
sent to the country at large. Now, for some years it has been inadequate,
frequently unintelligible, often grossly misleading, failing wholly to
give the real spirit and meaning of the most important discussions; and
it is as dry as chips besides. To be both stupid and inaccurate is the
unpardonable sin in journalism. Contrast these reports with the lively
and faithful pictures of the French Assembly which are served to the
Paris papers.

Before speaking of the reasons for the public distrust in reports, it is
proper to put in one qualification. The public itself, and not the
newspapers, is the great factory of baseless rumors and untruths.
Although the newspaper unavoidably gives currency to some of these, it is
the great corrector of popular rumors. Concerning any event, a hundred
different versions and conflicting accounts are instantly set afloat.
These would run on, and become settled but unfounded beliefs, as private
whispered scandals do run, if the newspaper did not intervene. It is the
business of the newspaper, on every occurrence of moment, to chase down
the rumors, and to find out the facts and print them, and set the public
mind at rest. The newspaper publishes them under a sense of
responsibility for its statements. It is not by any means always correct;
but I know that it is the aim of most newspapers to discharge this
important public function faithfully. When this country had few
newspapers it was ten times more the prey of false reports and delusions
than it is now.

Reporting requires as high ability as editorial writing; perhaps of a
different kind, though in the history of American journalism the best
reporters have often become the best editors. Talent of this kind must be
adequately paid; and it happens that in America the reporting field is so
vast that few journals can afford to make the reporting department
correspond in ability to the editorial, and I doubt if the importance of
doing so is yet fully realized. An intelligent and representative
synopsis of a lecture or other public performance is rare. The ability to
grasp a speaker's meaning, or to follow a long discourse, and reproduce
either in spirit, and fairly, in a short space, is not common. When the
public which has been present reads the inaccurate report, it loses
confidence in the newspaper.

Its confidence is again undermined when it learns that an "interview"
which it has read with interest was manufactured; that the report of the
movements and sayings of a distinguished stranger was a pure piece of
ingenious invention; that a thrilling adventure alongshore, or in a
balloon, or in a horse-car, was what is called a sensational article,
concocted by some brilliant genius, and spun out by the yard according to
his necessities. These reports are entertaining, and often more readable
than anything else in the newspaper; and, if they were put into a
department with an appropriate heading, the public would be less
suspicious that all the news in the journal was colored and heightened by
a lively imagination.

Intelligent and honest reporting of whatever interests the public is the
sound basis of all journalism. And yet so careless have editors been of
all this that a reporter has been sent to attend the sessions of a
philological convention who had not the least linguistic knowledge,
having always been employed on marine disasters. Another reporter, who
was assigned to inform the public of the results of a difficult
archeological investigation, frankly confessed his inability to
understand what was going on; for his ordinary business, he said, was
cattle. A story is told of a metropolitan journal, which illustrates
another difficulty the public has in keeping up its confidence in
newspaper infallibility. It may not be true for history, but answers for
an illustration. The annual November meteors were expected on a certain
night. The journal prepared an elaborate article, several columns in
length, on meteoric displays in general, and on the display of that night
in particular, giving in detail the appearance of the heavens from the
metropolitan roofs in various parts of the city, the shooting of the
meteors amid the blazing constellations, the size and times of flight of
the fiery bodies; in short, a most vivid and scientific account of the
lofty fireworks. Unfortunately the night was cloudy. The article was in
type and ready; but the clouds would not break. The last moment for going
to press arrived: there was a probability that the clouds would lift
before daylight and the manager took the risk. The article that appeared
was very interesting; but its scientific value was impaired by the fact
that the heavens were obscured the whole night, and the meteors, if any
arrived, were invisible. The reasonable excuse of the editor would be
that he could not control the elements.

If the reporting department needs strengthening and reduction to order in
the American journal, we may also query whether the department of
correspondence sustains the boast that the American, newspaper is the
best in the world. We have a good deal of excellent correspondence, both
foreign and domestic; and our "specials" have won distinction, at least
for liveliness and enterprise. I cannot dwell upon this feature; but I
suggest a comparison with the correspondence of some of the German, and
with that especially of the London journals, from the various capitals of
Europe, and from the occasional seats of war. How surpassing able much of
it is!

How full of information, of philosophic observation, of accurate
knowledge! It appears to be written by men of trained intellect and of
experience,--educated men of the world, who, by reason of their position
and character, have access to the highest sources of information.

The editorials of our journals seem to me better than formerly, improved
in tone, in courtesy, in self-respect,--though you may not have to go far
or search long for the provincial note and the easy grace of the
frontier,--and they are better written. This is because the newspaper has
become more profitable, and is able to pay for talent, and has attracted
to it educated young men. There is a sort of editorial ability, of
facility, of force, that can only be acquired by practice and in the
newspaper office: no school can ever teach it; but the young editor who
has a broad basis of general education, of information in history,
political economy, the classics, and polite literature, has an immense
advantage over the man who has merely practical experience. For the
editorial, if it is to hold its place, must be more and more the product
of information, culture, and reflection, as well as of sagacity and
alertness. Ignorance of foreign affairs, and of economic science, the
American people have in times past winked at; but they will not always
wink at it.

It is the belief of some shrewd observers that editorials, the long
editorials, are not much read, except by editors themselves. A cynic says
that, if you have a secret you are very anxious to keep from the female
portion of the population, the safest place to put it is in an editorial.
It seems to me that editorials are not conned as attentively as they once
were; and I am sure they have not so much influence as formerly. People
are not so easily or so visibly led; that is to say, the editorial
influence is not so dogmatic and direct. The editor does not expect to
form public opinion so much by arguments and appeals as by the news he
presents and his manner of presenting it, by the iteration of an idea
until it becomes familiar, by the reading-matter selected, and by the
quotations of opinions as news, and not professedly to influence the
reader. And this influence is all the more potent because it is indirect,
and not perceived-by the reader.

There is an editorial tradition--it might almost be termed a
superstition--which I think will have to be abandoned. It is that a
certain space in the journal must be filled with editorial, and that some
of the editorials must be long, without any reference to the news or the
necessity of comment on it, or the capacity of the editor at the moment
to fill the space with original matter that is readable. There is the
sacred space, and it must be filled. The London journals are perfect
types of this custom. The result is often a wearisome page of words and
rhetoric. It may be good rhetoric; but life is too short for so much of
it. The necessity of filling this space causes the writer, instead of
stating his idea in the shortest compass in which it can be made
perspicuous and telling, to beat it out thin, and make it cover as much
ground as possible. This, also, is vanity. In the economy of room, which
our journals will more and more be compelled to cultivate, I venture to
say that this tradition will be set aside. I think that we may fairly
claim a superiority in our journals over the English dailies in our habit
of making brief, pointed editorial paragraphs. They are the life of the
editorial page. A cultivation of these until they are as finished and
pregnant as the paragraphs of "The London Spectator" and "The New-York
Nation," the printing of long editorials only when the elucidation of a
subject demands length, and the use of the space thus saved for more
interesting reading, is probably the line of our editorial evolution.

To continue the comparison of our journals as a class, with the English
as a class, ours are more lively, also more flippant, and less restrained
by a sense of responsibility or by the laws of libel. We furnish, now and
again, as good editorial writing for its purpose; but it commonly lacks
the dignity, the thoroughness, the wide sweep and knowledge, that
characterizes the best English discussion of political and social topics.

The third department of the newspaper is that of miscellaneous
reading-matter. Whether this is the survival of the period when the paper
contained little else except "selections," and other printed matter was
scarce, or whether it is only the beginning of a development that shall
supply the public nearly all its literature, I do not know. Far as our
newspapers have already gone in this direction, I am inclined to think
that in their evolution they must drop this adjunct, and print simply the
news of the day. Some of the leading journals of the world already do
this.

In America I am sure the papers are printing too much miscellaneous
reading. The perusal of this smattering of everything, these scraps of
information and snatches of literature, this infinite variety and medley,
in which no subject is adequately treated, is distracting and
debilitating to the mind. It prevents the reading of anything in full,
and its satisfactory assimilation. It is said that the majority of
Americans read nothing except the paper. If they read that thoroughly,
they have time for nothing else. What is its reader to do when his
journal thrusts upon him every day the amount contained in a fair-sized
duodecimo volume, and on Sundays the amount of two of them? Granted that
this miscellaneous hodge-podge is the cream of current literature, is it
profitable to the reader? Is it a means of anything but superficial
culture and fragmentary information? Besides, it stimulates an unnatural
appetite, a liking for the striking, the brilliant, the sensational only;
for our selections from current literature are, usually the "plums"; and
plums are not a wholesome-diet for anybody. A person accustomed to this
finds it difficult to sit down patiently to the mastery of a book or a
subject, to the study of history, the perusal of extended biography, or
to acquire that intellectual development and strength which comes from
thorough reading and reflection.

The subject has another aspect. Nobody chooses his own reading; and a
whole community perusing substantially the same material tends to a
mental uniformity. The editor has the more than royal power of selecting
the intellectual food of a large public. It is a responsibility
infinitely greater than that of the compiler of schoolbooks, great as
that is. The taste of the editor, or of some assistant who uses the
scissors, is in a manner forced upon thousands of people, who see little
other printed matter than that which he gives them. Suppose his taste
runs to murders and abnormal crimes, and to the sensational in
literature: what will be the moral effect upon a community of reading
this year after year?

If this excess of daily miscellany is deleterious to the public, I doubt
if it will be, in the long run, profitable to the newspaper, which has a
field broad enough in reporting and commenting upon the movement of the
world, without attempting to absorb the whole reading field.

I should like to say a word, if time permitted, upon the form of the
journal, and about advertisements. I look to see advertisements shorter,
printed with less display, and more numerous. In addition to the use now
made of the newspaper by the classes called "advertisers," I expect it to
become the handy medium of the entire public, the means of ready
communication in regard to all wants and exchanges.

Several years ago, the attention of the publishers of American newspapers
was called to the convenient form of certain daily journals in South
Germany, which were made up in small pages, the number of which varied
from day to day, according to the pressure of news or of advertisements.
The suggestion as to form has been adopted bit many of our religious,
literary, and special weeklies, to the great convenience of the readers,
and I doubt not of the publishers also. Nothing is more unwieldy than our
big blanket-sheets: they are awkward to handle, inconvenient to read,
unhandy to bind and preserve. It is difficult to classify matter in them.
In dull seasons they are too large; in times of brisk advertising, and in
the sudden access of important news, they are too small. To enlarge them
for the occasion, resort is had to a troublesome fly-sheet, or, if they
are doubled, there is more space to be filled than is needed. It seems to
me that the inevitable remedy is a newspaper of small pages or forms,
indefinite in number, that can at any hour be increased or diminished
according to necessity, to be folded, stitched, and cut by machinery.

We have thus rapidly run over a prolific field, touching only upon some
of the relations of the newspaper to our civilization, and omitting many
of the more important and grave. The truth is that the development of the
modern journal has been so sudden and marvelous that its conductors find
themselves in possession of a machine that they scarcely know how to
manage or direct. The change in the newspaper caused by the telegraph,
the cable, and by a public demand for news created by wars, by
discoveries, and by a new outburst of the spirit of doubt and inquiry, is
enormous. The public mind is confused about it, and alternately
overestimates and underestimates the press, failing to see how integral
and representative a part it is of modern life.

"The power of the press," as something to be feared or admired, is a
favorite theme of dinner-table orators and clergymen. One would think it
was some compactly wielded energy, like that of an organized religious
order, with a possible danger in it to the public welfare. Discrimination
is not made between the power of the printed word--which is
limitless--and the influence that a newspaper, as such, exerts. The power
of the press is in its facility for making public opinions and events. I
should say it is a medium of force rather than force itself. I confess
that I am oftener impressed with the powerlessness of the press than
otherwise, its slight influence in bringing about any reform, or in
inducing the public to do what is for its own good and what it is
disinclined to do. Talk about the power of the press, say, in a
legislature, when once the members are suspicious that somebody is trying
to influence them, and see how the press will retire, with what grace it
can, before an invincible and virtuous lobby. The fear of the combination
of the press for any improper purpose, or long for any proper purpose, is
chimerical. Whomever the newspapers agree with, they do not agree with
each other. The public itself never takes so many conflicting views of
any topic or event as the ingenious rival journals are certain to
discover. It is impossible, in their nature, for them to combine. I
should as soon expect agreement among doctors in their empirical
profession. And there is scarcely ever a cause, or an opinion, or a man,
that does not get somewhere in the press a hearer and a defender. We will
drop the subject with one remark for the benefit of whom it may concern.
With all its faults, I believe the moral tone of the American newspaper
is higher, as a rule, than that of the community in which it is
published.