Chapter III

It is, however, what Sir Wemyss Reid called the “Wegotism” of the press that some fastidious souls find more offensive than its occasional betrayals of crass ignorance. Lecky remarked upon it, in his chapters on the rise of newspapers in England. “Few things to a reflecting mind are more curious than the extraordinary weight which is attached to the anonymous expression of political opinion. Partly by the illusion of the imagination, partly by the weight of emphatic assertion, a plural pronoun, conspicuous type, and continual repetition, unknown men are able, without exciting any surprise or sense of incongruity, to assume the language of the accredited representatives of the nation, and to rebuke, patronize, or insult its leading men with a tone of authority which would not be tolerated from the foremost statesmen of their time.”

A remedy frequently suggested is signed editorials. Let the Great Unknown come out from behind his veil of anonymity, and drop his “plural of majesty.” Then we should know him for the insignificant and negligible individual he is. It is true that some hesitating attempts of that kind have been made in this country, mostly in the baser journalism, but they have not succeeded. There is no reason to think that this practice will ever take root among us. It arose in France under conditions of rigorous press censorship, and really goes in spirit with the wish of government or society to limit that perfect freedom of discussion which anonymous journalism alone can enjoy. Legal responsibility is, of course, fixed in the editor and proprietors. Nor is the literary disguise, as a rule, of such great consequence, or so difficult to penetrate. Most editors would feel like making the same answer to an aggrieved person that Swift gave to one of his victims. In one of his short poems he threw some of his choicest vitriol upon one Bettesworth, a lawyer of considerable eminence, who in a rage went to Swift and demanded whether he was the author of that poem. The Dean’s reply was: “Mr. Bettesworth, I was in my youth acquainted with great lawyers who, knowing my disposition to satire, advised me that, if any scoundrel or blockhead whom I had lampooned should ask, ‘Are you the author of this paper?’ I should tell him that I was not the author; and therefore I tell you, Mr. Bettesworth, that I am not the author of these lines.”

But the real defense of impersonal journalism lies in the conception of a newspaper, not as an individual organ, but as a public institution. Walter Bagehot, in his _Physics and Politics_, uses the newspaper as a good illustration of an organism subduing everything to type. Individual style becomes blended in the common style. The excellent work of assistant editors is ascribed to their chief, just as his blunders are shouldered off upon them. It becomes impossible to dissect out the separate personalities which contribute to the making up of the whole. The paper represents, not one man’s thought, but a body of opinion. Behind what is said each day stands a long tradition. Writers, reviewers, correspondents, clientele, add their mite, but it is little more than Burns’s snowflake falling into the river. The great stream flows on. I would not minimize personality in journalism. It has counted enormously; it still counts. But the institutional, representative idea is now most telling. The play of individuality is much restricted; has to do more with minor things than great policies. John Stuart Mill, in a letter of 1863 to Motley, very well hit off what may be called the chance rôle of the individual in modern journalism: “The line it [the London _Times_] takes on any particular question is much more a matter of accident than is supposed. It is sometimes better than the public, and sometimes worse. It was better on the Competitive Examinations and on the Revised Educational Code, in each case owing to the accidental position of a particular man who happened to write on it—both which men I could name to you.”

Wendell Phillips told of once taking a letter to the editor of a Boston paper, whom he knew, with a request that it be published. The editor read it over, and said, “Mr. Phillips, that is a very good and interesting letter, and I shall be glad to publish it; but I wish you would consent to strike out the last paragraph.”

“Why,” said Phillips, “that paragraph is the precise thing for which I wrote the whole letter. Without that it would be pointless.”

“Oh, I see that,” replied the editor; “and what you say in it is perfectly true,—the very children in the streets know that it is true. I fully agree with it all myself. Yet it is one of those things which it will not do to say publicly. However, if you insist upon it, I will publish the letter as it stands.”

It was published the next morning, and along with it a short editorial reference to it, saying that a letter from Mr. Phillips would be found in another column, and that it was extraordinary that so keen a mind as his should have fallen into the palpable absurdity contained in the last paragraph.

The story suggests the harmful side of the interaction between press and public. It sometimes puts a great strain upon the intellectual honesty of the editor. He is doubtful how much truth his public will bear. His audience may seem to him, on occasions, minatory, as well as, on others, encouraging. So hard is it for the journalist to be sure, with Dr. Arnold, that the times will always bear what an honest man has to say. At this point, undoubtedly, we come upon the moral perils of the newspaper man. And when outsiders believe that he writes to order, or without conviction, they naturally hold a low view of his occupation.

Journalism, wrote Mrs. Mark Pattison in 1879, “harms those, even the most gifted, who continue in it after early life. They cannot honestly write the kind of thing required for their public if they are really striving to reach the highest level of thought and work possible to themselves.” If this were always and absolutely true, little could be said for the Fourth Estate. We should all have to agree with James Smith, of _Rejected Addresses_ fame:—

Hard is his lot who edits, thankless job!
A Sunday journal for the factious mob.
With bitter paragraph and caustic jest,
He gives to turbulence the day of rest,
Condemn’d this week rash rancor to instil,
Or thrown aside, the next, for one who will.
Alike undone, or if he praise or rail
(For this affects his safety, that his sale),
He sinks, alas, in luckless limbo set—
If loud for libel, and if dumb for debt.

The real libel, however, would be the assertion that the work of American journalism is done to any large extent in that spirit of the galley slave. With all its faults, it is imbued with the desire of being of public service. That is often overlaid by other motives—money-making, timeserving, place-hunting. But at the high demand of a great moral or political crisis, it will assert itself, and editors will be found as ready as their fellows to hazard their all for the common weal. To show what sort of fire may burn at the heart of the true journalist, I append a letter never before published:—

“NEW YORK, _April 23, 1867_.

“There is a man here named Barnard, on the bench of the Supreme
Court. Some years ago he kept a gambling saloon in San Francisco,
and was a notorious blackleg and _vaurien_. He came then to New
York, plunged into the basest depths of city politics, and emerged
Recorder. After two or three years he got by the same means to be a
judge of the Supreme Court. His reputation is now of the very worst.
He is unscrupulous, audacious, barefaced, and corrupt to the last
degree. He not only takes bribes, but he does not even wait for them
to be offered him. He sends for suitors, or rather for their
counsel, and asks for the money as the price of his judgments. A
more unprincipled scoundrel does not breathe. There is no way in
which he does not prostitute his office, and in saying this I am
giving you the unanimous opinion of the bar and the public. His
appearance on the bench I consider literally an awful occurrence.
Yet the press and bar are muzzled,—for that is what it comes to,—and
this injurious scoundrel has actually got possession of the highest
court in the State, and dares the Christian public to expose his
villainy.

“If I were satisfied that, if the public knew all this, it would lie
down under it, I would hand the _Nation_ over to its creditors and
take myself and my children out of the community. I will not believe
that yet. I am about to say all I dare say—as yet—in the _Nation_
to-morrow. Barnard is capable of ruining us, if he thought it worth
his while, and could of course imprison me for contempt, if he took
it into his head, and I should have no redress. You have no idea
what a labyrinth of wickedness and chicane surrounds him. Moreover,
I have no desire either for notoriety or martyrdom, and am in
various ways not well fitted to take a stand against rascality on
such a scale as this. But this I do think, that it is the duty of
every honest man to do something. Barnard has now got possession of
the courts, and if he can silence the press also, where is reform to
come from?... I think some movement ought to be set on foot having
for its object the hunting down of corrupt politicians, the exposure
of jobs, the sharpening of the public conscience on the whole
subject of political purity. If this cannot be done, the growing
wealth will kill—not the nation, but the form of government without
which, as you and I believe, the nation would be of little value to
humanity.”

This was written to Professor Charles Eliot Norton by the late Edwin Lawrence Godkin. The Barnard referred to was, of course, the infamous judge from whom, a few years later, the judicial robes were stripped. Mr. Godkin’s attack upon him was, so far as I know, the first that was made in print. But the passion of indignation which glowed in that great journalist, with his willingness to hazard his own fortunes in the public behalf, only sets forth conspicuously what humbler members of the press feel as their truest motive and their noblest reward.

PRESS TENDENCIES AND DANGERS

BY OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD

The passing of the _Boston Journal_, in the eighty-fourth year of its age, by merger with the _Boston Herald_ has rightly been characterized as a tragedy of journalism. Yet it is no more significant than the similar merger of the _Cleveland Plain Dealer_ and the _Cleveland Leader_, or the _New York Press_ and the _New York Sun_. All are in obedience to the drift toward consolidation which has been as marked in journalism as in other spheres of business activity—for this is purely a business matter. True, in the cases of the Sun and the _Press_ Mr. Munsey’s controlling motive was probably the desire to obtain the Associated Press service for the _Sun_, which he could have secured in no other way. But Mr. Munsey was not blind to the advantages of combining the circulation of the _Press_ and the _Sun_, and has profited by it.

It is quite possible that there will be further consolidations in New York and Boston before long; at least conditions are ripe for them. Chicago has now only four morning newspapers, including the _Staats-Zeitung_, but one of these has an uncertain future before it. The _Herald_ of that city is the net result of amalgamations which successively wiped out the _Record_, the _Times_, the _Chronicle_, and the _Inter-Ocean_. It is only a few years ago that the _Boston Traveler_ and the _Evening Herald_ were consolidated, and Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans, Portland (Oregon), and Philadelphia are other cities in which there has been a reduction in the number of dailies.

In the main it is correct to say that the decreasing number of newspapers in our larger American cities is due to the enormously increased costs of maintaining great dailies. This has been found to limit the number which a given advertising territory will support. It is a fact, too, that there are few other fields of enterprise in which so many unprofitable enterprises are maintained. There is one penny daily in New York which has not paid a cent to its owners in twenty years; during that time its income has met its expenses only once. Another of our New York dailies loses between $400,000 and $500,000 a year, if well-founded report is correct, but the deficit is cheerfully met each year. It may be safely stated that scarcely half of our New York morning and evening newspapers return an adequate profit.

The most striking fact about the recent consolidations is that this leaves Cleveland with only one morning newspaper, the _Plain Dealer_. It is the sixth city in size in the United States, yet it has not appeared to be large enough to support both the _Plain Dealer_ and the _Leader_, not even with the aid of what is called “foreign,” or national, advertising, that is, advertising which originates outside of Cleveland. There are now many other cities in which the seeker after morning news is compelled to take it from one source only, whatever his political affiliations may be: in Indianapolis, from the _Star_; in Detroit, from the _Free Press_; in Toledo, from the _Times_; in Columbus, from the _State Journal_; in Scranton, from the _Republican_; in St. Paul, from the _Pioneer Press_; and in New Orleans, from the _Times-Picayune_. This circumstance comes as a good deal of a shock to those who fancy that at least the chief political parties should have their representative dailies in each city—for that is the old American tradition.

Turning to the State of Michigan, we find that the development has gone even further, for here are some sizable cities with no morning newspaper and but one in the evening field. In fourteen cities whose population has more than doubled during the last twenty-five years the number of daily newspapers printed in the English language has shrunk from 42 to only 23. In nine of these fourteen cities there is not a single morning newspaper; they have but one evening newspaper each to give them the news of the world, unless they are content to receive their news by mail from distant cities. On Sunday they are better off, for there are seven Sunday newspapers in these towns. In the five cities having more than one newspaper, there are six dailies that are thought to be unprofitable to their owners, and it is believed that, within a short time, the number of one-newspaper cities will grow to twelve, in which case Detroit and Grand Rapids will be the only cities with morning dailies. It is reported by competent witnesses that the one-newspaper towns are not only well content with this state of affairs, but that they actively resist any attempt to change the situation, the merchants in some cases banding together voluntarily to maintain the monopoly by refusing advertising to those wishing to start competition.

It is of course true that in the larger cities of the East there are other causes than the lack of advertising to account for the disappearance of certain newspapers. Many of them have deserved to perish because they were inefficiently managed or improperly edited. The _Boston Transcript_ declares that the reason for the _Journal’s_ demise was lack “of that singleness and clearness of direction and purpose which alone establish confidence in and guarantee abiding support of a newspaper.” If some of the Hearst newspapers may be cited as examples of successful journals that have neither clearness nor honesty of purpose, it is not to be questioned that a newspaper with clear-cut, vigorous personalities behind it is far more likely to survive than one that does not have them. But it does not help the situation to point out, as does the _Columbia_ (S. C.) _State_, that “sentiment and passion” have been responsible for the launching of many of the newspaper wrecks; for often sentiment and the righteous passion of indignation have been responsible for the foundation of notable newspapers such as the _New York Tribune_, whose financial success was, for a time at least, quite notable. It is the danger that newspaper conditions, because of the enormously increased costs and this tendency to monopoly, may prevent people who are actuated by passion and sentiment from founding newspapers, which is causing many students of the situation much concern. What is to be the hope for the advocates of new-born and unpopular reforms if they cannot have a press of their own, as the Abolitionists and the founders of the Republican party set up theirs in a remarkably short time, usually with poverty-stricken bank accounts?

If no good American can read of cities having only one newspaper without concern,—since democracy depends largely upon the presenting of both sides of every issue,—it does not add any comfort to know that it would take millions to found a new paper, on a strictly business basis, in our largest cities. Only extremely wealthy men could undertake such a venture,—precisely as the rejuvenated _Chicago Herald_ has been financed by a group of the city’s wealthiest magnates,—and even then the success of the undertaking would be questionable if it were not possible to secure the Associated Press service for the newcomer.

The “journal of protest,” it may be truthfully said, is to-day being confined, outside of the Socialistic press, to weeklies of varying types, of which the _Survey_, the _Public_, and the _St. Louis Mirror_, are examples; and scores of them fall by the wayside. The large sums necessary to establish a journal of opinion are being demonstrated by the _New Republic_. Gone is the day when a _Liberator_ can be founded with a couple of hundred dollars as capital. The struggle of the _New York Call_ to keep alive, and that of some of our Jewish newspapers, are clear proof that conditions to-day make strongly against those who are fired by passion and sentiment to give a new and radical message to the world.

True, there is still opportunity in small towns for editorial courage and ability; William Allen White has demonstrated that. But in the small towns the increased costs due to the war are being felt as keenly as in the larger cities. _Ayer’s Newspaper Directory_ shows a steady shrinkage during the last three years in the weeklies, semi-weeklies, tri-weeklies, and semi-monthlies, there being 300 less in 1916 than in 1914. There lies before me a list of 76 dailies and weeklies over which the funeral rites have been held since January 1, 1917; to some of them the government has administered the _coup de grace_. There are three Montreal journals among them, and a number of little German publications, together with the notorious _Appeal to Reason_ and a couple of farm journals: 21 states are represented in the list, which is surely not complete.

Many dailies have sought to save themselves by increasing their price to two cents, as in Chicago, Pittsburg, Buffalo, and Philadelphia; and everywhere there has been a raising of mail-subscription and advertising rates, in an effort to offset the enormous and persistent rise in the cost of paper and labor. It is indisputable, however, that, if we are in for a long war, many of the weaker city dailies and the country dailies must go to the wall, just as there have been similar failures in every one of the warring nations of Europe.

Surveying the newspaper field as a whole, there has not been of late years a marked development of the tendency to group together a number of newspapers under one ownership in the manner of Northcliffe. Mr. Hearst, thanks be to fortune, has not added to his string lately; his group of _Examiners_, _Journals_, and _Americans_ is popularly believed not to be making any large sums of money for him, because the weaker members offset the earnings of the prosperous ones, and there is reputed to be great managerial waste.[2] When Mr. Munsey buys another daily, he usually sells an unprosperous one or adds another grave to his private and sizable newspaper cemetery. The Scripps-McRae Syndicate, comprising some 22 dailies, has not added to its number since 1911.

Footnote 2:

Mr. Hearst acquired the _Boston Advertiser_ in November 1917, shortly
after this article was written.-ED.

In Michigan the Booth Brothers control six clean, independent papers, which, for the local reasons given above, exercise a remarkable influence. The situation in that state shows clearly how comparatively easy it would be for rich business men, with selfish or partisan purpose, to dominate public opinion there and poison the public mind against anything they disliked. It is a situation to cause much uneasiness when one looks into the more distant future and considers the distrust of the press because of a far-reaching belief that the large city newspaper, being a several-million-dollar affair, must necessarily have managers in close alliance with other men in great business enterprises,—the chamber of commerce, the merchants’ association group,—and therefore wholly detached from the aspirations of the plain people.

Those who feel thus will be disturbed by another remarkable consolidation in the field of newspaper-making—the recent absorption of a large portion of the business of the American Press Association by the Western Newspaper Union. The latter now has an almost absolute monopoly in supplying “plate” and “ready to print” matter to the small daily newspapers and the country weeklies—“patent insides” is a more familiar term. The Western Newspaper Union to-day furnishes plate matter to nearly fourteen thousand newspapers—a stupendous number. In 1912 a United States court in Chicago forbade this very consolidation as one in restraint of trade; to-day it permits it because the great rise in the cost of plate matter, from four to seventeen cents a pound, seems to necessitate the extinction of the old competition and the establishment of a monopoly. The court was convinced that this field of newspaper enterprise will no longer support two rival concerns. An immense power which could be used to influence public opinion is thus placed in the hands of the officers of a money-making concern, for news matter is furnished as well as news photogravures.

Only the other day I heard of a boast that a laudatory article praising a certain astute Democratic politician had appeared in no less than 7,000 publications of the Union’s clients. Who can estimate the value of such an advertisement? Who can deny the power enormously to influence rural public opinion for better or for worse? Who can deny that the very innocent aspect of such a publication makes it a particularly easy, as well as effective, way of conducting propaganda for better or for worse? So far it has been to the advantage of both the associations to carry the propaganda matter of the great political parties,—they deny any intentional propaganda of their own,—but one cannot help wondering whether this will always be the case, and whether there is not danger that some day this tremendous power may be used in the interest of some privileged undertaking or some self-seeking politicians. At least, it would seem as if our law-makers, already so critical of the press, might be tempted to declare the Union a public-service corporation and, therefore, bound to transmit all legitimate news offered to it.

In the strictly news-gathering field there is probably a decrease of competition at hand. The Allied governments abroad and our courts at home have struck a hard blow at the Hearst news-gathering concern, the International News Association, which has been excluded from England and her colonies, Italy, and France, and has recently been convicted of news-stealing and falsification on the complaint of the Associated Press. The case is now pending an appeal in the Supreme Court, when the decision of the lower court may be reversed. If, as a result of these proceedings, the association eventually goes out of business, it will be to the public advantage, that is, if honest, uncolored news is a desideratum. This will give to the Associated Press—the only press association which is altogether coöperative and makes no profit by the sale of its news—a monopoly in the morning field. If this lack of organized competition—it is daily competing with the special correspondents of all the great newspapers—has its drawbacks, it is certainly reassuring that throughout this unprecedented war the Associated Press has brought over an enormous volume of news with a minimum of just complaints as to the fidelity of that news—save that it is, of course, rigidly censored in every country, and particularly in passing through England. It has met vast problems with astounding success.

But it is in considerable degree dependent upon foreign news agencies, like Reuter’s, the Havas Agency in France, the Wolf Agency in Germany, and others, including the official Russian agency. Where these are not frankly official agencies, they are the creatures of their governments and have been either deliberately used by them to mislead others, and particularly foreign nations, or to conceal the truth from their own subjects. As Dean Walter Williams, of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, has lately pointed out, if there is one thing needed after this war, it is the abolition of these official and semi-official agencies with their frequent stirring up of racial and international hatreds. A free press after the war is as badly needed as freedom of the seas and freedom from conscienceless kaisers and autocrats.

At home, when the war is over, there is certain to be as relatively striking a slant toward social reorganization, reform, and economic revolution as had taken place in Russia, and is taking place in England as related by the _London Times_. When that day comes here, the deep smouldering distrust of our press will make itself felt. Our Fourth Estate is to have its day of overhauling and of being muckraked. The perfectly obvious hostility toward newspapers of the present Congress, as illustrated by its attempt to impose a direct and special tax upon them; its rigorous censorship in spite of the profession’s protest of last spring; and the heavy additional postage taxes levied upon some classes of newspapers and the magazines, goes far to prove this. But even more convincing is the dissatisfaction with the metropolitan press in every reform camp and among the plain people. It has grown tremendously because the masses are, rightly or wrongly, convinced that the newspapers with heavy capital investments are a “capitalistic” press and, therefore, opposed to their interests.

This feeling has grown all the more because so many hundreds of thousands who were opposed to our going to war and are opposed to it now still feel that their views—as opposed to those of the prosperous and intellectual classes—were not voiced in the press last winter. They know that their position to-day is being misrepresented as disloyal or pro-German by the bulk of the newspapers. In this situation many are turning to the Socialistic press as their one refuge. They, and multitudes who have gradually been losing faith in the reliability of our journalism, for one reason or another, can still be won back if we journalists will but slake their intense thirst for reliable, trustworthy news, for opinions free from class bias and not always set forth from the point of view of the well-to-do and the privileged. How to respond to this need is the greatest problem before the American press. Meanwhile, on the business side we drift toward consolidation on a resistless economic current, which foams past numberless rocks, and leads no man knows whither.

THE WANING POWER OF THE PRESS

BY FRANCIS E. LEUPP