WHAT TO PRINT—THE PROBLEM OF HOW TO INTEREST AND INFORM THE READER

In his meditations over newspaper possibilities the late Joseph Pulitzer found himself reasoning that the existing newspapers were written above the understanding of the multitudes and consequently were not read by them. Hundreds of thousands of the metropolitan district population read no daily newspaper because the prices of the sheets were high and because editorial utterances were “over their heads,” were too profound, too argumentative, too scholarly. Mr. Pulitzer pictured to himself a newspaper so simple of speech and so simple of editorial expression that this vast population could understand it. He purchased the New York World, reduced its price, tried to make it appeal to the masses, and before long he had attained a very great circulation and a very great fortune.

Now, Mr. Pulitzer accomplished this result by contemplating his newspaper from the viewpoint of the reader rather than from that of the editor. He gave the people something they had wanted. Giving the public what it wants is the surest way of securing a horde of readers. His reading matter was mild; the typography spectacular. He attracted attention with headlines a foot high and with letter press that looked like thickly woven barbed wire fence. One half the page was daubed with blotches of black type and the other half was smeared with red ink. But typographical eccentricity alone does little harm; it’s a question of taste.

Mr. Pulitzer had made his great success on the lines indicated above and was breathing easily. It was not until another man came along who outdid Mr. Pulitzer in multiple exaggerations of the same game that the country saw the most riotous journalism ever known anywhere. Mr. Pulitzer’s early efforts at sensationalism were as a smoking ash barrel when compared with the Vesuvius of volcanic flame and melted lava that followed. That Mr. Hearst would collect a bigger mob of readers was inevitable, but Mr. Pulitzer lost no readers and gained many. Both establishments kept up the contest as long as circulations continued to grow; but with the pause of the rocket rise things began to simmer down to a less spectacular splendor of insanity. The inflammation of the imagination subsided and gradually they approached the routine and the respectability of the other newspapers.

It was the same old story—the story so familiar to every journalist of ripening years—of building up a newspaper circulation by spectacular methods and then relapsing into ordinary goodness with a deliberation so gradual that the reader does not notice the change. For every editor knows that the more details of sin, vice, and crime he crams into his newspaper the more copies of that newspaper will be sold; and every editor knows that the most subtle temptation that besets him is the temptation to print the things that should not be printed and that temptation is the more acute because he knows that the people want to read them. Aye! there’s the rub! The people want the sensational stuff. The very sensational newspapers sell three or four times as many copies as do the conservative ones. The proportion is even larger in London and Paris. In our large cities almost all the newspapers of great circulation began the building up process by audacious sensationalism; as they became prosperous they became moderate.

Joseph Addison of long-ago literary fame recognized the public liking for sensation. He says in The Spectator: “At the same time I am very sensible that nothing spreads a paper like private calumny and defamation.” And the Rev. Lyman Abbott, in rebuking the sensational press, was moved to remark: “Is the defense of the newspaper that it must give the public what it wants a good one? Most certainly no!—no more than the selling of whiskey, opium, stale fish or decayed vegetables. The editor is or ought to be a public teacher.” The popular taste that demands this sensational sort of newspaper stimulant attracted the notice of Lafcadio Hearn, who remarks: “Everywhere there is a public of this kind to whom lachrymose emotion and mawkish sentiment give the same kind of pleasure that black, red, and blazing yellow give to the eyes of little children and savages.”

Conversely, the Christian Science Monitor is read by thousands of persons for the reason not so much that it represents a religious emotion as that it prints wholesome news free from spasm. “It reflects the true balance of the world’s work and refuses to see only the evil and morbid happenings in it and let it appear that they are the preponderant forces of the world’s efforts. Thus it emphasizes the decent things, the heroic things, the things worth while.” With fairly good service the Christian Science Monitor presents the news of the day, and it especially appeals to parents who wish to keep the tart news reports of the secular press from their children.

What to print? That is a query that has disturbed many an editor’s nightcap. So much depends on the editorial purpose. If the editor seeks to have a wholesome influence, seeks to do good, seeks a reputation for honesty of purpose and honesty of community service he naturally will stick to a conservative course; for somehow, exaggeration and sensationalism, not to mention falsehood, do not seem quite to harmonize with moral precepts; nor do they inspire confidence in the editor’s influence. The conservative sheets are duller, but they are trusted the more—and public confidence is a mighty fine foundation on which to build a healthy circulation.

Many persons read the same newspaper for years and years. They become used to its ways, to its arrangement of news and topics; and they have confidence in its integrity. It comes to be almost a spiritual consolation to them. They swear by it and they believe in it just as they believe in their pastor or their family physician. This is especially true of readers in the smaller cities and villages although it prevails everywhere. Now, it behooves the editor to nurse this attitude, for once it gets hold on a community it is hard to dislodge. It grows like a river after spring rains, slowly but surely increasing in volume and in strength. The people bought Greeley’s Tribune because they believed that Greeley was honest. They were willing to be influenced by what he said. For the same reason Bowles’s Springfield Republican became popular and prosperous. Throughout the country we have repeated instances of newspapers having the confidence of the community because they are honestly conducted.

The New York Times is perhaps our most gratifying exhibit of a newspaper advanced to supreme success by conservative methods. Free from exaggeration of statement, or typographical appearance, or hysteria of any sort, it has grown to great circulation and influence. Mr. Ochs planned this result on the theory of giving to each reader the things in which he was personally interested, printing the news in such volume as to attract a great variety of interests. The lawyer found the full court calendar, the real estate man a record of every sale, the sporting enthusiast the result of every game.

Reversal of political policy has damaged the prosperity of many a newspaper. In 1872 the New York Tribune, the Chicago Tribune, and the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, that had built up large circulations and had secured a profitable business as Republican newspapers, bolted the nomination of the Republican candidate, President Grant, and supported Horace Greeley, the Liberal Democratic nominee, for the presidency. They lost more than half of their readers.

In 1884, the New York Times, that always had been unflinchingly Republican, bolted the nomination of James G. Blaine and supported the candidacy of Grover Cleveland, the Democratic standard bearer. It lost half of its readers. In the same campaign, the Sun, of New York, that heretofore had favored the Democratic cause, bolted Cleveland. It lost more than half of its readers.

Many other instances of loss of circulation in consequence of change of political policy might be given. Newspaper editors of long memories expect popular resentment of a turn-coat policy and they give great consideration to any change before making it. No amount or degree of caressing talk or pussy-paw argument seems to soothe the man whose politics or religion has been attacked. Also, if you attack a man’s politics or his religion you are likely to make that man your enemy—and almost every man has a trace of politics or religion in his makeup. He regards it as a personal assault on himself. He also resents criticism of a friend or of the object of his hero worship. The newspaper that attacked General Grant when Grant was the idol of the nation, when he was worshiped because he had led our armies to victory, that newspaper lost thousands of readers and its editor lost a host of his personal friends. The newspaper that attacked the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher with more violence than did any other newspaper, at the time of the famous Beecher trial, lost three or four thousand of its readers a day while the attacks continued. The public had become greatly excited and divided over the question of Mr. Beecher’s guilt or innocence. Neighbors shook fists in each other’s faces on Brooklyn street corners and the angry controversy spread all over the country. The church people in general championed the pastor and their defense of him came at length, in a way, to be regarded as a defense of religion as well, and the newspaper assaults as an attack on religion.

We have said that it behooves the editor who has the confidence of his constituents to nurse that confidence—that a circulation based on confidence is not easily lost. Nevertheless, it is fatal to mislead the public. It is dangerous to circulation to go against public sentiment. A knowledge of public sentiment and the ability to anticipate public sentiment are brilliants, indeed, in the editor’s jewelbox of sagacity.

The absolutely fearless editor who values his opinion more than he values his income, will slam into the public’s most cherished notions if he thinks he is right. He will take a violent attitude on all public questions. The timid editor shuns controversy. His policy is to praise rather than to condemn. He fears unpopularity. He knows that to lambaste the city government is to lose the city printing. He strives to please everybody, to avoid antagonizing any large part of the community. The fearless editor disregards consequences; the timid editor avoids them.

Mr. Dana used to say: “We must make the paper talked about. We must make it more interesting. The people will not buy it if it is dull.” Concerning a piece of inconsequential news that he had clipped from its columns he wrote: “This is not good. It is too commonplace. There is no poetry in it. A blockhead might have written it.” He abhorred the commonplace. He urged constantly that minor routine news be put aside for anything bright or unusual, that verbal tediousness be hooted out of the place. He loved literature. He appreciated and praised good writing and he inspired his staff to enthusiasm for it, and to superexcellence of workmanship. Mr. Dana chose to lead public opinion rather than be led by it. He wrote with extraordinary forcefulness and with entire disregard, with absolute unconcern, as to the effect of his utterances on the circulation of the paper. Repeatedly he printed articles that he knew must cost him thousands of readers.

Greeley’s idea was to print a newspaper of national importance and national influence; and that meant of course the printing of a lot of national politics. He sought to be a great political leader, to be the champion of his party. He was little interested as a journalist in the ordinary run of news.

Whitelaw Reid, who succeeded Greeley as editor of the New York Tribune, once said: “The thing always forgotten by the closest critics of the newspapers is that the newspapers must be measurably what their readers make them, what their constituents call for and sustain.” Reid wished the Tribune to be of national importance. His remark naturally recalls the continuous performance discussion as to whether the newspapers lead the people or whether public opinion leads the newspapers. But we must agree, I am sure, that it is useless to give the people what they do not want.

How can we best interest the reader? People enjoy reading about the things in which they have participated. If you have attended a public meeting you follow with pleasure the newspaper report of that meeting. You are grateful to recognize things you remember the speaker to have said. If you have been to the theater you want to read a report or a criticism of the performance. You are pleased especially if the critic mentions some good or poor feature that you had noticed. It is a sort of verification of your judgment. You feel a sense of personal participation in the article. The same is true of the opera or a music event. All these things are constantly recurring, and reporters and critics are likely to become so familiar with them that their importance becomes obscured. This is true of opera and theater notices. The opera critic who has been listening to Faust for thirty years ceases to write much about it; but the young person who hears the opera for the first time is disappointed because so little is printed about the performance.

We are much more interested in accounts of the ball games, the prize fights, the contests of any sort that we have seen than we can be in those not seen.

To the man or woman in society the news of society is infinitely more than mere gossip. The society man of any pretension must know what society folk are doing, must be informed of their every movement. His newspaper gives the hint for many letters. He must congratulate the family whose daughter’s engagement is announced. He must sympathize with the bereaved. Society news has the personal note, and personalities sell newspapers. Cram your sheet with them, young man!

We are living in a commercial age, a money-making age. People are thinking as never before of money accumulation and business expansion. The journalistic tendency of the hour is to exalt the practical and minimize the sentimental. War has made us money mad. We note a growing fascination for articles of the practical, of how great fortunes are developed, of how money is made and lost, of how the poor become rich and the rich become poor—stories of business construction involving millions, of the application of invention to everyday needs. This kind of narrative includes the recital of personal successes, how the quick-witted boy becomes a captain of industry, how Nature’s forces are utilized and Nature’s secrets are turned to practical account. The details of how great success or great wealth has been achieved never have failed to fascinate mankind.

All fiction has been saturated with stories of money-seeking because the topic is so interesting. Nevertheless fiction can but feebly compete with the realities of the present. The tales of great gambling in Wall Street, of card conquests at Monte Carlo, of new gold discoveries, of money made in real-estate speculations, of gigantic swindling operations, of big winnings on the racing track, of mental smartness in money-getting, of big success in any quest for cash—you cannot give the public too much of this kind of matter if you wish to sell your sheet.

But, if you ask me to describe the kind of news for which the people surge and struggle around the bulletin boards—the most popular kind of news printed anywhere—I must reply that it is found in the details of a conquest, a fight, whether between men with their fists, or dogs, or armies, politicians or polo players, football teams or racing horses, church choirs or kitchen cabinets.

I remember so well that in my boyhood days my own little village held its breath to await details of the world’s champion prize fight between John C. Heenan, of America, and Tom Sayers, of England. Not since that day has interest in prize fights languished. The fist fight between John L. Sullivan and James Corbett quadrupled the circulation of next-day newspapers. Repeatedly the big New York Madison Square Garden has been crowded to its roof with enthusiasts who paid from fifteen to fifty dollars to see two men batter each other. Fifty thousand persons see the big football games, and fifteen millions read about them.

So great is the interest in baseball contests the newspapers are compelled to print from seven to ten columns a day in description of them. The same conditions exist to a triflingly less degree only with contests in tennis, rowing, polo, yachting, horse racing, golf—any event, especially in athletics, involving a fight for supremacy. I know of one New York newspaper that confidently counts on an increase of eighteen or twenty thousand in circulation with the opening of the baseball season. There seems to be no limit to popular interest in the details of any kind of contest, especially one that has been lavishly advertised.

Business usually languishes every four years while the fight for the Presidency proceeds, and the newspapers print hundreds of columns about it. The squabbles, the encounters, the fights in sports, in business, in politics, in the courts, among doctors and educators, in the churches even—they all absorb the people almost to the limit of human interest. The young man in journalism should get wise to this interest.

Whatever is nearest the heart, whatever is uppermost in mind—that is what we want to read about. We are changeable creatures in thought, in purpose, and in habit. The new always is fascinating. The smart editor recognizes the love of change; accordingly he exalts the new. More than that, he anticipates interest that is to develop, foresees changes in government policies, the introduction of new methods, the outcome of scientific discovery. He prepares his readers accordingly.

Man’s great interest is in his business, in his money-making. Frequently the newspapers are of especial service to him. In many lines of business they are a necessity. The manufacturer of goods, for instance, searches every column for information bearing on the raw product that enters into them, the price, the supply, the demand, weather conditions that may influence, the condition and the cost of transportation, the effect of legislation, the menace of competition—anything that has influence on the making and delivery of his product. Quick information is priceless to him.

But interest in war surpasses all other attention, as it has from the beginning of man’s mastery over man. It is difficult to recall any condition of human existence not affected by war. War is supreme as an agent of destruction. It destroys not only nations and governments, life and property, but also it blunts civilization, coarsens refinement, stops study and progress, prevents the fulfillment of life-cherished plans and ambitions, changes the life purpose of millions of men. It is entirely impossible to comprehend the multitudinous effects of war or to appreciate the condition of mind in which a stricken people emerge from war. The study of war gives the journalist exalted opportunity. His readers are interested in war more than in anything else.

Some folks delight in reading criticisms of their neighbors, attacks on public men or complaints of the conduct of mankind in general. This is a species of jealousy that rejoices in the discomfiture of others. They gloat over disclosures, get cynical over the downfall of public idols and the reversals of popular beliefs. Nothing pleases them more than to have a clergyman go astray or a church member get in jail. They are fond of investigations. Their pinhead perceptions find nourishment in the mistakes of others. They always take the negative side. They question. They doubt. They lament. They scold.

It is easy for an editor to acquire this attitude. Many editors have assumed it, beginning with the notion of catering to people who like this sort of reading; then they gradually absorb the flavor. We have had the examples of ill-natured newspapers nicknamed by the public the “Growler,” or the “Scold,” or the “Old Pessimist.” Not long ago several magazines sought fame and circulation by a conduct of criticism of public men called muckraking. The sale of thousands of copies attested general greed for that kind of reading. This public attitude certainly tempts the editor; but experience has taught that the public scold is vastly unpopular, be he editor, preacher, teacher or oracle of any sort.

And many are interested in reading about the weather. It is a universal topic of conversation. It governs our agricultural prosperity. It influences every kind of business. It stops the ball games. It parches our soil, interferes with our plans, disturbs our comfort, upsets mental processes, compels us to change our clothing when we do not want to. It makes us wear clumsy things on our feet. It raises the very mischief in a hundred different ways. Everybody thinks of it or speaks of it twenty times a day. The wise editor will print a fine fat paragraph about it, describing the weather over all this broad land, giving the practical, the scientific reasons for its varied changes, and explaining the indicated effect on trade, travel, and temperament.

What shall we print? A California newspaper sought through a questionnaire to learn from its readers how much of the sheet they actually read. It summarized the eighteen hundred replies. Seventy-five per cent attested that the reader looked at the headlines and rarely finished the article; only twenty-five per cent ever read an article through. One answer said, “I go beyond the headline once in ten times, perhaps, but when I do I read it through.” Still another, “I usually find all I want in the first paragraph.” The net result seemed to indicate that almost all simply scanned the sheet in search of something to interest them, and found little. The chief criticism was that the articles were too long.

The Paris daily publications before the war minimized the news and in its place presented discussion and comment, sketchy description, much fiction and literary matter. They achieved enormous circulations. The most successful were exceedingly well written, were distinctly literary; and they prospered greatly without the aid of news features of the American and English journalistic sort. They were made attractive and interesting by their excellence of workmanship.

The New York Evening Journal was carried to enormous circulation by editorial presentation rather than news exploiting. For many years it had neither the Associated Press nor any other news association service. Its editorial utterances attracted far reaching attention. What news it had was emphasized by exaggeration and breathless announcement, and typographical monstrosity.

The Evening Sun, which never had the Associated Press dispatches, attained great popularity and circulation through cheerful, bright, and witty illumination of things, and a minimum of profundity.

In a newspaper address before the Convocation of the University of the State of New York, Mr. Don Seitz, of the New York World, said:

Talent was the thing in the old days, but we have gotten over that, alas! Energy has taken the place of talent and the sudden fact has taken the place of the news. The modern editor has been misled somehow into using a great deal of display type to handle the few words he uses, and at first I had the thought that this was wrong. But somehow I have changed my mind. It is necessary to arouse interest. The vast number of readers are rudimentary in thought. They do not take easily to a dull solid column no matter how interesting it may be. In trying, therefore, to catch the largest number of readers the editor conceived the idea of putting in larger type. It has shown what the people wanted, and that they must have some quick way of learning what was going on, and mind you, we have shortened up our reading time a great deal, which is another fact.

With many people newspaper reading becomes a fixed habit. They come to enjoy their favorite publication just as they enjoy food and sleep. It gives them topics for thought and conversation. They become interested in its features, in the “colyum” of fun and chat and josh that has become so popular, in the illustrated comic strips that started with Foxy Grandpa and have come to include Percy and Ferdie, Bringing up Father, Mutt and Jeff, and the rest of the jolly folk. Constant reading about them brings a feeling of personal acquaintance with them and the habit of seeking for them. They help amazingly to draw readers and to retain them. The newspaper habit is to be encouraged and these features help to fix it. There can be no doubt of the popularity of the medical column, of the puzzle department, of the question and answer feature, and of the other like things that serve to amuse the reader.

Parents seek topics, also, that will interest the children, simple and childlike though they be. It is amusing to note how interested older people get in articles on important subjects written down to a child’s understanding. Somebody is going to make a fortune sometime by printing a children’s newspaper giving the news and the questions of the day in language and thought that children can understand. “Grown-ups” will appreciate it quite as much as will the youngsters.

Just how much of exaggeration and feverish language and typographical eccentricity to inject into the sheet always puzzles the editor. He is tempted by public demand for it, yet he does not want a reputation for sensationalism.

The hysteria of the sensational newspaper may not be of harm to a young person who reads it casually. But suppose she, the shop girl for instance, acquires the habit of reading it every day. Because of her employment, or her environment, she has not time or opportunity to read anything else. She comes to think and to talk in its exaggerated, inflamed, feverish language. Its typographical, breathless announcements startle her—fill her with feverish emotions. She becomes a pessimist, for in the sensational sheet the true, the good, the normal are ignored. “Virtue go hang; vice is the thing that attracts attention” is the motto. The maiden is fed on the abnormal, the unusual, on mental monstrosities, and fancies. It influences her life.

It was said not so very long ago that ten years of cheap reading had changed the British from the most stolid nation of Europe to the most hysterical and theatrical. Be this as it may: habitual cheap reading must of necessity produce cheap thinking, and cheap expression of thought, and consequently cheap moral conduct. It is in this direction that the sensational press and the cheap literature of the day have their chief influence. Cheap literature produces cheap mentality and, therefore, a cheap people.

In defense of sensationalism it is urged that you cannot arouse the interest of the ignorant man by ordinary methods of speech. His mind is too sluggish to comprehend it as ordinarily spoken. He can appreciate big headlines and lurid catch words and they attract him.

I have lingered over these things in somewhat prosy manner, perhaps, but if you are going into the newspaper business I know of little more important than real study of what to print. The practical newspaper man thinks of it by the hour. The good newspaper is not the product of chance. Every phase of life is thought out and its relation to public interest is weighed. Public interest changes almost daily. It must be studied, must be anticipated, must be prepared for.