Chapter 2

Our newspapers are overwhelmed with material that is of no importance. The obvious remedy for this would be more intelligent direction in the collection of news, and more careful sifting and supervision of it when gathered. It becomes every day more apparent to every manager that such discrimination is more necessary. There is no limit to the various intelligence and gossip that our complex life offers--no paper is big enough to contain it; no reader has time enough to read it. And the journal must cease to be a sort of waste-basket at the end of a telegraph wire, into which any reporter, telegraph operator, or gossip-monger can dump whatever he pleases. We must get rid of the superstition that value is given to an unimportant "item" by sending it a thousand miles over a wire.

Perhaps the most striking feature of the American newspaper, especially of the country weekly, is its enormous development of local and neighborhood news. It is of recent date. Horace Greeley used to advise the country editors to give small space to the general news of the world, but to cultivate assiduously the home field, to glean every possible detail of private life in the circuit of the county, and print it. The advice was shrewd for a metropolitan editor, and it was not without its profit to the country editor. It was founded on a deep knowledge of human nature; namely, upon the fact that people read most eagerly that which they already know, if it is about themselves or their neighbors, if it is a report of something they have been concerned in, a lecture they have heard, a fair, or festival, or wedding, or funeral, or barn-raising they have attended. The result is column after column of short paragraphs of gossip and trivialities, chips, chips, chips. Mr. Sales is contemplating erecting a new counter in his store; his rival opposite has a new sign; Miss Bumps of Gath is visiting her cousin, Miss Smith of Bozrah; the sheriff has painted his fence; Farmer Brown has lost his cow; the eminent member from Neopolis has put an ell on one end of his mansion, and a mortgage on the other.

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.