The quest for authority: How metropolitan magazines defined their critical voice against commercialized journalism

“ In the magazine the patchwork of daily journalism is assembled into more meaningful designs. Local news is sifted of its provincialism to become matter of national concern. Topics which you rapidly skimmed in the afternoon newspaper three or four weeks ago are re-discussed in the weekly or monthly magazines in a way which often makes you feel that here, for the first time, they become of personal import. ”

“ It is a misfortune that necessity has induced men to accord greater license to this formidable engine, in order to obtain liberty, than can be borne with less important objects in view; for the press, like fire, is an excellent servant, but a terrible master. ”

“ If one had time he might evolve a formula for successful shows which would run something on this order: “Better a third rate artist and a first rate publicity man than a first rate artist and no publicity man at all.” They do say, around about the galleries that there is considerable pique over the tremendous fuss made over the Spaniard’s work. There is a moral in it for the American gallery. A race reared on billboards, nourished on Mellen’s Food, Quaker Oats and washed with Ivory soap, will never seek its art in dark corners. ”

“ I found in the movement many men who saw the truth as clearly as I did; but such was the clamour of the “religious,” who were opposing that which is the very essence of living religion, of the “scientific,” who broke the first laws of Science by pronouncing upon a thing which they had not examined, and of the Press, who held up every real or imaginary rascality as being typical of a movement which they had never understood, that the true men were abashed and shrank from the public exposition of their views. ”

“ For straight reporting is not a career that offers many great rewards. The rewards in journalism go to specialty work, to signed correspondence which has editorial quality, to executives, and to men with a knack and flavor of their own. This is due, no doubt, to what economists call the rent of ability. But this economic principle operates with such peculiar violence in journalism that newsgathering does not attract to itself anything like the number of trained and able men which its public importance would seem to demand. ”

“ Reporting is the obvious aspect of journalism which the ignorant layman sees. Many hold the erroneous view that the end of a school of journalism is to train reporters. Reporting is not journalism. It is the open door to the news [Pg 544] paper office, partly because there are very few reporters of many years' service. Some of them are, but able men before long usually work out of a city-room, or gain charge of some field of city news, doing thus what is in fact reporting, but combined with editorial, critical, and correspondent work. ”

“ It is, of course, tragic. “The Matriarch,” by G. B. Stern (Knopf) is high comedy with humor, an exuberantly done inside chronicle of an upper class Jewish family, whose principal branch gets from Austria to England and there smashes under the age-cracked Anastasia’s ruinous matriarchy, after which one of her granddaughters picks up pieces to carry on. We can think of no novel not longer that sets as many good characters going and reconciles you as quickly to keeping track of them.
If you are fond of satire, your best fun in that line may be Rose Macaulay’s “Orphan Island” (Doran) . ”

“ And Miss Grace George, in her own adaptation of Paul Geraldy’s “She Had to Know”—a name which many of our theatre-goers are having such an amusing time getting mixed up with that other little dandy in the way of titles, “They Knew What They Wanted”—is giving a charming and highly skillful performance in a comedy about a lady who seeks to find out whether or not she has sex appeal, answer yes or no, But, we can’t add quickly enough, this is referred to throughout only as “appeal”; that one little word of three letters that has made so many the happiest man in the world is delicately omitted. ”

“ He was impressed particularly by the dancing craze and by the utterly shocking styles in women’s clothes
THE early history of New York is obscured in myth; and to separate the purely historical from the purely hysterical is no easy task. But it is a task worth while; for it is impossible to understand the life of Manhattan to-day until we get a glimpse of the great figures, from Peter Minuit down to Ralph Easly, who were forever pointing out that, but for them, the island would be in the hands of the Reds. ”

“ A small man, physically, Mr. Walker, minority leader in the New York State Senate: a demi-tasse among legislator: more at home with mustache cups. His face is thin; his features sharp, and his cheeks have the perennially youngish tint of the juvenile who bounds onstage as the chief chorine shrills: “Oh, girls, here comes the Prince now.” Along Broadway he would past unnoticed, or in an Equity meeting. ”

“ He gives the public what it likes, and the public—through a board of Metropolitan directors—compensates him generously.
For the public′s sake he has persuaded himself that opera is as much a social as a musical institution. If the public prefers “Tosca” for the benefit of the Save-a-Pet Home to “Don Giovanni” for the good of its own soul ... it is the American public after all. And if the American public doesn't like novelties—ecco! ”

“ Need I speak of great schemes that hang about neglected; of things most necessary to be done, and so confessed by all men, that no one can seriously set a hand to because of the lack of money; while if it be a question of creating or stimulating some foolish whim in the public mind, the satisfaction of which will breed a profit, the money will come in by the ton. Nay, you know what an old story it is of the wars bred by Commerce in search of new markets, which not even the most peaceable of statesmen can resist ”

“ The members of that race wish to be told about it, they wished to be “sold,” as every good Rotarian knows. Let them read about it in the Sunday papers and on the billboards and they will walk a mile for it, even though it be art.
An artist standing in front of the Michael Strange portrait at the Zuloaga show was explaining to his companion that the legend existed that the reason Zuloaga did not paint so well now as in his earlier days, was that he only took up brush when his son wanted money to buy a new motor car. ”

“ The Authors’ League and the Pen Women’s League and the various Writers’ Clubs throughout the country have all discussed and analyzed the moving-pictures market, and their members are taking means to meet its eccentric exactions. Why write a story in photoplay continuity or even detailed synopsis form only to have it returned from the Coast most likely unread, when the same material can be written up in a short story or a novelette, its serial rights sold to a magazine and its photoplay rights reserved and offered to a film company which is then sure to accord it a friendly reading? ”

“ The great heat makes one’s brain languid, barren, dusty. Then I have been making desperate efforts to do some magazine work. Thanks for your praise of “The Pipes of Hameline.” I wish, indeed, that I could drag myself out of this newspaper routine,—even though slowly, like a turtle struggling over uneven ground. Journalism dwarfs, stifles, emasculates thought and style. As for my translation of Gautier, it has many grave errors I am ashamed of, but it is not castrated. ”

“ There are also half a dozen reporters, trying to recover from the night before election; four rewrite men, who have abandoned hope of ever recovering; the city editor, who is reading Variety, and the assistant city editor, who is doing nothing at all except looking blank. The telephone rings, and the assistant city editor, with the air of an early martyr, answers it. ”

“ The city room is more serene and tranquil than a saloon which sells nothing but near-bear. The man who does Hearts Bereft is gloomily figuring out a three-letter word meaning Japanese sash, the octogenarian who dopes the Kute Kracks and sells them to himself at one dollar a krack is playing one-handed parcheesi, and the permanent author of the Daily True Story is trying to get a week’s supply in advance so he may run up to Montreal for a couple of days and sample some fine old Scotch manufactured on Staten Island and imported via Burlington, Vermont. ”

“ The author of the Daily True Story, who has long ago given up hope of an advance supply and for two hours has been sitting in a state of coma, covers three sheets of copy paper with “Now is the time———”
A rewrite man, who has been listening in total apathy to a reporter’s account of an East Side fire, suddenly becomes intensely interested in finding out what it was all about, and asks questions carefully designed to sound intelligent.
The city editor drops the remains of his Western sandwich into the basket. His assistant grabs the phone and calls up a series of mythical numbers. ”

“ Dig around in the morgue and get a picture of some doll who's died or moved away or something. If nothing else happens, splash her on the front page and stick the election inside—I suppose we gotta say something about it. Be down in about an hour. G’bye.”
The best man (there is no such thing as a “star reporter” any more except in the movies) is thereupon yanked away from his autopsy into the unfortunate Chink, and dispatched to the Bronnix with a photographer. They leave, cogitating on how to run a ten-cent round-trip subway fare into a four-dollar-and-fifty-cent-expense account. ”

“ THE after dinner speech is one of the few surviving economic wastes that have eluded the efficiency man. It is a big problem. Every night we squander hours and hours of the high-powered business man’s time, and give him nothing for it. ”

“ Should the Sons and Daughters of the Advent try to rent the hill for a private wafting upward on a privately calculated date, so popular has become the spirit of first-come-first-served, that the Sons and Daughters are usually gracious enough to re-examine the Book of Revelations so that the Reformed Disciples of the King may keep a previously scheduled tryst with heaven. ”

“ This two week′s delay looms as a tremendous obstacle and you hasten breathlessly to the the telephone company′s office where you become part of a throng surrounding a man at the counter who dodges to a desk telephone for conversational purposes every forty seconds, obviously to demonstrate what a really great help this invention is to a busy man. ”

“ Some one begins describing various personalia of a well known man or woman without mentioning the subject’s name, until a bright listener (usually the one in the party you would be inclined to regard as the stupidest present) asks a question of the leader, the innuendo of which shows the leader, that the subject has been identified, but is so veiled that all the other guessers are thrown off the track. ”

“ But there was about her the mysterious authority of beauty, a sureness in the carriage of the head, the movement of the eyes, which, without being in the least theatrical, struck his as highly trained and full of a conscious power. ”

“ One meets at his parties great scientists, authors, musicians, people of the stage, all with a common denominator: reality. For that is Will Beebe′s distinguishing characteristic, the ability to find and sound the reality of people. That is why his books on science are more widely read than popular works of fiction. And that is why one can be sure that each member of his staff, while standing high in the professional capacity, will have a still higher place as a human being. ”

“ Upon Examination of these, I found a certain Boldness of Temper, growing in me, which was not enclin'd to submit to any Authority in these Subjects, but led me to seek out some new Medium, by which Truth might be establisht. After much Study, & Reflection on this, at last, when I was about 18 Years of Age, there seem'd to be open'd up to me a new Scene of Thought, which transported me beyond Measure, & made me, with an Ardor natural to young men, throw up every other Pleasure or Business to apply entirely to it. ”

“ Forbes is rehearsing the part of Gavin Dishart, there is another rumor that Mr. Dillingham himself will join the Marilyn Miller company to play the role of Michael.
For a proper understanding of the ensuing anecdote, it is necessary to know that Heywood Broun, dramatic critic of the World, is nevertheless a person of consequence in the eyes of Morris Gest and that further the same Gest attaches to the good opinion of Adolph S. Ochs, publisher of the New York Times, a value reserved by the rest of us for our right eyes. ”

“ But, of course, perhaps you can't have everything at once. From the visitors' gallery the spectacle of the Senate in active session is a game more national than baseball. "There he goes!" cries one ardent spectator, pointing to a "home player," so to say, moving down the aisle. "That's him! Gettin' along pretty good, ain't he?"
CHAPTER XXVIII
FAME: A STORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE
$10,000!
IN PRIZES FOR SHORT STORIES!
You have a story. We want to read it. Every human life has one great story in it. Every man, every woman, has at least one story to tell. ”

“ Two of the big collar firms have combined. Our own Beauty Contest judges announce that the handsomest man in American is now Mister Cluett Peabody Earl Wilson.
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It turned out, after a New York jury had got down to business, that the foreman didn′t understand English, so the judge excused him and told the remaining eleven to reach a verdict on of their own. We don′t get the point. Readers of Daily News doubtless don′t understand English but they ought to be experts on crime.
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We and Mr. Hearst are among those who credit Mayor Hylan with sagacity. ”