Hamilton Holt

“ While commercialism is at present the greatest menace to the freedom of the press, just as it is to the freedom of the Church and the University, yet commercialism as it develops carries within itself the germ of its own destruction. ”

“ Advertising is also responsible for the fact that our papers are no longer organs but organizations. The individuality of the great editor, once supreme, has become less and less a power, till finally it vanishes into mere innocuous anonymity. To show you how far the editor has receded into public obscurity, it is only necessary to try to recall the portrayal of a modern editor in a recent play. ”

“ The department stores are seldom or never referred to unfavorably by the New York papers. When an elevator falls down in an office-building and somebody is injured, the headlines ring to heaven. A similar catastrophe in a department store is considered of hardly sufficient human interest to publish. The name and shame of a woman caught shoplifting in a department store can seldom be kept out of the papers. A department store caught overworking and underpaying its sales-girls—well, that is of no public concern. ”

“ The danger of manufactured public opinion in this country comes not from governments. Even the political parties are losing the allegiance of the press. The days when the Republican organs told the people the worst Republican was better than the best Democrat, and the Democratic papers said the same about the Republicans, have happily passed, never to return again, though the spirit still lingers in the organs of the Socialist, Populist, and Prohibition parties. ”

“ The danger from the advertising columns is not, as I have said, that the advertisements misrepresent the goods, but that the terms on which they are solicited tend to commercialize the whole tone of the paper and make the editor afraid to say what he believes. The advertiser is coming more and more to look on his patronage as a favor, and he seldom hesitates to withdraw his advertisement if anything appears that may injure his business or interfere with his personal fad or political ambition. ”

“ To be frank and confidential with you, "The Ladies' Home Journal" is published expressly for the advertisers. The reason I can put something in the magazines that will catch the artistic eye and make glad the soul of the reader is because a good advertiser finds that it pays to give me $4000 a page, or $6 an agate line, for advertising space.
Yes, the tremendous power of advertising is the most significant thing about modern journalism. It is advertising that has enabled the press to outdistance its old rivals, the pulpit and the platform, and thus become the chief ally of public opinion. ”

“ In the yellow press they now have their own champion,—a press that serves them, represents them, leads them, and exploits them, as Tammany Hall does its constituency. Of course they give it their suffrage. The hopeful thing is that yellow readers don't stay yellow always. When a man begins to read he is apt to think. When he begins to think there is no telling where he will end,—maybe by reading the London "Times" or the "Edinburgh Review." In New York the yellow papers, while they still have an enormous circulation, are losing their influence as a political and moral force. ”

“ COMMERCIALISM AND JOURNALISM
In the United States of America, public opinion prevails. It is an axiom of the old political economy, as well as of the new sociology, that no man, or set of men, may with impunity defy public opinion; no law can be enforced contrary to its behests; and even life itself is scarcely worth living without its approbation. Public opinion is the ultimate force that controls the destiny of our democracy. ”

“ Thus you see advertising has made possible the great complex papers and magazines of the day with their corps of trained editors, reporters, and advertising writers, in numbers and intellectual calibre comparable with the faculty of a good-sized university. Advertising makes it possible to issue a paper far below the cost of manufacturing—all to the benefit of the consumer. So far as I know there is not an important daily, weekly, or monthly in America that can be manufactured at the selling price. ”

“ I have taken the pains to go over the advertising columns of the leading papers and periodicals of New York during the month of February, and, with the exception of a few medical, financial, and perhaps real-estate advertisements, I could find absolutely nothing that on the face of it seemed fraudulent, and very little that was misleading. The advertisers have at last come to realize that for the long run, whatever the rule may be for the short run, it does not pay to overstate the qualities of their merchandise. ”

“ Whether they have attained more than other men to the Christian ideal of turning the other cheek; whether they think that nobody pays any attention to a scathing book-review, or whether they hold that the "best seller" is the offspring of hostile criticism, I do not know. But again and again we denounce books in our literary department that the publishers pay good money to praise in the advertising pages of the same issue. ”

“ The advertisers when offended stop their advertisements; the readers, their subscriptions. The editor who is afraid to offend both must make a colorless paper indeed. He must discuss only those things about which every one agrees or nobody cares. The attitude of such an editor to his readers is, "Gape, sinner, and swallow," and to his advertisers, as Senator Brandegee said at a recent Yale Commencement in regard to a proposed Rockefeller bequest, "Bring on your tainted money." As a rule, the yellows are most in awe of the mob, while the so-called respectables fear the advertising interests. ”

“ As advertising still further increased, rival papers competed for it and the professional solicitor became a necessary adjunct of every paper, until now the advertising department is the most important branch of the publication business, for it is the real source of the profits. Because the solicitor seeks the advertiser, and, therefore, is in the position of one asking for favors, he puts himself under obligations to the advertiser, and so in his keenness to bring in revenue for his paper, he is often tempted to ask the aid of the editor in appeasing the advertiser. ”

“ The great journalists of the past, whatever their personal idiosyncrasies, have all been men of integrity; the great journalists of to-day are of the same sterling mould; and the journalistic giants of to-morrow—and the journalists of the future will be giants—must also be men of inflexible character. ”

“ Comparatively few buy the New York "Evening Post" for three cents. This is all the more remarkable, because advertising is the most sensitive feature of a most sensitive business and is sure to suffer first in any industrial crisis or depression.
No wonder that the man who realizes the significance of all these figures and the trend disclosed by them is coming to look upon the editorial department of the newspaper as merely a necessary means of giving a literary tone to the publication, thus helping business men get their wares before the proper people. ”

“ Most of the Philadelphia criticism counts for no more than what New Orleans says of sugar, or Pittsburg of steel, or San Francisco of fruits, or Chicago of packing-house products. And it is common knowledge that what almost every big New York paper says is an echo of Wall Street. ”

“ By common consent we editors are called the "moulders of public opinion." Writing in our easy chairs or making suave speeches over the walnuts and wine, we take scrupulous care to expatiate on this phase of our function. ”

“ The Socialists and other utopian critics, who are supposed to drill to the bedrock of questions, have looked upon advertising as essentially a parasite upon the production and distribution of wealth. They tell us that in the good time coming, advertising will be relegated to the scrap-heap of outworn social machinery, along with war, race prejudice, millionaires, the lower education of women, and other things of an undesirable nature. ”

“ The weeklies and monthlies, however, are not, like the dailies, necessities. They have to attract by their merits alone. They must at all hazards therefore retain the people's confidence in their integrity, enterprise, and leadership. Whether this be the true explanation or not, there is at least no doubt that the moral power of the American periodical press has been transferred from the dailies to the monthlies and weeklies. The monthlies and weeklies have also the advantage of being national in circulation instead of local, and therefore less subject to local and personal influence. ”

“ Interesting and attractive as magazine advertising has become—it certainly should be so, considering the advertisers pay good money to put it before the people—it is not enough alone to sell a magazine, and when it forms more than half or two thirds of the number the issue becomes too bulky and the value of the advertising pages themselves decreases. In making sandwiches the ham must not be sliced too thin. That necessitates starting a new magazine; and so we find from three to a dozen periodicals issued by the same house, often similar in character and apparently rivals. ”

“ Indeed it would be more dangerous, for a periodical trust would practically control the diffusion of intelligence, and that no self-respecting democracy would or should allow. But this is borrowing trouble from the future.
Fourth and last. We come back to the old, old remedy, which if sincerely applied would solve most all the ills of society. I refer to personal integrity, to character. Despite what may be said to the contrary, integrity is the only thing in the newspaper profession, as in life itself, that really counts. ”

“ These are the men—and there are more, too, I might name—who came forward with their touch upon the pulse of the nation when the day of the daily newspaper as a leader of enlightened public opinion had waned. ”

“ A certain religious weekly lost a hundred thousand dollars for refusing to take patent-medicine advertisements—probably ten times what the paper was worth. "Everybody's Magazine," and many others of its class, refuse every kind of questionable advertising.
Many editors and publishers scrupulously eschew politics, lest obligations be incurred that might limit their opportunities for public service. Some will not even accept dinner invitations when the motive is known to be the expectation of a quid pro quo. ”

“ Inasmuch, my good sir, as you deemed it worth while to devote so much of your valuable space to spreading broadcast before your intelligent audience an error about Christian Science, I feel sure that your sense of justice will make plain to you the privilege of giving us space to demonstrate the real truth of the matter. ”

“ There is a limit, of course, to the length to which a paper can go in defying its constituency, whether advertisers or subscribers. Manifestly a paper cannot be published without their support. But there are times when an editor must defy them, even if it spells ruin to himself and bankruptcy to the paper. It is rarely necessary, however, to go to such an extremity as suicide. The rule would seem to be—and I think it can be defended on all ethical grounds—that under no circumstances should an editor tell what he knows to be false, or urge measures he believes to be harmful. ”

“ When you remember that the proprietary medicine concerns have been accustomed to spend forty million dollars a year, which is distributed among the papers of the land, you can see that it requires considerable financial independence for a publisher to forego a taste of their patronage.
It is a curious fact that, aside from the country weeklies, the papers most plentifully besprinkled with medical advertisements are the yellow journals, the religious weeklies, the socialistic and other propaganda organs, and in general those which preach most vociferously reform and the brotherhood of man. ”

“ The newest school of sociology tells us that the human race in its spiral progress onward and upward through sweat and blood, misery and strife, has at last reached the point where, emerging from the control of the blind forces of an inexorable environment, it is about to take its destiny into its own control and actually shape its future. ”

“ The modern American magazines have now fallen heir to the power exerted formerly by pulpit, lyceum, parliamentary debates, and daily newspapers in the moulding of public opinion, the development of new issues, and dissemination of information bearing on current questions. ”

“ If all the money now spent on agents' commissions, advertising, yellow-dog funds, and palatial offices were devoted sacredly to the reduction of the rates of insurance, probably fewer rather than more persons would insure. ”

“ When the press agent has no news, he manufactures it. The readers of the New York papers the other day read that a prominent Socialist, who occupied a box in the theatre where a play was given in which Socialism is attacked, stood up and offered to harangue the audience between the acts. ”

“ Now the twenty large department stores alone of New York City spend, so it is estimated, $4,000,000 a year for advertising, while one Chicago house is said to appropriate $500,000 a year for publicity in order to sell $15,000,000 worth of goods. ”