Sunday newspaper

“ It seems to me that the leading feature of the Sunday magazine should be the biggest topic that will be before the public on the Sunday that the newspaper is printed. It should be written by one who thoroughly knows his subject, who is forceful in style and fluent in words, who can make a picture that his readers can see, and seeing, realize. So every other feature of the Sunday magazine should have points of human interest, either by contact with the news of the day or with men and women who are doing something besides getting divorces and creating scandals. ”

“ The Sunday newspaper, I think, is the best of any day in the week. That paper keeps hundreds and thousands at home. You can find in it information about almost everything in the world. One of the great Sunday papers will keep a family busy reading almost all day. Now, I do not wonder that the ministers are so opposed to the Sunday newspaper, and so they are opposed to anything calculated to decrease the attendance at church. Why, they want all the parks, all the museums, all the libraries closed on Sunday, and they want the World's Fair closed on Sunday. ”

“ It is then the fashion to denounce the newspapers, and to deplore the low plane to which the fourth estate has fallen. But in Farmington in my youth the feeling against the Sunday newspaper was so great that it was felt generally that all journalism was at least slightly tainted, and so I list it as a sin. So far as the financial rewards go, it is even now nothing less than a crime. ”

“ Taking for granted the fact of special leisure on the part of its readers, it is apt to appeal to the lower and not to the higher part of them, which the Sunday leisure has set free. Let the Sunday newspaper be worthy of the day, and the day will not reject it. So I say its fate is in the hands of its editor. He can give it such a character as will make all good men its champions and friends, or he can preserve for it the suspicion and dislike in which it stands at present."
Edward's journalistic instinct here got into full play ”

“ Profusion is a characteristic of the American newspaper. There is too much of everything. And when Sunday comes with its masses of reading matter proper to the Day of Rest one is appalled. One thing is certain—no American can find time to do justice both to his Sunday paper and his Maker. It is principally on Sunday that one realises that if Matthew Arnold's saying that every nation has the newspapers it deserves is true, America must have been very naughty. ”

“ As Stuart was to find out, in the years to come when he should really be a newspaper [Pg 138] man, the Sunday Editor's job is a hard one. It is much sought, since it is day work rather than night work, but it is a wearing task. The Sunday Editor must have all the qualities of a magazine man and a newspaper man at the same time. He must also have the creative faculty. ”

“ To a stranger, even if he be English, they are almost incomprehensible and indescribable and, as criticism on these points is quite a delicate matter, it would be safer to repeat an American description of them. “The average Sunday paper is like nothing else on earth. It might well be called a literary dime museum, for the editor presents not ‘stories’ that will simply amuse or entertain, but only those which will attract attention, because of their absurdity and the pictures, which sometimes cover whole pages, are, if anything, more unusual than the text.” ”

“ Most of the Sunday Papers, calling themselves Newspapers, have no news, only political essays, which are read by the working-classes, and which in those papers produce astonishing success.” In other letters he says: “The reputation of the writings of any man, the mere reputation of them, would not serve, or in the very slightest degree serve, any daily newspaper.” ”

“ Are you doing a stitch in time, the sort of stitch that is supposed to rhyme with nine? I wonder why it is that we always give ourselves up to occupations that we dislike on Sunday. I have not read a newspaper for years. One learns so much more about what is happening in the world if one never opens a newspaper. ”

“ Chapter XXII The Sunday-School and the Newspaper
On several pages of this book I have hinted at the use of the newspaper in our teaching; but the theme deserves a chapter to itself. An up-to-date teacher is respected, and it is largely the newspaper that brings one up to date. We must put our lessons into touch with life, and the newspaper is our modern compendium of life—very faulty, but all we have. The best illustration of the lesson is one your scholars find; the next best, one you find yourself; and only the third best, one found for you by the skilful writers of your lesson helps. ”

“ The present-day newspaper is prepared with great care. Its ambitious articles are studied out. The errors in its news columns are the results of haste rather than ignorance—the haste compelled by necessity in getting to press on the minute. The Sunday edition supplements, devoted to general topics and to literature, are already taking the place of many kinds of literature. They print new fiction by popular authors. They exploit and expand the latest developments in science, art, music, medicine, mechanics, construction, transportation—indeed, anything that is new or important. ”

“ It is not often he gets a newspaper; for it is not the like of us that can have newspapers and bread too at the same time in our houses. But now and then he begs an old one, partly torn, at the baker's, and reads it to us of a Sunday night. ”

“ They encourage bad manners and selfishness. A newspaper is an impudent intrusion at the table at any time, but on Sunday its presence is a crime. On an occasion, the late William Graham Sumner was a guest in my house. Like the alert, clear-thinking philosopher he was, he rose early and read the morning paper before breakfast. ”

“ In later years it had an able editor in Mr T. Catling. Reynolds's Weekly Newspaper, an extreme Radical paper with a large circulation, dates from May 1850. Other Sunday papers came later into existence—the People (1881) , the Sunday (afterwards Weekly) Sun (1891) , the Sunday Special (1897) —with which in 1904 was amalgamated the Sunday Times (1822) . The Referee (1877) , a paper with a strong sporting and theatrical interest, is famous for the humorous contributions by “Dagonet” (G. R. Sims) and the pungency of its miscellaneous articles. ”

“ A reporter on a New York newspaper has one day in seven to himself. Williams's day off was Monday, and he was always glad when it came. Sunday was especially arduous for him, because in addition to the unsatisfactory nature of the day's assignments, involving private interviewing which the citizens pretended to resent on their day of rest, he had the task in the evening of reporting a difficult sermon in a Brooklyn church. ”

“ Reynold’s Weekly News (1852) , an extremely Radical popular organ and the People, allied with the Globe, each have a large following. Finally the Sunday Chronicle of Manchester is the best representative of some very widely circulated papers in the provinces with issues running up to a million in many cases.
The revolution in the English press, which has extended to every corner of journalism,200 except the “heavy weeklies,” originally started in the provinces and spread to London with three rather insignificant gossipy and anecdotic penny weeklies. ”

“ Our Sunday newspapers, to my mind, rank among the greatest institutions of the present day. One finds in them matter that could not be found in several hundreds of books,—beautiful thoughts, broad intelligence, a range of information perfectly startling in its usefulness and perfectly charming in its entertainment. ”

“ Smith, tells first about the elopement of a neighbor’s daughter.46 Not until that is disposed of does she comment on last Sunday’s sermon.
Newspapers formerly were made on the assumption that men were the only readers. Now they are made with the tastes of women ever in mind. The evening newspaper, especially, is edited for the women, on the theory that it is taken home in the evening, while the morning newspaper is taken out of the home by the man going to work.
The newspaper is a business enterprise. In order to live it must get advertising. ”

“ The average Sunday circulation has reached the 15,500 mark, while of the weekly edition 8,500 copies are printed every Thursday.
↑ Editor's Note:—This is the second in the "Prominent Newspaper Series." The first, "The Oregonian," appeared in the April number. Others will be treated in turn, providing a history of our great journalistic enterprises. ”

“ Thousands seldom listen to a clergyman. But in these wide-awake days everybody of any account must read the newspaper, for the reading of the newspaper has come to be absolutely essential to the daily routine of every intelligent person. The things we read in the morning newspaper are the things we talk about during the day. If you are interested in politics, or if you are interested in finance, or the fluctuations of prices, or the movements of society, or any phase of trade or commerce, or in any of the vital questions of the hour—for all of these you turn to the newspaper. ”

“ I am not sure that this is an advantage, but in the undeniable decay of interest in the local preaching, some sort of mental relish for the only day of leisure is necessary. It is not so much a pity that they read the Sunday papers, as that the Sunday papers are so bad. If they were carefully and conscientiously made up, they would be of great use; they wait their reformer, and they do not seem impatient for him. ”

“ There are a good many different reasons. Some say they want a paper that prints all the news; meaning, by that, the crime details, sensations like prize fights, scandals and horrors of various kinds. Others object to the discontinuance of the Sunday edition. I have lost hundreds of subscribers by that action, although I have made satisfactory arrangements with many of the old subscribers by giving them even more in the extra Saturday edition than they formerly had in the Sunday issue. ”

“ Advertisements in the weekly press are on the whole more successful in England than in America. A few American weeklies cope successfully with the increasing competition of the huge Sunday editions of American daily papers. ”

“ Fascinating as the reporter’s life may be, it nevertheless has its unpleasant moments, its many hardships. The hours of work are irregular and unlimited. Men on the big metropolitan morning newspapers report for duty at noon, one or two o’clock; those of the evening staffs at seven or eight, A.M.; and all are supposed to work as long as their services are required—not infrequently for fifteen hours. Newspaper-making is a continuous performance, especially for reporters. ”

“ One of the most important of the world’s industries carried on at night is the making of the great morning daily newspaper. The average reader who unfolds his paper above his coffee cup in the morning rarely reflects that it represents the labor of half a hundred men, a great number of whom bend their lagging steps homeward only when the newsboy has begun to wake the morning echoes with his familiar cry. ”

“ Our notice of the American press would be incomplete without some account of that ample supply of religious literature which is furnished by thousands of weekly, monthly, and quarterly periodicals. The religious newspaper is almost peculiar to America, and is far superior to any similar publication in England. ”

“ Last of all comes the general reader and he asks nothing more of his newspaper than all the news of everywhere, collected at great cost, transcribed with finished skill and presented to him in just the way which pleases and flatters him most. All of them have on their lips the daily threat of giving up the paper, if they are not scrupulously satisfied. ”

“ Evening newspapers, as a rule, are essentially local in character, and hence use less special telegraph matter than those published in the morning. But a big story is a big story at any hour of the day or night, and if it develops in time for day publication the correspondent of an evening newspaper should use every effort to get it in. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch says: “In the early hours of the morning—say up to 10 or 11 o’clock—a brief bulletin on any important news item will be sufficient; if the telegraph editors want more they will notify you by wire. ”

“ A newspaper is an instrument of great importance; all men read it; many read nothing else; some it serves as reason and conscience too: in lack of better, why not? It speaks to thousands every day on matters of great moment—on matters of morals, of politics, of finance. It relates daily the occurrences of our land, and of all the world. All men are affected by it; hindered or helped. To many a man his morning paper represents more reality than his morning prayer. ”

“ The mirror of the newspaper reflects in its pages every relationship of life, from the cradle to the grave. No other literature is so rapidly produced, so omnipresent its circulation, or is so potent in its possibilities for good or evil; for comparatively few men read books, but everyone eagerly peruses his newspaper. ”

“ The success of the Bulletin’s exposé was even greater than the Camera Chap had predicted. Not only was the entire issue sold out, but the name of Carroll’s newspaper was on every tongue, which, of course, was a fine thing from the standpoint of future circulation; for the more a newspaper is talked about, the more it is read. ”