The World (newspaper)

“ It will uphold no candidate for office whom it believes to be unworthy of the support of honest men, and accept no platform which it believes to misrepresent or to contradict the true conditions of our national prosperity and greatness. As a newspaper The World, being the organ of no man, no clique and no interest, will present the fullest and the fairest picture it can make of each day’s passing history in the city, the State, the country and the world. ”

“ No interest, however powerful, shall ever be permitted truly to boast that it can silence the true criticism of The World.
During the past year The World has seen its daily circulation trebled and its weekly circulation pushed beyond that of any other weekly newspaper in the country. This great increase has been won, as The World believes, by truthfulness, enterprise, ceaseless activity in collecting news, and unfaltering loyalty to itself and to its readers in dealing with the questions of the day. ”

“ All of them have souls to save—so has that lawyer who does not go to church. I must see him to-morrow. 'What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?'"
Meanwhile the newspaper man prints the news about them all, for he keeps his finger on the pulse of the whole world for news. "No factor in modern civilization is so important as the press," says he. ”

“ At all times—whether in the pressure of heavy affliction, when our own life has become a burden, and the world indifferent, or in exalted feeling, when we are transported, as it were, out of all actual existence—the newspaper comes, and demands our attention, and calls to us as if we were to cöoperate everywhere in the various relations of the world. ”

“ By the same means the ideas of people who lived long ago have been handed down to us, and the ideas of to-day will be passed on to later generations. Most wonderful is the modern newspaper, which daily carries into almost every home of the land the important happenings in the world during the preceding twenty- four hours. ”

“ Newspapers are to the whole civilized world what the daily house-talk is to the members of a household; they keep up our daily interest in each other, they save us from the evils of isolation. To live as a member of the great white race of men, the race that has filled Europe and America, and colonized or conquered whatever other territories it has been pleased to occupy, to share from day to day its cares, its thoughts, its aspirations, it is 466 necessary that every man should read his daily newspaper. ”

“ Given, formerly of the New York Sun, often called “the newspaper man’s newspaper,” has written to my mind the only valuable professional account of the newspaper world.
What is news? Americans give a more comprehensive answer to that question than any other people. In that country small things overshadow the great. Perhaps it would be truer to say that the important things to them are matters of detail. Foreign politics are to them outlandish matters. Their public life is itself a matter of small things ”

“ The same thing is as obvious in the daily papers. The world is filled with English newspaper men who combine with reportorial training the power of treating a subject briefly and tellingly in its broadest relations. ”

“ Seldom, perhaps, has anything illustrated more vividly that great and distinctive condition of modern existence in free countries,—the double power wielded by the newspaper press, at once as the ubiquitous instructor and as the rapid interpreter of a national mind. ”

“ Writing from a long experience with the profession of journalism, Will Irwin reaches the180 conclusion that33 “news is the main thing, the vital consideration of the American newspaper; it is both an intellectual craving and a commercial need to the modern world. In popular psychology it has come to be a crying primal want of the mind, like hunger of the body. ”

“ These men read newspapers, took an interest in all that happened in the outer world, and discussed, if not with thorough knowledge, at least with eager interest and sympathy, the events that moved humanity at large. ”

“ An editorial, giving some of the plain facts about civilization—simple stuff to teach the people what industry means, what their work means, what they ought to be doing. Then news—news about all movements toward freedom—labor, strikes, reform, new laws, schools—news of all the forces working for betterment—a concrete statement of where the world stands to-day and what it is doing. ”

“ An intelligent American newspaper, the Nation, says that it is very easy to sit in one's study and find fault with the course of modern society, but the thing is to propose practical improvements for it. ”

“ In brief, the newspapers of that time had not learned the baleful lesson that human society is a cone, broadest at bottom, and that the lower a newspaper cuts into it the broader its surface of circulation is. ”

“ It is the imperative demand for news, embracing every movement of human life in every class and every country, that sets in action the wondrous organization that produces a daily newspaper. Its ministers of communication are almost ubiquitous. ”

“ Perhaps the tendency of modern journalism is to epitomize too much. In the hurry of daily newspaper work and the press of matter upon our pages, very likely we are fatally brief, and sacrifice rhetorical beauty to naked and goose-pimply facts. ”

“ What books and newspapers shall we read? You see I group them together. A newspaper is only a book in a swifter and more portable shape, and the same rules which apply to book-reading will apply to newspaper-reading. What shall we read? Shall our minds be the receptacle of every thing that an author has a mind to write? Shall there be no distinction between the tree of life and the tree of death? Shall we stoop down and drink out of the trough which the wickedness of men has filled with pollution and shame? ”

“ Let us endeavour to supply a rapid sketch of the wonderful organization that is required to produce this great necessary of modern society.
The essential characteristic of a newspaper is news. It may be philosophical, or critical, or imaginative—it may pour forth treasures of learning or eloquence, to live but a few hours and then be too readily forgotten—but no amount of ability will give it currency if it be deficient in news. ”

“ Gentlemen, in a newspaper, at a glance, you are in touch with the elemental forces of nature—war, pestilence and famine; you are transported by this printed sheet, as it were the fairy carpet of the Arabian, from capital to capital, from the exultation of one people to the bitter resentment and chagrin of another. You behold on every scale every quality of humanity, everything that piques the sense of mystery, everything that inspires pity, dread, or anger. It is a vast and ever-changing panorama of the raw material of art and literature. ”

“ We have said before in this column that it has been an unique experiment—to make one loyal newspaper out of two that were none too English, to make it with talent unused to the work, to make it, often, without news and to conduct it so as to produce something palatable to both the conquerors and the conquered. ”

“ A correct answer to it is unquestionably the first step in the settlement of the appalling problems of poverty, intemperance, ignorance, and crime. Truth, in selecting it as a subject on which to harp and hammer from day to day, shows itself a level-headed, far-sighted newspaper. ”

“ Under its influence, through the “natural selection” of the public, a new and nobler species of journalism has arisen and now exists. The newspaper of to-day, evolved from rudimentary forms, is a splendid and heroic organism; and the last upholder of the dogma of its miraculous creation and infallible power is dead.
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SOCIETY’S EXILES. BY B. O. FLOWER.
It is difficult to over-estimate the gravity of the problem presented by those compelled to exist in the slums of our populous cities, even when considered from a purely economic point of view. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If the newspaper has not the news it may have everything else, yet it will be comparatively unsuccessful; and by news I mean everything that occurs, everything which is of human interest, and which is of sufficient interest to arrest and absorb the attention of the public or of any considerable part of it. ”

“ The time when the opinions, the power in phraseology, or the individuality of one man could alone make a daily newspaper a financial, literary, or political success had passed. The press had become an institution, journalism a profession, and the publication of newspapers a practical business requiring and rewarding enterprise and sagacity. ”

“ Thus the daily newspaper will be entirely a vehicle for the propagation of news, correctly so called: and very likely it will become almost entirely colourless, politically, because a well-informed public will resent obvious garbling or clearly unfair selection. ”

“ CHAPTER XX CULTURE AND ART THE function of the newspaper, which we have been discussing, is, to a considerable extent, to widen our horizon, to give us new ideas and sympathies, to enrich and brighten our lives; in greater degree, that is the role of the fine arts, and of that wide conversance with beauty and truth that we call culture. ”

“ The sensational character of the daily press must be considered in this connection. The news value of normal, peaceable developments is very small. It is therefore a godsend to the news- papers when something extraordinary happens, particularly in international affairs. ”

“ But when you turn to the news columns for details of some event that is startling the world, whether it is a crime, an earthquake, a battle, or a royal wedding, you find a few lines that vex you with their insufficiency. ”

“ This is the limit of the power of the modern newspaper of large circulation, the newspaper that appeals to the grey element, to the average democratic man, the newspaper of the deliquescence, and if our previous conclusion that human society has ceased to be homogeneous and will presently display new masses segregating from a great confusion, holds good, this will be the limit of its power in the future. ”

“ The controlling desire of a great modern newspaper is to give its readers the news, and the news therefore may show progressive action, the breaking of precedents, the activities of great organizations formed to uphold righteousness and peace. ”

“ The newspapers and illustrated periodicals which they read were the pabulum that fed the flames of patriotism incessantly. Such capacity for enormous lying, both in creation and absorption, the world never heard. Sufficient for the hour is the falsehood. ”

“ This has been the principle on which I have uniformly acted in the conduct of this paper. But to suppress in a newspaper the publication of a fact which meets the eyes and ears of all people would be at once absurd and mischievous. ”

“ The human interest story has grown out of a number of causes. Up to a very recent time newspapers have been content with printing news in its barest possible form—facts and nothing but facts. Their appeal has been only to the brain. ”

“ How near the chit-chat of a newspaper brings you to past events,—you can’t help feeling yourself a contemporary. What life and movement; what petty details, all of which, however, are necessary to fill up the picture of the time, and to clothe the bones which history picks so bare. ”

“ If I were asked to select what one influence more than another wastes the spare time of the modern man, I should be inclined to specify the reading of newspapers. The value of the modern daily newspaper as a short cut to knowledge of what is actually happening in two hemispheres is indisputable, provided it is read regularly so that one can eliminate from the consciousness [188] those facts which are contradicted or qualified on the following day. ”

“ One of the objects of a newspaper is to understand popular feeling and to give expression to it ; another is to arouse among the people certain desirable sentiments ; and the third is fearlessly to expose popular defects. ”

“ And the press was the chief instrument that kept these two huge multitudes of people directed against one another.
The press--those newspapers that are now so strange to us--like the "Empires," and "Nations," the Trusts, and all the other great monstrous shapes of that extraordinary time--was in thenature of an unanticipated accident. It had happened, as weeds happen in abandoned gardens, just as all our world has happened—because there was no clear Will in the world to bring about anything better. ”

“ The newspaper informs you, instructs you, influences you, amuses you, inspires you, directs your thoughts, assists your conclusions, fires your ambitions, enlarges your vocabulary—all of which are of the utmost importance to you. ”

“ Journalism, look you, is the religion of modern society, and has even gone a little further.” ”

“ As a consequence33 an importance is attached to the details of personal life, private happiness, social standing, success and failure of individuals, which in Europe is quite beyond comprehension. Everything is news; almost anything may become big news, if it can be shown to be in any way connected with the interests of the vast, curious, highly intelligent but not deeply cultivated public. ”

“ I echoed, taking the newspaper from my wife, and as I read I felt a little lump of emotional pride rise in my throat. There it was, sure enough, in black and white, though I could not help wondering why the fact was of importance enough to be chronicled in the daily press along with the telegraphic news, and the deaths and marriages. ”