Newspaper publisher

“ It requires a high conception of the objects and pur poses of a newspaper, a clear insight into
minds of old and young, often through
the needs and possibilities of a given locality, to establish a standard for a publication which will be creditable and
at the same time can be made to yield a profit. Back of every newspaper which is a
credit to the community in which it is published, is an editor who is devoted to his work. Combined in the same indi vidual or associated with him must be a publisher and business manager with his upper story full of business sense. ”

“ In most big cities you find papers owned by big local “trusts,” and one or two others belonging to a “trust” of newspapers, a publishing-system like that of Calkins or Capper or Munsey or Scripps or Hearst. For the rule that the big fish swallow the little ones applies in the newspaper world as elsewhere. The publisher of a big newspaper comes upon a chance to buy a small newspaper in a neighboring city, and presently he finds himself with a chain of newspapers. Then he learns of a magazine that is “on the rocks,” and it occurs to him that a magazine can help his newspapers, or vice versa. ”

“ For the recognition has become general that the average newspaper is owned and operated as a commercial property. As Mr. Brooke Fisher, in a recent number of the Atlantic, writes, the days when the editor hired the publisher are gone; it is now the publisher who hires the editor, and the counting-room determines the policy. Advertising is the material mainstay, and the merchants and magnates who have largesse to distribute must be humored. ”

“ Such has become the magnitude of the business side of the newspaper that ownership by stock companies is the rule to-day instead of the exception as it was in 1845. Not infrequently the majority of the stock of a newspaper is held by one man or in one family, and one person, often known as the publisher-owner, directs the publishing. ”

“ In large cities the amount of capital required to establish and maintain a daily newspaper is so great that the publisher-owner must be a man of considerable wealth. Stock in newspaper companies, however, is not held exclusively by those directly connected with the paper. ”

“ And the larger, the more popular, and the more widely read the paper, the better will be the prices which advertisers 14 will pay, and the more will be the advertisements. And so the publisher tries to sell as many papers as he can, partly because of the money which he gets for them, but more, because the more he sells the more advertising will he get, and the better rates will he charge for it. So, Tom, if you ever become the publisher of a newspaper, you must set your heart on getting an editor who will make a paper that will sell—whatever else he does or does not do. ”

“ Newspaper Publishers of Today
The newspaper publishers of today are men of varied origins and training. Many began their careers as printers; others inherited or invested in newspaper properties. The advertising solicitor, the circulation man, the newsboy, the office boy, the printer's devil, have developed into controllers of policy as frequently as the man who served his apprenticeship, such as it was, in the gathering and writing of news. An acute business judgment is a more uniform characteristic than any familiarity with the social effects of journalistic policies. ”

“ The readers of higher class circles are apt to be thoroughly bored with reiterated details on a subject, which soon becomes stale, while yet there is no other method than this by which the newspaper can secure a suitable return for its enterprise and heavy expenditure.
One of the vexed questions for the publisher of periodicals is properly to assess the relative value of a large or small circulation. Some small circulations especially of a technical kind have a far higher value for advertisers than a large one of poorer quality. ”

“ The District Court found: 'AP does not prevent or hinder nonmember newspapers from obtaining access to domestic and foreign happenings and events.' Newspaper publishers differ as to the comparative value of AP and other services; many choose one in preference to the other; some have relinquished one service and acquired the other. Vast newspaper enterprises have grown up which depend on services other than those furnished by AP. These include metropolitan newspapers with circulations running from two hundred thousand to over a million. ”

“ As personal ownership of newspapers has been superseded by corporate ownership, the place of the editor becomes more and more conventional; as the personal owner continues to be the editor, he tends to consider more than formerly the commercial interests of his paper. These changes seem to create the impression, even among newspaper men themselves, that the editorial is declining in importance. "A newspaper is divided into three parts," says a recent novel dealing with the press. "News is the merchandise which it has to sell. Advertising is the by-product that pays the bills. ”

“ To furnish for a cent or two a fairly complete record of important events that take place in any corner of the world, editorial comment, market quotations, reviews of new books, critiques of plays and concerts, fashion hints, cooking recipes, cartoons, and illustrations, as well as advertisements of all kinds, would seem a stupendous, not to say impossible, task if it were not an everyday phenomenon. A single copy of a daily newspaper in a large city contains, exclusive of advertising, from 60,000 to 80,000 words, or as many as does the average novel. ”

“ You must recall that the entire newspaper industry as we know it has been developed within comparatively recent years. The great daily, with its Sunday edition of pictures, colored sheets, news of classified varieties, and advertising and sporting sections, is only possible by means of the modern press which has the capacity for turning out in a short time such an immense number of papers. ”

“ In certain advertising agencies there is a standing rule in the matter of newspaper plates that all proofs must be pulled on newspaper stock—and a very inferior grade. A newspaper press is used, an entire series coming off at once. ”

“ The Bill will receive the Royal Assent this day, and on Monday, the Price of the Morning Post, in common with that of other Newspapers, will be Sixpence Halfpenny.”
Then, as now, the backbone of a Newspaper was its advertisements, and then also, did each Newspaper laud itself as being the best advertising medium, owing to its superior circulation. ”

“ From being a comparatively simple undertaking, newspaper publishing has become a big, complex, highly organized enterprise. In 1835 it was possible for one man, James Gordon Bennett, Sr., to start the New York Herald with a cash capital of $500, and to perform the greater part of the work connected with its publication, for the owner-editor’s duties ranged from editorial writing to keeping books, from gathering police news to making out bills, and from commenting on conditions in Wall Street to writing advertisements. ”

“ The business man would think chiefly of a newspaper, as a vehicle for prices and a10 medium for advertising. Cooks, butlers, clerks and governesses look upon it as a daily registry office. The solicitor sells houses and lands through it. Housewives through it sometimes buy their soaps and more often their hats. Actors, singers, authors, artists and musicians each read their special column and wonder when the editor intends to engage some one really acquainted with the only subject worth reading. ”

“ The newspaper was then a means of supplying information upon which men could depend in the guidance of these affairs, but the conditions have entirely changed and it too has changed with them. In our day a newspaper, generally owned by a corporation, is organized for the purpose of making money for the stockholders by the sale of news. ”

“ The commodity in which the publishers of daily newspapers deal is news, i.e. information respecting recent events in which the public take an interest, or in which an interest can be excited.
Newspapers, therefore, rank according to their excellence as newspapers; and no other kind of excellence can make up for any deficiency in the one thing for which they exist.
Consequently, the art of editorship consists in forming, handling, and inspiring a corps of reporters; for inevitably that newspaper becomes the chief and favorite journal which has the best corps of reporters, and uses them best. ”

“ The modern newspaper is a product of city life; it is no longer merely an organ of propaganda and opinion, but a form of popular literature. The journal of opinion was largely a business man's newspaper. The so-called independent press added to its public the so-called artisan class. The yellow press was created mainly to capture immigrants, and women.
It was this increase of circulation that made the newspaper—formerly a subsidized organ of the parties an independent business enterprise, an envelope and carrier for advertising. ”

“ It is only fair to the would-be reporter, therefore, to tell him that at times in his journalistic career he may be permitted to see snow only through a motorist's yellow goggles. The modern newspaper is a business organization run for the profit or power of the owners, with the additional motive in the background of possible social uplift,—social uplift as the owners see it. ”

“ Within the lifetime of these two great editor-publishers newspaper making had become a big business enterprise.
Newspapers Require Large Capital. During the last quarter of a century the amount of capital required for success in newspaper publishing has been further increased by the need for huge presses, expensive linotypes and other type-casting machines, and more elaborate stereotyping apparatus, as well as for better news service, new special features, and more numerous illustrations. ”

“ The life and power of any newspaper or periodical is thus doubly entrusted to the hands of its readers and to their opinion of it. They must draw from it amusement, instruction and business facilities and for the latter the newspaper proprietor is even more concerned than for the former. The secret of the miracle whereby 6d. or 10 cents worth of news and literary matter can be sold in the streets for one penny or one cent is that the reader makes a return to the newspaper for every copy, which he buys, equivalent to the difference in price. ”

“ If the social and political interests of the community are vitally affected by news furnished in the newspapers, as has been shown in the examples given, publishers cannot claim that the purpose of the newspapers is to sell as many copies as possible, to get as much advertising as possible, and to give the people what they want to read, rather than to furnish their readers with a record of the interesting and significant activities of the day, as complete and accurate as it can be made. ”

“ It has absorbed monthly magazines or forced publishers to resort to illustrations—to a sort of picture-book literature for grown-up children. It has driven the lumbering quarterlies into smaller fields and diminished their relative importance. The average citizen craves the news from a journal having the very dew of the morning and of the evening upon it. It must come to him damp and limp, bringing whatever is best at the smallest possible cost. The newspaper is the herald of the new era. ”

“ With this came, in the first quarter of the last century, the extension of private announcements, which have now attained, through the so-called advertising bureaus, some such organization as political news-collecting possesses in the correspondence bureaus.
The modern newspaper is a capitalistic enterprise, a sort of news-factory in which a great number of people (correspondents, editors, typesetters, correctors, machine-tenders, collectors of advertisements, office clerks, messengers, etc.) are employed on wage, under a single administration, at very specialized work. ”

“ The business organization, as its name implies, has charge of the commercial side of newspaper publishing. From the financial point of view the purpose of the newspaper is to make enough money to maintain the paper and to pay dividends to the stockholders. The object of the business department is to sell as much advertising space and as many copies of each issue as it possibly can ”

“ But I am sure that few persons who read the papers realize the great amount of time and thought that goes into turning out a good, up-to-date, artistically illustrated newspaper. The mere mechanical toil required is enormous; and in addition to this labor there is all the bustle, rush, and rivalry attending the securing of the latest news. The editorial office has its set of problems, as you know, if you yourself get out a paper. ”

“ The public generally are not aware that the newspaper Press is everywhere thus subsidized and suborned, and therefore are easily deceived, It is supposed that there are about three thousand newspapers in the United States, and most of them advertise more or less nostrums; and I think we may safely say, that such advertisements are the chief support of at least one-half of the whole number of papers. The gross amount paid annually for such advertisements almost exceeds belief. ”

“ The people who take the paper pay the expense of its publication, choose its editor, and remove him when unsatisfactory. You will scarcely say, I think, that such a newspaper press is not a free organ of popular opinion. ”

“ The counting-room desires to conciliate the advertisers; the editor looks to making a paper satisfactory to his readers. Between this see-saw of the necessary subscriber and the necessary advertiser, a good many newspapers go down. This difficulty would be measurably removed by the admission of the truth that the newspaper is a strictly business enterprise, depending for success upon a 'quid pro quo' between all parties connected with it, and upon integrity in its management. ”