Newspaper

“ And all these touches of nature make us wondrous kind. It is the country newspaper, bringing together daily the threads of the town's life, weaving them into something rich and strange, and setting the pattern as it weaves, directing the loom, and giving the cloth its color by mixing the lives of all the people in its color-pot—it is this country newspaper that reveals us to ourselves, that keeps our country hearts quick and our country minds open and our country faith strong. ”

“ A newspaper is a living organism, threaded through with the nerves of men and women, inspired by their spirit, animated by their ideals and thought, the living vehicle of their own adventure of life. So The Tribune seemed to us then, in that last [Pg 108] hour, when we looked back on our labor and comradeship, our laughter, our good times together on “the rag,” as we had called it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now, a newspaper in itself is a little thing, small and thin; but when you think of newspapers by the hundred, newspapers by the thousand, going on growing and accumulating, then you can understand how difficult it must be to find room for them all. ”

“ The interest created by a newspaper is hardly confined to a perusal of its pages. After we have devoured the motley contents of its voluminous columns, and drunk in the excitement of its serried lines of print, there comes a pause—and in that pause we naturally turn to the marvellous phenomenon of its production. ”

“ If we go into a library piled with books, old and new, we may find it hard to select one to suit our taste. But let a man lay his hand on a newspaper of a hundred years ago, with its stained yellow pages and its old-fashioned type, and he is interested at once. He sits down and reads it all through, advertisements and news and editorials—only, fortunately for the people of the olden times, there were very few editorials written then. And why does he do this? Because he recognizes the true nature of the newspaper. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We have always regarded a newspaper as a mirror in which all may look and see the events of the day as they pass, and as a journal in which are to be re corded for future reference the public acts and deeds of men ”

“ A modern newspaper is an enormously expensive institution. The day is past when a country printer could set up a hand-press and print news about the wedding of the village blacksmith’s daughter and the lawn-party of the Christian Endeavor Society, and so make his way as a journalist. ”

“ The newspaper is probably responsible for making current many words with which the general reader is familiar, but which he rises to in the flow of conversation, and strikes at with a splash and an unsuccessful attempt at appropriation; the word, which he perfectly knows, hooks him in the gills, and he cannot master it. ”

“ Newspapers are distributed on the same principle as are the letters.
The newspaper department of a post-office is one that may well be called the “reservoir” of the press: here flows all that makes up that vast institution, here comes the highest standard of our literature, down to the meanest sheet venality produces. A number of men are constantly employed in the newspaper room, or, as we term it, “the rotunda of literature.” This is emphatically the wholesale room; for they deal in bulk. Papers coming singly, directed to individuals, pass through the same process as do the letters. ”

“ Oh, the newspapers exaggerate dreadfully—shamefully, to get up a sensation in the interest of their own flimsy sheets. There is some disturbance, but nothing like what people are made believe by the newspaper reports. ”

“ The newspaper, fully alive to the value of things new, gives welcome to the self-revelations of human folly, perverted ingenuity, and uncontrollable vanity. The struggle for its coveted column seems hardly less violent than that for the fashionable gathering. ”

“ The newspaper man notices that the man stands like one who is braced against something that may come suddenly and that his deep-set eyes say, "We know what we know." There are other impressions that interest the newspaper man. For a moment the motionless one seems a blurred little unit of the hurrying crowd. ”

“ Through the newspaper he can feel the pulse of the country and find whether its vitality is increasing or diminishing; he can read the signs of the times and scan the political horizon for what concerns his own interests. ”

“ I have tried to write for you a story of newspaper life and tell how a boy, who started in the lowest position,—that of a copy carrier,—rose to become a reporter. The newspaper covers a wide field, and enters into almost every home, telling of the doings of all the world, including that which takes place right in our midst.
There are many persons in the business, which is an interesting and fascinating one. ”

“ When you open your newspaper in the morning, the actual sensations of seeing the print form a very minute part of what goes on in you, but they are the starting-point of all the rest, and it is through them that the newspaper is a means of information or mis-information. ”

“ Has the time come, or is it near at hand, when we can point to a person who is alert, superficial, ready and shallow, self-confident and half-informed, and say, "There is a product of the American newspaper"? The newspaper is not a willful creation, nor an isolated phenomenon, but the legitimate outcome of our age, as much as our system of popular education. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These may perhaps be telegraphed to the newspaper office from some intermediate port when the theatre of war is distant—for unquestionably we shall, before very long, be able to telegraph pictures quite as easily as words. And this brings us face to face with one of the most interesting and important developments to be looked for in the vending of news. Beyond doubt, newspaper illustration will, in even the near future, be the subject of great and, in fact, of revolutionary improvement. Every daily paper will be copiously illustrated, and illustrated in colour. ”

“ A newspaper is a report of daily happenings, sometimes even of rumours. These should be published, so that the truth may be arrived at, but the girl at work should find the parts of the newspaper which are her special concern and should not give much time to the rest of the paper. She should learn to distinguish facts from rumours and opinions. ”

“ The yellow press grew up in an attempt to capture for the newspaper a public whose only literature was the family story paper or the cheap novel. The problem was to write the news in such a way that it would appeal to the fundamental passions. The formula was: love and romance for the women; sport and politics for the men. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Well-written heads that give clearly and accurately the information of greatest significance in the stories under them are an integral part of the newspaper, the function of which, as has been said, is to give the readers in a clear and interesting form the news of the day. ”

“ The newspaper press is one of the most extraordinary features in the United States. Its influence is omnipresent. Every party in religion, politics, or morals, speaks, not by one, but by fifty organs; and every nicely defined shade of opinion has its voices also. Every town of large size has from ten to twenty daily papers; every village has its three or four ”

“ 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. ”

“ Before considering the common school, however, we have to notice a phenomenon in letters—namely, the evolution of the modern newspaper as a vehicle for general reading-matter. Not content with giving the news, or even with creating news and increasing its sensational character, it grasps at the wider field of supplying reading material for the million, usurping the place of books and to a large extent of periodicals. The effect of this new departure in journalism is beginning to attract attention. An increasing number of people read nothing except the newspapers. ”

“ As the newspaper in its news records the life of every day, so in its style it too frequently records the slang of daily life and the faults of ordinary conversation. A newspaper contains bits of English prose from hundreds of different pens, some skilled, some unskilled; and this jumble of styles does not determine good use. ”

“ A newspaper is simply a news exchange. If you’re ready to read about the affairs of others, you should not resent the activity of the newspaper that attempts to present yours. I’m merely advancing a theory.”
“Damned ingenious,” admitted the polo-player. “Make a reporter a sort of public agent, eh? ”

“ Almost every kind of writing is used by newspapers. All kinds of literature are printed in them—the scholarly essay, the article of argument, the expository editorial paragraph, the story of fiction, the language of verse, the consideration of art, music, the play, all sorts of description of all kinds of happenings in every part of our old earth—and all are written without uniformity of diction or construction. There is no style that the newspaper rejects. The experienced editor seeks diversity of writing and of topic in every column. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Want some advice from the Old Man?"
"I most surely do, Dad."
"Listen here, then. A newspaper is a business proposition. Never forget that. All these hifalutin' notions about its being a palladium and the voice of the people and the guardian of public interests are good enough to talk about on the editorial page. Gives a paper a following, that kind of guff does. But the duty of a newspaper is the duty of any other business, to make money. There's the principle, the policy, the politics, ethics, and religion of the newspaper in a nutshell. ”

“ You might say that nobody does read it, but the column of the newspaper which is devoted to this narrative, contrasted with the few paragraphs in which the important news from all parts of the globe is discussed, refutes you. The newspaper understands itself. It is a shrewd merchant who supplies the demand in the market. ”

“ It is evident that a newspaper cannot do for a community of 1,000,000 inhabitants what the village did spontaneously for itself through the medium of gossip and personal contact. Nevertheless the efforts of the newspaper to achieve this impossible result are an interesting chapter in the history of politics as well as of the press. ”

“ Nothing else ever invented has the public attention as the newspaper has, or is an influence so constant and universal. It is this large opportunity that has given the impression that the newspaper is a public rather than a private enterprise. ”