Newsprint

“ Because of the insatiable appetites of our large newspaper printing presses and because a newspaper is not intended to be an imperishable document but a fleeting record of passing events, quality is of little importance in the preparation of pulp for newsprint and everything must be sacrificed for speed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Large heads extending across several columns and printed in green, red, or black ink set forth the latest phases of the news in a manner well calculated to catch the eye as the paper is displayed on the news stand or in the hands of the newsboy. As in advertising in general there is always a temptation to make alluring statements at the expense of truth, so in headline advertisement there is a tendency to exaggerate and magnify in order to catch the unwary reader. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No event of news value was too insignificant to escape the watchfulness of the Consolidated Press, none so great that it could not handle it from its inception up to the moment when it ceased to be quoted in the news-market of the world. Each night, from thousands of spots all over the surface of the globe, it received thousands of facts, of cold, accomplished facts. ”

“ These limitations in the colonial point of view, however, had several striking effects on the early journalism between 1704 and 1750, or thereabouts. The reader who examines the small, ill-printed, half illegible news sheets is surprised to find them more varied in many ways, and more distinctly literary than modern journalism aims to be. The simple fact of the matter is that the dearth of news at length forced the editorial mind to become inventive and even, in some instances, creative. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is an absence of the striking headlines, which in English journals direct attention to news of importance, and which in America almost swamp the text. The outside page generally contains the editorial articles and the news of most importance, while the intelligence received immediately before going to press is placed in the last column of the last sheet. The bulk of the paper can apparently be increased indefinitely in accordance with the supply of news or literary matter, or with the number of advertisements. ”

“ Not only are the editorials of a single editor and the editorials from a single newspaper collected and published in book form, but the editorials of one paper are reprinted on the editorial pages of other papers, they are reprinted as advertisements, they are copied in the news columns of the press, and they are collectively copied in an effort to secure a consensus of public opinion on important questions. ”

“ In editorial offices one is constantly hearing the word "feature," and reporters are constantly admonished to "play up the feature" of their stories. Feature is the word that editors use to signify the essence of news value. Every story that is printed is printed because of some fact in it that makes it interesting—gives it news value. The element in the story that makes it interesting and worth printing is the feature. The feature may be some prominent name, a large list of fatalities, a significant amount of property destroyed, or merely the unusualness of the incident. ”

“ On one matter there has been no difference of opinion: in every country the printed has grown out of the written newspaper. Even after the invention of printing it was a comparatively long time before the printing-press was called upon to aid in the dissemination of news. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Tribune was the first newspaper to adapt for journalistic purposes the printing of the half-tone photograph. The innovation started the rising flood of news-in-pictures which is so distinctive a feature of the American press of 1923.... Some of the events of the day’s news can be visualized for the reader simply by the printed word. Others need the aid of a picture. Others still find presentation possible in a picture alone.... The universal appeal of pictures can be taken advantage of for sound informative and educational purposes, instead of for scandal and filth. ”

“ All the rules that apply to the fire lead apply to the lead of any story.
It would be impossible to classify all the news stories that a newspaper must print. The very zest of reporting comes from the changing variety of the work; no two assignments are ever exactly alike—if they were only one would be worth printing. Newspapers themselves make no attempt to classify the ordinary run of news or to work out a systematic division of labor; a reporter may be called upon to cover a fire, a political meeting, a murder, a business story, all in the same day. ”

“ A sixth mainstay of the magazines is in the presentation of articles dealing with happenings of national interest or personalities prominent in the day's news. This task grows increasingly difficult as the newspapers tighten their grip upon the public's attention and as the news pictorials of the moving picture screen gain in popular esteem by improved technical skill and more intelligent editing. The magazine of large circulation must go to press so long before the newspapers and the films that much perishable news must be thrown out, even though it is of nation wide appeal. ”

“ The leading journals publish news from every corner of the globe, all that is worthy of interest: they contain much more foreign news and cable dispatches than any New York paper. Instead of the enormous quantity of trivial gossip about public and private individuals which forms so large a part of the reading matter of most of our papers, they have in addition to real news of State, and of mercantile and commercial matters at home and abroad, articles scientific and literary, information as to art, music, and every field of activity. ”

“ As news stories, whether local or telegraph, are edited before they are printed, practically all stories as they appear in the newspaper are the work not only of the reporter or correspondent who gathered the news, but of one or more editors and copy-readers. Well-written stories of reporters and correspondents usually undergo little change when edited. A poorly written story, on the other hand, may be made over into a very effective one by a rewrite man, an editor, or a copy-reader. ”

“ We adapt and modify what we have. We do not revive what we have lost. And the regeneration of the newspaper will be forced upon the newspaper-office by the development of public intelligence. Comment will probably during the next few decades be eliminated from daily journalism altogether, and confined to serious weekly publications, somewhat on the lines of our monthly reviews, and to other publications summarising the latter, like the present Review of Reviews, perhaps the most useful periodical now being issued, with the single exception of The Times. ”

“ The stage has hardened us to seeing a reporter slinking around the outskirts of every bit of excitement writing excitedly and hurriedly in a large leather notebook. So hardened are we to the sight that some new reporters buy a notebook just as soon as they get a place on a newspaper staff. But real reporters on real newspapers do not use notebooks. A few sheets of folded copy paper hidden carefully in an inside pocket ready for names and addresses and perhaps figures are all that most of them carry. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It seems to me, now, that an intelligent man, or one simply desiring information, would see what benefit he is getting for his money, in taking a paper. It is the principle in all other matters. I can see no reason why it should not apply here. As a rule, both editorial and news-matter are of higher quality in white papers. The news-matter in colored papers is absolutely worthless. Whatever news there is of public or special interest, is first procured by white papers, which, for the most part, have agents on the spot. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In full uniform, no manager—certainly no editor—of another morning paper is aware of the existence of the Daily News; the Daily News, on its part, being courageously steeped in equally dense ignorance of the existence of other journals. ”