TRAINING FORTE
NEWSPAPER
TRADE
DON C.SEITZ
ALVMHVS BOOK FVND
LIPPINCOTT'S
TRAINING SERIES
"FOR THOSE WHO WANT
TO FIND THEMSELVES"
TRAINING FOR THE
NEWSPAPER TRADE
LIPPINCOTT'S
TRAINING SERIES
"For those who want
to find themselves"
The books in the Lippincott's Training Series,
by the leaders in the different professions, will do
much to help the beginner on life's highway. In a
straightforward manner the demand upon charac-
ter, the preparatory needs, the channels of advance-
ment, and the advantages and disadvantages of
the different pursuits are presented in
THE TRAINING OP A SALESMAN
BT WILLIAM MAXWELL
Vice-President of Thomas A. Ediion, Inc.
TRAINING FOR THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
BY DON C. SEITZ
BuiineM Manager ol the New York World.
TRAINING FOR THE STAGE
BT ARTHUR HORNBLOW
Editor of "The Theatre Magaiine.'^
TRAINING FOR THE ELECTRIC RAILWAY
BUSINESS
BT C. B. FAIRCHILD, JR.
Executive Assistant, Phils. Rapid Transit Co.
TRAINING AND REWARDS OF THE
PHYSICIAN
BT RICHARD C. CABOT, M.D.
TRAINING OF A FORESTER
BT GlFFORD PlNCHOT
These books should be in every school and college
library. Put them in the hands of your young
friends; they will thank you.
Other volumes in preparation
Each thoroughly illustrated, decorated cloth
LIFPINCOTT'S TRAINING SERIES
TRAINING FOR THE
NEWSPAPER TRADE
BY
DON C. SEITZ
BUSINESS MANAGER OF "NEW YORK WOBLD '
'Once a journalist, always and forever
a journalist."
— RUDYABD KlPLINQ
PHILADELPHIA & LONDON
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, I9I<J, BT J. B. LIPPIITCOTT COMPANY
PUBLIBHKD SEPTEMBER, Ipl6
COMPANT
AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PBESfl
PHILADELPHIA, TJ. S. A.
"P IV 4- 773-
To THE MEMORY OP
SIMEON DRAKE
PRINTER
CONTENTS
PAQB
TRAINING AND OPPORTUNITY 17
THE TRADE 38
THE EDITOR 49
THE REPORTER 62
THE READER 82
INDUSTRIAL SIDE 96
ADVERTISING Ill
ILLUSTRATING 126
CIRCULATION 135
THE COUNTRY PAPER 151
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Where Many Start — Composing Room of a Country News-
paper Office Frontispiece
A Busy Press Room 22
Monotype Operators at Work 30
A Business Office Foyer 45
Preparing Night Copy for Morning Newspaper 51
The City Staff of a New York Evening Newspaper 64
Stereotypers Molding Pages 87
A Battery of Linotypes 98
Monotype Casting Room 110
A Hand Composing Room 120
Photo-Engraving Plant 132
Mailing Department of a Country Newspaper 156
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
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TRAINING FOR THE
NEWSPAPER TRADE
TRAINING AND OPPORTUNITY
WHAT does a newspaper career hold out
to young men in the way of interest and
advantage? This can be answered generally:
It offers an education greater than any col-
lege or university can afford ; it puts them in
close touch with the great affairs of the
universe; it makes them broadminded and
rouses an intellectual activity not inspired
in any other profession or trade.
The newspaper is the mirror of modern
life in which all phases, of thought and ac-
tivity are reflected. To become competent
in the employ of a newspaper means that a
man must educate himself in advance of the
rest of the world, in order that he may eluci-
date and exploit the happenings of the day
intelligently. Unlike education as it is pro-
2 17
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
vided in schools and colleges, this learning is
picked up automatically under pressure. If
the youth is fitted to become a newspaper
worker he absorbs ideas and intelligence
with his day's work; he becomes thoroughly
grounded in the widest possible range of
knowledge, until his mind shows radio-
activity.
Primarily, the newspaper office is not a
place where a good living is to be had by the
mere performance of a day's work. Many
other lines of exertion are easier to master
and much more certain in their steady finan-
cial productivity.
To enjoy life truly one must find some-
thing more than money in his task. When
old Omar wondered if the winesellers could
buy with the proceeds of their vintages any-
thing one-half so precious as the stuff they
sell, he expressed a deep idea. The item
called a newspaper, book or magazine, pro-
is
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
duced by eager brains and willing hands, is
much more precious to mankind than any
money its sale brings to the producer!
This thought must be in the mind of every
one who adopts the art of letters — the Art
Preservative — for a livelihood. To grasp
what the ordinary mind does not, and to re-
late it so that the ordinary mind will perceive
and understand, is a great achievement.
Many people go through life with limited
observation. It is the privilege, therefore
of the newspaper worker to see for the un-
seeing and to become a public observer for
the benefit of those who cannot observe.
The trade is a refreshing and engaging
occupation. It appeals to the young and
vigorous intellect. It affords a deep involve-
ment in public affairs, for patriotic and pub-
lic endeavors, most agreeable to the indepen-
dent American mind. Through long years
of unpopularity in a social sense the profes-
19
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
sion has reached a rank high in general
esteem. The old attitude of scorn for the
newspaper passed away with the Jefferson
Bricks and the penny-a-liner, expelled by
the public acceptance of the newspaper's
value to the community and a realization of
the great place it fills in the common welfare.
The American rarely picks out his course
systematically in life. He tries many things
at great waste of time and effort before he
" lands." It is reckoned that only five out of
one hundred succeed at the thing undertaken
in the first instance. This is the natural
result of dwelling in a land of opportunity,
where changing chances fascinate and lead
away from early purposes. The great test
under way in Germany before the nation
turned to war, to assist natural selection at
an early stage and thus curtail waste, seemed
logical and promised effectiveness — but how
far even the wisest Herr Professor could not
20
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
say. In a Democratic country it does not
seem possible to do more than hold open
many doors with free and easy entrances for
all.
The printing office is a very inviting place ;
the selling of newspapers a readily under-
taken occupation. The printers are talented,
adventurous souls, who stand close to the
editors in sense and intelligence. They form
agreeable acquaintances for the boy with an
eager mind. From selling papers to mak-
ing them is a common and early step; from
printing to owning is another. Everybody
in America ought to master a trade. The
boy who has a mind for journalism should
learn to finger type or feed a press if he
really wishes to reach the top. That it is
done without these accomplishments cannot
be gainsaid, but the journey up is much more
pleasant to him who knows type, ink and
presses!
21
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
Naturally with the closeness of the rela-
tionship most editors and publishers are
drawn from the lower grades of the trade.
More than one successful sheet was evolved
as a side issue of the printing office. The
very prosperous Brooklyn Eagle was estab-
lished by Isaac Van Anden to keep the
printers busy between jobs and Benjamin
Day started the New York Sun in 1833 for
a similar reason. The Buffalo News, a nota-
ble publication, started as a Sunday paper,
" set up " by two brothers, Edward H. and
J. Ambrose Butler, who ate their meals out
of a pail and worked day and night to make
the paper go, though strangely enough after
the Sunday had bred a great evening edition,
it faded out and was finally abandoned, with
the effect of strengthening the prosperity of
its offspring. The Utica Press a model
country daily, was born of a printers' strike!
How to begin save at the bottom, as a
22
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
printer's boy, is the question first asked and
most difficult to answer. Nearly all trades
and professions have an orderly process of
preparation and introduction. The news-
paper trade has been left among the last to
haphazard and natural selection. The estab-
lishment of the School of Journalism by
Joseph Pulitzer, at Columbia University,
New York, and the taking up of the idea by
other institutions of learning, now affords a
place for beginning, with some definite
chance for education and training in advance
of experience. There now exist, besides the
special school at Columbia, classes bearing
on phases of newspaper training in the
New York University School of Commerce,
conducted by James Melvin Lee; the Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania; University of
Chicago; Northwestern University; the
University of Missouri ; University of Texas ;
University of Washington; University of
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
Minnesota; University of Montana; De
Pauw University; University of Oregon;
Indiana University; Toledo (O.) Uni-
versity; University of Maine; Iowa State
College; University of Southern California;
Brooklyn, N. Y., Commercial High School;
St. Xavier College, New York; University
of Kansas.
The Pulitzer School of Journalism ignores
business instruction and confines its efforts
to reportorial and editorial training. The
purpose of the founder was to perfect the
intellectual side of newspaper making and
fit students for what he believed to be the
highest form of public service. Harvard
College, in its Graduate School of Business
Administration, pays some attention to ad-
vertising under the head of " Marketing."
For a number of years, Mr. Frank L.
Blanchard has maintained successful classes
in advertising at the Twenty-third Street
24
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
Branch of the New York Young Men's
Christian Association. He and Charles F.
Southard, of the advertising class of the
Brooklyn Commercial High School, can
really be called the pioneers in the movement
to prepare the young for a place in the
Newspaper Trade. Instruction in advertis-
ing is, however, devoted to the construction
of " copy " for the advertiser, something
with which the newspaper has little to do.
It is an adjunct to the trade, not a part of
it. Instruction in soliciting advertising is,
I fear, far too psychological to be acquired.
It is a form of salesmanship to which the
paper represented bears a greater part than
the solicitor.
Good writing has gone out of fashion in
our mile-a-minute age. There is no place in
journalism to-day for the leisurely, reflective
writer, carefully cultivating style. Speed
governs. The newspaper is made up to the
25
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
minute. So far as reflection is permitted it
is allowed mainly for ideas, not expression.
Even the few feeble weeklies, designed for
general circulation, fail to maintain the old-
time care for literary excellence. The less
said about magazine English the better!
The man who is to become either an editor
or reporter, must learn to think quickly and
concretely and write rapidly and to the point.
No room is given him to be ornate, or time
for remodelling. Neither is there place for
ignorance or slovenliness. Simplicity and
directness are the chief desiderata.
How can these qualities be acquired by the
would-be writer? Few do it in advance of
the requirement. They must be beaten out
under the pressure of actual conditions be-
fore the true facility is attained. But there
must be a beginning. I can think of nothing
better than Benjamin Franklin's own ac-
count of how he taught himself to write in
26
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
an inimitable style that can be safely taken
as a model for all comers. " About this
time," he says, in his matchless autobiog-
raphy, " I met with an odd volume of the
Spectator. . . . I thought the writing excel-
lent, and wished if possible to imitate it. With
that view I took some of the papers, and
making short points of the sentiments in
each sentence, laid them by a few days, and
then without looking at the book, tried to
complete the papers again, by expressing
each hinted sentiment at length and as fully
as it had been expressed before, in many suit-
able words that should occur to me. Then I
compared my Spectator with the original,
discovered some of my faults, and corrected
them."
Franklin read widely and thought deeply.
These are prerequisites for a truly success-
ful journalist, who must possess knowledge
far beyond that furnished by scanning the
27
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
i
day's events. Like a good horse, he must
have " bottom." The editorial writer who
cannot think up a topic until the news-
proofs begin to come in from the composing
room is poorly equipped for his job.
The Pulitzer School of Journalism under-
takes to equip definitely a student for every
form of editorial and reportorial work. It
is required that the applicant shall be as well
grounded as he would be for a regular college
course. French, German, history, science,
politics, philosophy and writing are included
in the first year's course. The second year
provides a continuation of much of the first
year's programme, with practice in writing
special articles and a study of current
events.
The drill in newspaper technic begins in
the third year, the first half of which is de-
voted to financial and commercial report-
ing— the dullest of routines — but impressing
28
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
accuracy. Party government, and munici-
pal affairs and economics, here and abroad,
are included in the third year's curriculum.
The fourth year gives a practical course in
reporting and copyreading, to which are
added international relations and a study of
the elements of law.
The course is exacting. Necessarily the
training is academic, modified so far as the
trained newspaper men who are welded
with the collegiate system are able to impress
the practical. Teaching journalism is a
good deal like teaching how to shoot. Much
depends upon the conduct of the target!
For the would-be writer, whose instinct
impels him toward journalism, the best move
to make is first to study the characteristics
of the newspaper or publication to which his
inclination leans. They all have their moods
and habits. It was easy to sell a snake or a
sea story to the old Sun. The odd and the
29
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
interesting have a market everywhere and
news seldom has to knock twice for admission.
Even the much congested magazines can
make room for a refreshing narrative or a
story with a new slant. The list of writers
each year reveals many new names — those
who have seen and conquered. Best sellers
are not seldom the work of people who never
before put pen to paper. " David Harum,"
the most successful book of the last twenty-
five years, was written by Edward Noyes
Westcott, who had been a bank cashier, while
he lay dying from consumption, in a desper-
ate hope that the work might provide for
his family. Mrs. Stowe wrote " Uncle
Tom's Cabin " while " keeping house " in
Brunswick, Maine, where her husband was
a Bowdoin College professor. Gene Strat-
ton Porter, whose " Limberlost " books sell
by the carload, had but the vision of an
Indiana swamp before her. " O. Henry "
30
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
ground out his admirable stories for a weekly
dole from a Sunday newspaper, after a tur-
bid experience in Texas. He was a product
of the North Carolina upland. Rex Beach
broke into Alaska and fame from clerking
in a Chicago store!
The publishing world is always ready for
a good product, but its views as to what con-
stitute a good product vary. What fits one
paper, magazine or book publisher, may fail
another. The necessary discernment is no-
where infallible. There are many tales in the
publishing world of a manuscript rejected
by one house making the fortune of another.
Not infrequently, too, men who have
failed to rise on one journal make a mark on
another. Again, the ambitious worker will
seek out his ground, study the papers and
fit himself to the most inviting. It is as nat-
ural to like writing for a certain paper as to
prefer it for reading purposes.
31
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
The newspaper office is a world in itself.
Some great Metropolitan establishments em-
ploy as many as 2000 people. Offices with
from one hundred to six hundred employees
are plentiful. The tabulation given else-
where indicates the departments. About
one-third of the force will be mechanical,
another third clerical, mail and delivery and
miscellaneous, and the remainder be made up
of editors, copy readers, reporters, corre-
spondents and boys. The boy is a plentiful
factor in all parts of the establishment. He
is also the most volatile. It is to be doubted
if one in a hundred " sticks."
The table of occupation also shows that
there is a wide range for employment outside
of the purely journalistic end. Many forms
of professional or handicraft work are to be
found. The trades cover composition, photo-
engraving, presswork, stereotyping, mail-
ing, with adjuncts in electricians, engineers,
32
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
firemen, mechanics and chauffeurs. Writers,
reporters, artists, copy readers, form another
class, with variants expressed in the table.
In the cities the trades unions dominate
the offices and the opportunities for begin-
ners are small. No matter how large the
number of compositors, for example, but four
apprentices are allowed by Typographical
Union No. 6 in New York composing rooms.
Four seems to be the limit in all trades. The
stereotypers practically ban apprentices, re-
lying on out-of-town workmen to recruit
their ranks. In the press rooms, two to
three carrier boys to each machine have an
ultimate opportunity to become pressmen,
but not by any definite progression. They
must await the will of the union.
Recently the Typographical Union, the
Publishers' Association and the employing
printers of New York, have united in sup-
porting an apprentices' school for composi-
3 33
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
tors. This does good work, but its instruc-
tion is limited to indentured apprentices.
The door is not open, therefore, except
by way of some job or newspaper office.
The city opportunity to get into the news-
paper trade through the mechanical side is
therefore unduly circumscribed. The coun-
try boy is not held back by union restric-
tions and for him there is no better road into
the trade than through the doorway of the
rural printing office. There is no more de-
lightful place to work than in such a shop.
He has the free run of the place and is
treated as an equal by all hands. He has,
often, more privileges than pay, but all the
same he is a mighty important boy. He is
being introduced to the mystery of letters
and learning to see life in all its aspects
and angles! There is no curb on his energies.
He is permitted to do everything from wash-
ing rollers to sweeping out, and from collect-
34
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
ing bills to picking up items. He learns much
from the printers. The journeyman in the
smaller office is usually a wise fellow who
has travelled far. There is something about
him that makes him sensitive and he takes
ready umbrage at the community or his em-
ployer and this keeps him moving. The
printers scatter widely. Not long ago I
found at Barstow, California, on the edge of
Death Valley, a printer very familiar with
New York offices, who had drifted about
until he lodged himself and a weak pair of
lungs in this hole in the desert sand. He was
quite happy, however. He had seen the
world!
The printing office boy has a higher rank
in the community than the one who works in
a store or factory. Clerking in a store has
always been looked down upon by those who
believe in robust occupation, and working in
a factory does not procure a very high place
35
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
in the social scale. The farm lads are apt
to be considered clodhoppers. But the boy
in the printing office lives with grownups.
He soon becomes familiar with the great.
He knows the business men, the politicians,
the lawyers and the sacred list called "lead-
ing citizens." He is not engaged in a sordid
business, but in a trade and a profession com-
bined, where ideals are superior to money
and where the public side must rule above
the private pocket. He is on terms of amity
and co-interest with everybody in the office.
He is not chained to a wheel, or worked in
a grind. He has liberty of thought and ex-
pression. He must use his head as well as
his hands, always with the privilege of going
higher and further as his talents may compel !
For women, the trade affords a number of
excellent opportunities. To be a woman re-
porter is not especially agreeable, particu-
larly under direction of an editor given to
36
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
" freak " assignments. But the fashion
writer, the society reporter and the producer
of special articles is well employed. Sala-
ries in the best places run from $2000 to
$4500 per year. The woman is man's equal
on a newspaper and is paid what she earns,
not what she can get, as the rule seems to
be in other occupations. The typewriting
machine has led to the hiring of many young
women in clerical departments at good pay
and under easy working conditions. They
fill these minor positions, from which promo-
tion is slow, to better advantage than men.
The men on the small jobs who cannot ad-
vance, grow less useful and become discon-
tented as their years and needs increase
The girls get married and so give way to
others.
The ordinary salary of a subordinate edi-
torial writer in a Metropolitan office will
range from $2500 to $8000 a year; the chief
37
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
from $10,000 to $15,000. The managing
editor's pay will range from $7500 to
$12,000. Some special talent is credited with
earning as high as $30,000 a year, and one
exceptional man of ideas receives $100,000
a year under an arrangement based upon a
percentage of circulation results, tantamount
to a partnership. Country offices and small
cities pay much more modest salaries, but
they are usually well abreast of professional
returns; they equal or exceed the pay of
clergymen, school principals, or social
service employees, and other intellectual
employments.
THE TRADE
THE printing and publishing business
stands sixth among the industries of the
United States, being exceeded in output only
by meat-packing, foundries and machine
shops, lumber, iron and steel and the produc-
tion of flour and meal. It supports under-
38
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
lying industries of much importance, the first
of which, of course, is print paper, having a
round annual value of $90,000,000; the
manufacture of presses and other forms of
machinery, of ink and type, and pays the
highest average standard of wages to he
found in any form of employment.
It remains an independent industry, its
very nature forbidding combinations of any
extent, and providing the most intense form
of competition. Its chief product, the daily
newspaper, sells at a price, fixed, as a rule,
by one or two of the smallest coins in the
republic. That no publisher purveys his
product for less than one cent is due
only to the failure of the mint to supply a
fraction! It has thriven without the help of
tariffs or of any support other than that de-
rived from the direct appeal to the public,
which yearly grows more appreciative of the
services performed and of the value of the
39
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
press as an informant, educator and sup-
porter of popular rights !
The newspaper publisher is quite out of
the line of ordinary business. He does not
" take that which was thine and make it
mine " for a profit. He does no merchandis-
ing, but must produce from the start. He
must be a creator and a seller, but not a
trafficker. Moreover, he deals in the most
elusive and perplexing of all articles — News!
The merchant can figure on his values and
his costs ; he can reckon his profits with a de-
gree of safety and to an extent lean upon
the market. At least his wares are sala-
ble to-morrow, if not to-day. But the news-
paper publisher deals entirely in the perish-
able and does not know up to the hour of
going to press what his wares are to be ! If
he fails to make a true estimate of news
values he loses and success goes to the man
who can. He cannot have relations with
40
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
other lines of trade and keep his paper
strong in the public esteem. A demagogic
propaganda now and then starts out with
cries against the " capitalistic press " when
there can be no such thing, by the very
nature of the business. One newspaper can-
not hide what another prints and remain
fair in the public eye. More than once have
" interests " tried to bolster up a waning
sheet, only to complete its doom. A success-
ful newspaper creates its own capital: no
" capital " as such can save an unsuccessful
one. A newspaper with money and no soul
is a foreordained failure.
Examples could be cited in proof but this
would be invidious. The other side can be
put in evidence without offence. James
Gordon Bennett started the Herald with
$500 and in fifteen months had a property
which he proudly valued at $5000. The
New York World struggled for nearly a
41
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
quarter of a century, until Joseph Pulitzer
took it from the burdened hands of Jay
Gould, May 10, 1883, and gave journalism
a new message :
" The entire World newspaper property
has been purchased by the undersigned, and
will, from this day on, be under different
management — different in men, measures
and methods; different in purpose, policy
and principle; different in objects and inter-
ests; different in sympathies and convic-
tions ; different in head and heart.
" Performance is better than promise.
Exuberant assurances are cheap. I make
none. I simply refer the public to the new
World itself, which henceforth shall be the
daily evidence of its own growing improve-
ment, with forty-eight daily witnesses in its
forty-eight columns.
"There is room in this great and growing
city for a journal that is not only cheap, but
42
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
bright; not only bright, but large; not only
large, but truly democratic, dedicated to the
cause of the people rather than that of purse-
potentates, devoted more to the news of the
New than the Old World; that will expose
all fraud and sham, fight all public evils and
abuses; that will serve and battle for the
people with earnest sincerity.
" In that cause and for that end solely the
new World is hereby enlisted and committed
to the attention of the intelligent public."
Here was a code of journalism, struck off
at white heat, almost at the midnight hour as
the forms were closing for the first issue of
the new World. The paper became profit-
able from that moment. Mr. Pulitzer had
previously combined two staggering St.
Louis evening papers, the Dispatch and
the Post, twenty- four hours after he had
purchased the former, and success followed
from the day of the union. When he bought
43
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
the Dispatch he figured that he had money
enough to run it for fifteen weeks! The
great San Francisco Chronicle was founded
without money as a theatrical program a
little more than fifty years ago by two boys,
Charles and M. H. De Young. It literally
made itself by exhibitions of extraordinary
energy and enterprise. For a later example
we have the Seattle Times, picked up for a
trifle, by Alden J. Blethen, a maker of suc-
cessful newspapers in Kansas City and
Minneapolis, but then " down and out," and
well past his fiftieth year! In magic time
it was changed from a burden to one of
the most profitable publications of the day.
The newspapers mentioned were not made
by patient upbuilding like a select few, but
by dash and vigor, by pushing their ideas
and energies into the field and conquering.
There are more than 22,000 newspapers
and periodical establishments in the United
44
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
States. The business has become stabilized
to a degree but none the less continues to
stand itself apart in a class by itself. News-
papers are not " capitalized " and their
shares distributed via Wall Street. It is the
business of the individual, with all the fas-
cination and opportunity that individualism
implies and affords.
A witness before a Congressional Com-
mittee investigating the cost of white paper,
was asked: " Do you run your newspapers
for benevolent purposes or as business prop-
ositions? "
" Most newspapers," was the reply, " are
run by gentlemen who have sporting blood —
different from the conductors of any other
enterprise. They are all very much alike.
They take all sorts of chances and do things
that would make ordinary business men
shiver."
This pretty well describes the successful
40
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
newspaper maker. He is not governed by
rules. He must meet conditions as they
arise, without counting cost or figuring
profits. If he is bold enough and sanguine
enough for this he can succeed. It is
the temperament that tells! It is this
liberal and adventurous disposition that ral-
lies other men and leads to the formation of
a working force impelled by the same in-
stincts and these become irresistible in the
field.
Percentages of profit in newspaper mak-
ing vary greatly according to the size of out-
put and the proportion of loss from circu-
lation that must be charged against adver-
tising revenue. It can be established, though,
that in a community where newspapers are
managed with skill and energy, there will be
a return to the papers of the town, of about
$1.00 per inhabitant. This does not mean
such a return to each publication, but the
46
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
total sum which the population will give up
to newspaper profit. That is to say, a city
of 100,000 people ought to afford $100,000
in net return to be divided among the papers
of the town. This can happen in a place
where there are one or more losing proposi-
tions. Where the papers are earning this
sum per inhabitant it is safe to say a new-
comer will have a hard time, but more than
once exceptional talent has taken over a los-
ing sheet and exacted its share.
Money is earned, not " made " in the
newspaper trade. The business cannot be
" run " by boards and councils. It must
succeed by innate energy on the part of men
on the spot. To decide upon policy by the
side of the " form " is something beyond the
ability of boards of directors. On a ship, the
rule is to obey the last order, no matter what
rank may be held by the man who gives it.
So in a newspaper office where events are
47
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
dealt with. They control, but there must be
talent present, capable of dealing with events
and making the most of them!
Partisanship no longer plays any impor-
tant part in newspaper success. Indeed, the
party paper in cities of size is usually a sad
affair. The city papers securing the most
success are those of the independent Demo-
cratic type. Cities are usually Democratic,
but the party idea is hardly apparent in the
rule. It is due to freer expression and an
utter refusal to tie up to the fortunes of any
party or man. Quite often these papers are
in revolt against the party organization with
benefit to themselves and the community.
For striking examples of this rule we have
the Globe and Post, in Boston; the World,
Times and Evening Post in New York;
the Record in Philadelphia ; the Plain Dealer
in Cleveland ; the Post-Dispatch in St. Louis
and the Examiner in San Francisco. In
Chicago, the Tribune, while nominally Re-
48
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
publican, has a long record as an antipro-
tectionist and of opposition to party. It
also enjoys conspicuous prosperity.
Some survivals of the early days had an
interesting parentage. The daily Eastern
'Argus, of Portland, Maine, the oldest news-
paper in New England east of the Connecti-
cut River, was founded in 1803 by Nathaniel
Willis, father of N. P. Willis, poet and edi-
tor of the New York Mirror. He estab-
lished also the Congregationalist, first named
the Recorder, and iheYouth's Companion, of
Boston, interesting progeny, and lusty after
all these years!
THE EDITOR
Can he know all, and do all, and be all,
With cheerfulness, courage, and vim?
If so, we perhaps can be making an
Editor " outei? of him."
— WILL CARLETON.
WITHOUT an editor all is vain! Much
merit as there is in a well-organized business
4 49
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
office, success belongs to the editor. He
makes the goods. If his ideas and output
are not salable the best economic manage-
ment and most zealous advertising hunting
fails. To prescribe what an editor must be
is a difficult and delicate undertaking. To
describe his task is easier. The poet whose
lines head this chapter had the qualifications
clearly in mind, but he left out the chief
one: Imagination! By this is not meant
inventiveness but the possession of a mental
mirror that enables him to see what is " in "
things ahead of others, so to grasp and com-
pass them as to reflect his vision until it in-
terests and informs the multitude!
The gentleman of Wordsworth's lines to
whom
A primrose by the river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him
. . . and it was nothing more,
would not do as an editor. The edi-
50
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
tor is one to turn the primrose into decora-
tive garlands, into a bloom rivalling the
orchid, into a decoration for the fairest
scenes. As the trade grows complex he must
think for many subordinates and inspire as
well as command.
Men have broken into the newspaper
world who had no thought of business or
money making, who felt they had a message
to expound or a cause to create, and so have
founded great journals. Few newspapers
ever began as calculating getters of money
and few could survive if this was their sole
intent. That money comes is the result, not
the primary purpose, of good newspaper
making.
The editor in America has passed through
two stages and is well on in a third. The
early editors were servants of party. They
echoed the views of statesmen. The quarrels
of Hamilton and Jefferson, of Jackson and
51
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
the Whigs, were the themes. Then came the
period of personality; Greeley, Raymond,
Webb and Weed, Halstead, Medill and
Watterson, imposing their views on the pub-
lic mind. Instead we have now a power-
ful impersonality. It is no longer the
opinion of the editor that prevails. It is the
opinion of the paper, which has taken on
the personality lost by the editor. What does
the World say, the Times, the Chicago
Tribune, the Evening Post, the Boston
Globe? The editorial opinions are collected
over the wire in the face of great events.
Whoever the writer of the moment may be,
he expresses concretion, not the views of
an individual. They who plead for a return
to the one-man view and deride the " irre-
sponsible " press, " hiding behind ano-
nymity," and urge the signing of editorial
articles, with the best of motives, are wrong,
if they desire the real forces of opinion to
52
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
operate. The view of one man so revealed
is nothing more in effect than the view of
another, except for the wider expression at-
tained through the printed page. It remains
of no more potency than the letters from
" Veritas " and " Pro Bono Publico " in the
correspondence column. But where the
paper speaks, the force it represents is crys-
tallized, the people and the politicians know
that a vast activity is in the field to demand
and enforce. John Smith writing a leader
above his name is John Smith talking; but
the leader standing alone is the voice of
organized intelligence sending its message
forcefully and cogently to the land !
The great editor writes little and thinks
much. But a gifted few can pour out their
brains in penmanship and preserve virility
and expression. The rest must think before
they write. Indeed, the greatest of editors
in the sense of direction, John Thadeus
53
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
Delane, who lifted the London Times to its
highest estate, wrote little. He thought,
directed, and acquired knowledge. He kept
close to the inner circles of government, when
government had an importance quite beyond
the usual American estimate. He fre-
quented the salon of the social leader and the
study of the statesman. His views were ac-
quired first hand and he spoke always with
authority.
We have no such relationships in these
United States. The editor who "keeps
close " to society and statesmen soon gets far
away from his paper and its true purposes.
There probably was never so complete a dis-
association of the press and politics as we
fortunately now enjoy in America. The
editor edits, untrammeled by the pressure of
politicians or the aims of social leadership.
That extraordinary feminine influence so
strong in the England of Delane's day is and
54
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
always has been absent from American
journalism. The American editor is in-
fluenced by facts and events, not by relation-
ship or " pull." Moreover, the greatest and
most exacting editor cannot be certain that
his " page " will not be tipped over before
morning. The night man is there to do as
he pleases in most offices. He is usually too
busy to pay attention to anybody.
Until the great war broke out America's
isolation kept the country out of world poli-
tics, which were so great a part of Delane's
activities. In American affairs to-day the
editor does not " commune " with " leaders."
He looks down, not up, on statecraft and
politics.
So much for the editorial writer and
his duties. Other editors are much nearer
the reader and more important in filling his
daily needs — the managing editor, the news
55
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
editor, and the city editor. The city editor
of a metropolitan paper controls the group
of reporters who hunt the news, usually
within a 75-mile radius. Beyond that the
managing editor rules, with the aid of his
associate, the news editor. This last named
worker deals with the correspondents, some
hundreds of them, at all points of the com-
pass, who send in their daily queries, for
example, offering " 200 words, cave-in, at
Oneonta." He must judge of values and
place the limit. The building of a morning
paper requires a double force, and a far
greater responsibility than in the evening
edition. Here the numerous " extras " and
quick replating lessen the need of final judg-
ment. The morning man fixes his edition to
" stand." He only knows the advantage of
the other fellow over him after he sees his
product, when it is usually too late for more
than a hasty " lift." The evening man can
56
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
" make over," and in half an hour few will
be able to know who was first. It is a killing
job getting out a morning paper and re-
quires a calmness of temperament approach-
ing the phlegmatic, coupled with quickness
of decision and soundness of judgment, to do
the work and to meet and pass the next day's
criticism. Fortunately the newspaper be-
longs to the family of the ephemeral. Each
day kills its predecessor's failures — and
merits !
Office criticism is always cruel. It is well
exemplified by the joker who wrote a dia-
logue something like this for a miniature
Chicago Tribune issued to grace a shop
dinner :
In our office — Managing Editor: Note to
all the editors— * Why haven't we played up
that dash story? All the other papers have
it?"
In their offices — Managing Editor : Note
57
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
to all the editors — " What did you play up
that dash story for? The Tribune had sense
enough to play it down! "
Upon the City Editor falls the dual re-
sponsibility of getting news and handling a
large body of men. To do so well he should
know more than all of them put together.
The right kind of a City Editor must be a
cross between a steel trap and an encyclo-
paedia. He must know everything and every-
body. A name must suggest personal
history, incident and the past. He must
understand the meaning of moves in all
walks of life, know politics, Wall Street,
police annals and the records of the courts.
This he can acquire only with the aid of
time and an adhesive mentality to which the
things will stick. His telephone is always
jingling. He cannot have temper or impa-
tience and he is always on trial!
The personal belligerency of the editor
58
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
long ago passed away. Like most grades of
life in initial stages, fighting was a needful
quality. George D. Prentice had his pis-
tols handy in the Louisville Journal office,
ready to step to the sidewalk and meet any
comer with a grouch. When the " fierce "
paragraphs of the day are scanned in a
modern light, one wonders what there was in
them that incited to murder! The chief re-
sentment seemed to be that the editor had a
thousand tongues and so did an extraordi-
nary injustice when he criticised a man pos-
sessing but one. In the early days of the
Cincinnati Commercial, Murat Halstead
always kept a loaded revolver in the open
drawer of his desk with that piece of furni-
ture so placed as to command a view of the
door. The weapon lay under cover of a half
open newspaper so adjusted as to slip off
at a turn of the hand and give quick access
to the weapon. The recitation of editorial
59
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
fights is not edifying, but there is almost
amusing interest in the spectacle of the re-
vered author of Thanatopsis, William Cul-
len Bryant, cowhiding William L. Stone,
editor of the New York Commercial Adver-
tiser, and he the head of the New York
Evening Post! Philip Hone witnessed the
affray, recording it under date of April 20,
1831:
"While I was shaving this morning at
eight o'clock, I witnessed from the front
window an encounter in the street nearby
opposite, between William C. Bryant and
William L. Stone; the former one of the
editors of the Evening Post, and the lat-
ter editor of the Commercial Advertiser.
The former commenced the attack by strik-
ing Stone over the head with a cowskin ; after
a few blows the men closed, and the whip
was wrested from Bryant and carried off by
Stone."
60
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
The warfare between General James
Watson Webb, of the Courier and Enquirer,
and James Gordon Bennett of the New
York Herald, produced a number of assaults
by Webb upon the editor of the Herald. Mr.
Bennett always wrote full reports of the en-
counters for his paper! Here is a sample
excerpt from the Herald under date of the
tenth of May, 1835:
"As I was leisurely pursuing my business
yesterday in Wall Street, . . . James Wat-
son Webb came up to me, on the northern
side of the Street — said something which I
could not hear distinctly, then pushed me
down the stone steps leading to one of the
brokers' offices, and commenced fighting
with a species of brutal and demoniacal des-
peration, characteristic of a fury. My dam-
age is a scratch, about three quarters of an
inch in length, on the third finger of the left
hand, which I received from the iron railing
61
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
I was forced against, and three buttons torn
from my vest, which any tailor will reinstate
for a sixpence. His loss is a rent from top
to bottom of a very beautiful black coat
which cost the ruffian $40, and a blow in the
face which may have knocked down his
throat some of his infernal teeth for anything
I know. Balance in my favor $39.94."
THE REPORTER
His dealings with reporters who affect a weekly bust
Have given to his violet eyes a shadow of distrust.
— " Little Mack/' By EUGENE FIELD.
J. B. McCuLLAGH, famous as manager of
the St. Louis Globe Democrat, the " Little
Mack " of the poem, once defined successful
news-getting as the art of knowing where
" hell was going to break loose next and
having a man there."
The " man " is the reporter upon whom
falls the chief burden of the trade. He is
ubiquitous and versatile, possessing a heaven-
62
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
born quality called " the nose for news."
Like much talent in other lines it may lie
latent, awaiting some discoverer, but once
made known it flourishes. The " nose for
news " is a very real, but scarce and most
valuable proboscis! Under present-day
workings, the writing side is the least of the
newspaper's troubles. Re-write men and
trained copy readers shape up the stuff.
The problem is to get it. That is the
reporter's job.
Dr. Talcott Williams, Dean of the School
of Journalism at Columbia University, New
York, gives an apt illustration of the lack-
ing sense. The " kid " reporter sent out
from the office of the Philadelphia Press to
" cover " three assignments turned in two at
the night desk and was departing for home
when the Night City Editor, checking up his
schedule, asked for a report on the third — a
wedding. " Oh," said the boy, " there wasn't
63
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
anything to write. There wasn't any wed-
ding. The bridegroom didn't show up ! "
Here is the lesson of "knowing news."
Next to knowing news it is important to
know how to write it. That can be taught.
Indeed, I got my first knowledge from
Simeon Drake, who instructed me in the
printer's trade in the old Advertiser office at
Norway, Maine. I was printer's "devil,"
but as I worked for nothing and boarded
myself, my liberty was considerable and my
privileges many. Uncle Sim wanted items.
He thought a boy who loafed around as
much as I did ought to pick up a few. I
rather timidly thought so, too, but effort
soon showed that the picking was bad. For
the life of me I couldn't see anything or hear
of anything in Norway worth printing. But
during six unfruitful weeks' search an item
had been rapidly growing in the garden next
door. Uncle Granville Reed's two hills of
64
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
Southern corn had hustled until the tallest
stalk was thirteen feet high. Like a flash
the importance of the event possessed me
and I sat down to " write it up." Try as I
would, I could not seem to get the words to-
gether, and finally the struggle resulted in a
measly little paragraph to the effect that
" Granville Reed had a stalk of Southern
corn in his garden thirteen feet high." When
I handed it in Mr. Drake looked at it criti-
cally, took off his glasses and looked at it
again, cleared his throat a couple of times
and then taught me my first and funda-
mental lesson in journalism, big or little.
"You don't say who Mr. Reed is," he
began, " you don't tell us where he lives and
you don't make any point that is compli-
mentary to him."
Mr. Drake rarely wrote anything, but set
his matter up out of his head from a much
used case of bourgeois. In a few minutes
5 65
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
he gave me the item to read in the composing
stick. In its new form it ran something
like this:
" Former Selectman Granville Reed has
an agricultural wonder growing in his well-
kept garden on upper Main street in the
shape of a stalk of corn which under his
able attention has gained the extraordinary
height of thirteen feet."
" You will notice," he said gently, " that
I have cut out the word ' Southern ' before
' corn.' Southern corn ought to be thirteen
feet high."
Here it was all in a nutshell! State the
facts, nothing but the facts, but state all of
them attractively and if possible amazingly.
There is interest in almost everything, and
it is the newspaper maker's business to find
it and make it plain to his readers. He who
does this has succeeded.
The late Professor Thomas Davidson,
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
most learned of men, once asked Joseph
Pulitzer why he was so tolerant and kindly
toward reporters and so severe in his judg-
ment of editors.
" Because," he replied, " a reporter is
always a hope and an editor always a dis-
appointment."
One reason for the frequent truth of the
epigram was that too often a good reporter
had been taken from the task for which he
was so well fitted and made an editor with
disappointing results. It is not given man
to possess too many perfections. The good
news-getter is not always a good writer, and
less often a good administrator. To reward
the reporter with a deserved promotion too
frequently lands him in failure and disrepute.
From twenty to thirty in the life of a
man, no more agreeable profession can be
selected for him who has the instinct for news-
getting and the itch to write. The rewards
67
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
are considerable. For a reporter succeeds
from the outset. He " makes good " or fails
promptly. His is not the experience of the
young lawyer, doctor or business man,
slowly picking up his load. He reaches his
task full grown or not at all. True, he can
find lodgement in certain lines of mediocrity,
but if he has it in him to be a reporter of
merit, the fact is soon revealed and at once
rewarded. But as it is a form of precocity
the end comes sooner than in other lines.
For being a reporter is eminently a young
man's job. He is always on assignments.
Home ties are scant and friends few. He
must ever be alert and at the command
of the relentless " desk." One assignment
rules until it is supplanted by another. He
has no hours, but must be ready on call.
The dailies grant each man his day off, but
it is often intruded upon and the sense of
responsibility is always with him. He must
68
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
learn to write accurately without revision
and to think ahead of his pen. His person-
ality is ordinarily hidden, though most news-
papers now make known the men who do
unusual things.
What are the rewards? Well, they are
worth while. Pay in the large offices will
run from $3000 to $6000 and even occasion-
ally to $10,000 a year for men who can dis-
cover news and write it effectively. That
greatest of American reporters, James
Creelman, rarely received less than the lat-
ter sum. The making of valuable acquaint-
ances is an important factor. It has led to
the graduating of many reporters into other
lines of success.
There is always a chance for promotion
outside of the profession, if the inside fails
to open up. Bankers, railroads and great
corporations have recruited much brain force
from the ranks of the reporters.
69
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
In our earlier journalism of opinion and
partisanship the reporter had but a small
place. His efforts to relate anything outside
of a court proceeding or a political convention
were resented bitterly and offensively. He
was regarded as a sneak, as an impertinent in-
truder, where he endeavored to get the facts
of personal or social matters. Crime was his
only legitimate concern.
* You fellows thrive on calamity," once
said old Commodore Fillebrown, Command-
ant of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, to me when
I was trying to get at the facts of the
Greely Arctic disaster. He really thought
the cannibalism and tragic story of the luck-
less expedition was none of a newspaper's
business. Indeed, all was suppressed until
Tracy Greaves, a New York Times reporter,
picked a chance word from a sailor's lips
and let in the light. This was as late as 1884 !
But in earlier days few doors opened to
70
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
the reporter. New York was particularly
repelling. James Gordon Bennett, the
elder, wrote all of the Herald's contents at
itsNstart in 1835. He devoted his news-get-
ting mainly to Wall Street. The social news
was mostly mockery of events to which he
was not invited. But people bought the
Herald for these satirical glimpses of what
was going on. In due time reporters were
added, and added, until there was a " staff,"
the first to be had by any newspaper in
America. , Then the " staff " began to de-
mand admission at social" and semi-social
affairs — to such purpose that at last a
Herald reporter was actually admitted to
Henry I. Brevoort's fancy dress ball, the
social event of the period. Let Philip Hone,
in his celebrated diary, reveal the horror of
it all! Writing under date of February 25,
1840, of "the great affair," of which he
makes a very tolerable report himself, and
71
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
where he appeared as Cardinal Wolsey " in
a grand robe of new scarlet merino," he says :
" Some surprise was expressed at seeing
in the crowd a man in the habit of a knight
in armour, a Mr. Attree, reporter and one
of the editors of an infamous paper called
the Herald. Bennett, the principal edi-
tor, called upon Mr. Brevoort to obtain per-
mission for this person to be present to
report in his paper an account of the ball.
He consented, as I believe I should have
done under the same circumstances, as by
doing it a sort of obligation was imposed
upon him to refrain from abusing the house,
the people of the house, and their guests
which would have been done in case of a
denial. But this is a hard alternative; to
submit to this kind of surveillance is getting
to be intolerable and nothing but the force of
public opinion will correct the insolence,
which, it is to be feared, will never be applied
72
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
as long as Mr. Charles A. Davis and other
gentlemen make this Mr. Attree * hail fel-
low, well met,' as they did on this occasion?
Whether the notice they took of him, and
that which they extend to Bennett when he
shows his ugly face in Wall Street, may be
considered approbatory of the daily slanders
and unblushing impudence of the paper they
conduct, or is intended to purchase their for-
bearance toward themselves, the effect is
equally mischievous. It affords them coun-
tenance and encouragement and they find
that the more personalities they have in their
papers, the more they sell! "
Sad enough! Yet the day after the ball
Mr. Hone wrote himself down as bad as the
rest of the curious-minded public whom Mr.
Bennett sought to capture when he pencilled
this note in his diary:
" The Herald of this morning contains a
long account of the ball, with a diagram and
73
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
description of Mr. Brevoort's house; but, as
it was an implied condition of the reporter's
admission that it should be decent, it was
tame, flat and tasteless! "
A far cry from this to 1894, when Ward
McAllister, arbiter of the " 400 " at Mrs.
Astor's famous ball, became a writer on
social topics for the New York World!
It took many years for this umbrage at
the reporting of social events to wear off and
make the reporter welcome. Indeed, there is
one place yet on the map where it is not even
now permitted to record a social event,
though the editors and owners of the papers
may be among those present. That is
Charleston, S. C., which possesses in the
News and Courier the oldest newspaper in
continuous publication in America.
Yet the reporter can be truly credited
with performing a great public service in
these United States. He has destroyed aris-
74
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
tocracy. His eager search for the interest-
ing, his desire to reveal the notable, whether
it be in an extravagant social function, the
bride's costume, or the habits of the rich, has
resulted in a universal levelling. This is a
truly democratic country to-day, and it is so
because the reporter has banished mystery
and made all men and all things appear as
they really are!
Nor is there longer " impertinence " or
" intrusion." Sensible people know the
value of publicity. Honest folk welcome it.
The society reporter instead of being re-
pelled is overworked.
" But how can I become a reporter? " is
one question often asked of a newspaper
manager. About the best way is to hang
around until the City Editor is able to " see "
you, or until you are convinced that he can't.
" Bring in an item," is the best introduction.
A newspaper office is a place of chance. Be-
75
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
ing on the spot is the surest way to secure
consideration.
Many great reporters and great men were
to be found on the staff of the New York
Sun in the Dana days. One of these, who
afterwards became a first citizen of the city,
got on the staff in this fashion: Tiring of
college at Cornell, he came to New York
with the help of $10, borrowed from
William O. Wyckoff, then an Ithacan
stenographer, later to become the head of
the great Remington typewriter firm of
Wyckoff, Seamans and Benedict, with let-
ters to the managing editor and the chief of
the Sun's staff. He first attacked the man-
aging editor. Nothing to be had, perhaps
the chief had something; would like to
oblige the introducer, but just couldn't. An
interview with the chief produced the same
result, with a kindly reference back to the
managing editor.
76
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
Now if he had been an ordinary young
man he would have gone away. He was not.
The next day at office hours he dropped into
the Sun factory and took a vacant desk and
began scribbling. There are always vacant
desks in the City room. Pretty soon the
managing editor came in and gave him a
friendly nod; later the great editor, who
noted with pleasure that the boy had " found
something." Presently all the reporters were
sent out on one errand or another. The
managing editor stuck his head out of his
cage and looked about. Seeing no one but
the adventurer he asked if he was free. He
was. " Well, take this." He " took " it, got
it — and was on the staff as long as he cared
to stay!
John N. Bogart, eminent as the city edi-
tor of the Sun, got his start by applying in
writing to Amos J. Cummings and enclos-
ing a photo.
77
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
It had been hand-colored and showed him
wearing a red necktie and a green vest. Mr.
Cummings thought a man daring enough to
be so garbed, and proud of it, would do.
He did!
Mr. Cummings, who was himself a master
reporter, made his start on the Tribune. He
had been one of Walker's filibusters in the
last luckless expedition to Nicaragua and
then went into the Northern Army, serving
through the war. When mustered out he
applied to Horace Greeley in person for a
job. Mr. Greeley was in a temper and
" d — d sick," as he expressed it, of the place-
seeking soldiers. He said he couldn't hire
the whole blamed army, which seemed to be
pestering him for places. Amos persisted,
saying he needed work badly. " Show me
some good reason! " squeaked the great edi-
tor. Amos stepped back, turned about and
gracefully parting the tails of his army coat
78
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
revealed ample evidence for need of employ-
ment. He was set to work and soon had a
whole pair of trousers ! The greatest assign-
ment ever given a reporter was that curt
word of James Gordon Bennett the younger,
to Henry M. Stanley: " Go and find Living-
stone!" He went, found him and opened
Africa to the world! Stanley's name stands
at the head of the legion of newspaper
writers. In after years he became very often
the pursued instead of the pursuer.
Some short time following his marriage
to Miss Dorothy Tennant, an evil rumor
reached the Paris Herald that there was
some infelicity. It was not true. Stanley
and his bride were located at a quiet resort
in the Tyrol. Aubrey Stanhope, the best
man on the staff, was forthwith hurried away
to interrogate the explorer. He knew the
temper of the man and was quite aware of
the bad taste of his mission. But he obeyed
79
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
orders and in due season came into the pres-
ence of Bula Matari. The " Breaker of the
Path " was very glad to see him. It was
lonely at the hotel, Mrs. Stanley was ill and
in retirement. The great man had no one
to talk to. For two days he poured out his
feelings. Then he said, " I've been very
selfish, Stanhope, done all the talking and
haven't given you a chance. Come, now, tell
me what you are after. Is it Africa? "
Poor Aubrey summoned all his resolution.
" No, Mr. Stanley," he said desperately. "It
isn't Africa. Do you beat your wife? "
JJnder his breath he added: "Now kill
me." He saw Stanley's fingers tighten into
the palms of his hands, and prepared for the
worst. The fingers relaxed as the explorer
gasped: " God! I used to do that myself! "
Resourcefulness is a very necessary re-
portorial attribute. I know of no better ex-
ample than one afforded by Henry L. Terry,
80
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
a very able member of the craft. When
night city editor of the New York Recorder,
I sent him to Bloomingdale asylum to verify
a tip that a patient had been scalded to death
in an overheated bath. It was nine at night
when he reached the asylum, so he was
denied admission. Going to another en-
trance he gave such an effective imitation of
an escaped lunatic who wanted to get back
that he was admitted, taken to the superin-
tendent and — got the story!
The political reporter has perhaps the
most satisfactory assignment and is most
likely to earn promotion to the rank of cor-
respondent at the State or the National Capi-
tal. His occupation brings him into close
contact with men of affairs and is free from
the irksomeness of routine.
" Shakspeer," sagely observed Mr. Arte-
mus Ward in his celebrated essay on
" Forts " " rote good plase, but he wouldn't
6 si
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
have succeeded as a Washington correspon-
dent of a New York daily paper. He lack't
the rekesit fancy and imagginashun."
This is a pretty high tribute, but, jesting
aside, the place calls for great talent and
usually secures it from the ranks of the
working reporters. To know men, politics,
government, ambassadors and the compli-
cations of parties is to know much and to
enjoy the knowledge more!
THE READER
THE reader of the newspaper in America
is a legion. He is closely followed up by the
editor and publisher, morning, noon and
night, with an extra allowance on Sunday.
Such an appetite as never Gargantua had is
that of the American for news! " Every-
body reads the papers — nobody believes
them " a cynic wrote, most untruthfully, for
the reader can do little else than believe the
82
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
paper if he is to believe anything. The silly
idea that a crowded sheet can spare the room
for idle deception, or that its conductors are
foolish enough to believe that invention is
more important than facts, obtains in some
higher intellectual circles, among men
whose learning should teach them to know
better. That they do not is a reflection upon
them — not upon the hurried, zealous news-
paper diligently endeavoring to be first with
its wares.
Perhaps this careless characterization is a
relic of the newspaper in days when news
was scarce and communication slow and
talent expressed itself in fancies. The cele-
brated moon hoax, perpetrated by Richard
Adams Locke in the New York Sun, in
1835, purporting to be taken from an ad-
vance supplement of the Edinburgh Philo-
sophical Journal, was the finest example of
this form of fooling. It was a work of
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
genius, causing a great sensation, telling, as
it most solemnly did, of the goings on aboard
our celestial neighbor, as " revealed " by the
mighty telescope shortly before installed by
Sir John F. W. Herschel at the Cape of
Good Hope!
Beyond this romance, so well done as to
live in book form to this day, the papers
padded themselves with much useless
opinion and extended theorizing, especially
in extracting " significance " from politics
and guessing at the doings of circles from
which they were excluded. The welcoming
of the press was anything but cordial, and
for much that was printed the keyhole and
the back stairs were credited as the source
and the purveyor of the information was
regarded as a low person. The Right of
Publicity had a long journey before it se-
cured recognition!
The church, government and trade alike
84
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
frowned upon the inquisitive and inform-
ing printed sheet. When James Franklin
established his Courant in Boston, 1720-21,
he was soon in jail as the result of expressing
opinions offensive to the authorities, in which
he was abetted by his mischievous brother
Benjamin, destined to become the first real
editor in America, combining wit, wisdom,
great intelligence and boldness of opinion
with a commanding style of expression.
Therefore as the voice of the people, the
relation of the paper to its reader is intimate
and one of confidence. It is fashionable with
certain types of moralists to decry the press
and to insist it should limit its expressions to
things the moralist thinks the public ought
to know, with the idea of protecting virtue
by suppressing knowledge of sin. The de-
cent newspaper — and I know of few that
is not — does sift its news, which is quite
another matter from either suppression or
85
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
repression. It does not pander and it tries
to adjust news values to fit the comprehen-
sion of its constituency, not to place a limit
upon what it should know.
What does a newspaper ever print that is
worse than what the public does? It is not
the thief, the murderer, the forger, the
speculator, the eloper, or the corporation
lawyer! It is a plain recorder of events,
good or evil, not the creator or adjuster of
them!
Certain types of popular journals have
come under criticism for the use of huge
headlines, red ink and large pictures. There
is a real reason behind all three. Most minds
are rudimentary and where the foreign lan-
guage element is great a few words in big
type, with pictorial accompaniment make for
quick comprehension. The critic should look
at the old primers where the familiar ax was
depicted to emphasize the first letter of the
86
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
alphabet upon the juvenile mind, or the
common cat to render " c " intelligible. No
child ever yet liked to read a book that failed
to contain pictures. As for red it is the most
popular of colors and strikes the eye as does
no other!
It is easy to understand, therefore, why a
sheet, seemingly " loud " in tone because of
headlines and make-up, will be found quite
mild in contents when subjected to analysis.
Some of the publications most lurid in head-
lines have a very meek assemblage of read-
ing matter, and a high moral tone in thought.
They are made for the simpler strata and
succeed in proportion. That they graduate
readers to the conservative and better man-
nered papers is an undoubted fact, but the
evolution upward is slow. The " best "
newspapers have the smallest circulations!
The paper produced for the rudimentary
minds is a valuable connecting link, too,
87
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
between the foreigners groping for know-
ledge and the thorough-going American
press. The circulation of foreign language
newspapers in this country is very great.
In New York it is formidable. There are
not less than 1,200,000 copies of issues in
alien tongues produced each day in that
city— 600,000 Jewish; 250,000 German;
200,000 Italian and at least 150,000 in other
tongues, ranging from Greek to Croatian,
These papers will flourish for a generation
at least, perhaps longer, particularly those
in the Yiddish text where for racial and re-
ligious reasons their readers keep themselves
apart in the community. The easily read
papers in English are the best mediums for
beating down the hold of the foreign lan-
guage papers, supplying as they do a readily
understood expression of events. They flux
the melting pot!
Following the complaint against the brisk,
88
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
but lightly made sheets is the clamor against
the popular Sunday papers and their varied
components, particularly the comic supple-
ments! As the inventor of the Sunday comic
and so incidentally the parent of " yellow "
journalism I may be pardoned a line of his-
tory. In 1893 the New York World had in-
stalled thefirst color press in America adapted
to newspaper printing. It was built by the
Walter Scott Company, of Plainfield, New
Jersey, and was an excellent machine. It
lacked, or was thought to lack, capacity for
large editions, and another machine, con-
structed by R. Hoe & Company, was in-
stalled. The latter lay idle for months and
the former was used usually to daub bits of
color on the face of a local supplement —
little city scenes like the flower market in
Union Square. No results were visible in
circulation and the cost was considerable.
Coming into the mechanical and business de-
89
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
partments, after a ten-year journey through
the reportorial and editorial side, I had often
noted the popular craving for amusement,
the almost pathetic desire to see something
funny, and I urged that the color presses be
set to producing a " comic " sheet. Mr.
Pulitzer, absent in Europe, cabled the single
word " experiment," so, with an equipment
consisting of Frederick A. Duneka, for long
and now the head of Harper & Brothers, a
pair of shears, and Walt McDougall, the
cartoonist, the "experiment" began. The im-
mediate effect was to send the paper from
the quarter million class, where it had long
lodged, into the half million, where it has
since remained, in the teeth of tremendous
competition.
The " yellow " phase developed when
William J. Kelly, the pressman, whose
knowledge of color printing had been ob-
tained printing specimen books for George
90
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
Mather's Sons, the ink makers, complained
that he could get no results from the wishy-
washy tints turned out by the art depart-
ment and begged for some solid colors.
About this time R. F. Outcault, a clever
youth from Sandusky, Ohio, who had re-
cently invaded New York, turned in to the
Sunday editor, then Arthur Brisbane, sev-
eral black and white drawings, depicting
child-life in a tenement district called
" Hogan's Alley." I carried Kelly's kick to
C. W. Saalburg, the colorist who was paint-
ing the key plate of the "Alley," and being
of quick understanding said: "All right,
I'll make that kid's dress solid yellow!"
Suiting the action to the word he dipped his
brush in yellow pigment and " washed " the
"kid." For once Kelly was right. The
" solid color " stood out above all the colors
in the comic. The " yellow kid " arrived.
The success of the series led to the capture of
91
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
Mr. Outcault by the rival Journal newly
revived by William R. Hearst, and to a for-
tune for the artist. The rivalry resulting, for
the World's " kid " was long continued by
George B. Luks, since a notable American
painter, and stamped " yellow " on an en-
terprise that is now common to all news-
papers. The wide use of Sunday comics has
vindicated the inventor's idea that there was
an intense desire for amusement in the land
— whatever the Sunday-school teachers may
think.
The idle chance that opened the door of
success for Outcault had a parallel in the
New York Herald office, where Carl
Schultze, " Bunny," a Kentucky artist, pre-
sented himself with a comic series showing
the antics of two small boys in playing tricks
on Grandpa. William J. Guard, editor of
the supplement, said that if the artist would
reverse the idea he would try it out. Schultze
92
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
did so. When the first plate came to the
form no caption had been sent up with it.
Called upon suddenly to furnish a " line "
Mr. Guard, inspired by the presence in a
local theatre of Jerome Sykes as " Foxy
Quiller," wrote "Foxy Grandpa." Fame
followed for " Bunny," with a comfortable
financial reward and much circulation for the
Herald. Bought for the Journal by Mr.
Hearst the idea had extended success in a
wider circle.
The Sunday paper is a sort of depart-
ment store in journalism. Its large circula-
tion enforces size, because it must cover
many things to interest so great a constitu-
ency with its vast variations in taste.
Curiously, the attacks on the Sunday papers
had little or no effect on circulation, but the
outdoor habit brought on by the bicycle and
continued by the automobile and the golf
course, affected it greatly. Before the bicy-
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
cle came a rainy Sunday meant a poor sale.
After the wheel craze began, a rainy Sun-
day meant an increase of perhaps 50,000 cir-
culation to all the Sunday papers in New
York and a bright day a corresponding fall-
ing off. People who may buy entertainment
in bad weather, head for out o'doors in fair.
The old-fashioned editor tried to be loyal
to the subscriber and catered to his feelings
instead of compelling him to be loyal to the
editor. Fear of the subscriber was a griev-
ous editorial weakness. Incidentally, here is
a good story in point :
When Robert H. Davis, the editor and
playwright, was a boy he served as printer's
devil in the office of the Carson, Nevada,
Appeal; of which his brother Sam was editor.
Late one night as they were rattling the
modest edition off on the Washington hand-
press, a shabby little man crept in and asked
if there were any old clothes about that " a
94
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
feller " might have. The hooks in the rear
office were full of garments discarded by
tramp printers after picking up a couple of
weeks' pay. He was told to help himself.
Shortly he came back to the press side com-
paratively transformed and watched the
operations of the clumsy machine curiously.
' What does the paper cost? " he asked.
" Eight dollars a year."
He dug $8 out of his pants pocket and
started to leave.
" Hold on," said the foreman, " where do
you want it sent?"
" I'll let you know," he replied, " when I
git settled. I'm travelling."
He stepped out into the moonlight. In
half an hour there was a clatter of hoofs and
rattling of arms outside. In came the
Sheriff of Carson and a brace of deputies.
Had the printers seen anything of a little
man, half dressed and unshaven?
95
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
Little Bob was prompt to make reply:
" Yes. He was here half an hour ago."
" Which way did he go? "
Bob started to reply, giving the correct
information.
" Shut up," said the foreman in his ear,
" I'll attend to this."
He went on glibly to lay out a route for
the stranger, just opposite to the one he had
taken — down the main road to the Canyon.
The sheriff made it known that the visitor
was Black Bart, an eminent highwayman
who had just escaped from the Nevada peni-
tentiary, and rode away with his deputies —
on the wrong trail.
" What did you lie to them for, Jim? " Bob
asked the foreman. " Hell !" he said. "You
wouldn't go back on a subscriber, would
you? "
INDUSTRIAL SIDE
THE distance between " upstairs " and
" downstairs " is far greater than the physical
96
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
measurement implies. To the force assigned
to take care of the material side of a news-
paper establishment " the people upstairs "
are a strange and inexplicable lot. The
academic critic is often heard with acute
accusations against " business office " con-
trol. These critics could never have tried
the experiment. " Controlling " an editor is
about as easy as picking live eels out of a
puddle of water. Indeed the average editor
can hardly " control " himself. His hunting
instincts are so keenly developed as to leave
no place in his mind for any considerations
other than getting out the very best paper he
can. He is after the news, after the thing of
interest. If he does not supply this the busi-
ness office, even if it were inclined to repress,
would soon find itself without an occupation.
There is amazingly little acquaintance
between the rank and file of the two depart-
ments, each attending to its respective f unc-
7 97
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
tions according to requirements and usually
in conflict over the size of the paper and the
" placing " of advertisements. Size regu-
lates all expenses in a newspaper office. Two
pages more or less a day may often represent
the difference between a proper profit and
none at all. So the paper is rarely big
enough for the editor or small enough for
the business end. The " placing " of adver-
tisements is an endless source of difficulty.
The editor loves a " clean page " where he
can let his " story " run. The business office
regards a page as a place for intensive culti-
vation, and the more high-priced position
advertising it can tuck away the better the
balance sheet looks.
Beside there is an incessant pressure from
the advertisers for better positions. This is
energetically voiced by the advertising solici-
tor, who by the rule that we all take on the
color of our surroundings, is always more
98
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
eager to promote the interest of the adver-
tiser than the convenience or profit of the
office. This makes the lot of the advertising
manager, who has to placate the editor and
please the advertisers, a very unhappy one.
The editors have always been contemptu-
ous of the business office, regarding it only as
a place where the salaries are paid, but with
very little respect for the struggle to gather
in the wherewithal to pay them. In the early
days of the trade, there was no business office
organization; only a clerk or two and the
man who handed out and received the money
for the circulation. Sometimes the editor
himself stood behind the counter when the
rush was on. Mr. Pulitzer used to humble
his business managers by remarking that
when " he was active, he had no business
office," which was in a measure true. But
the growth of the business made manage-
ment necessary and, like most things needed,
it arrived and filled its place.
99
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
The New York newspapers of the middle
decades of the nineteenth century had no ad-
vertising departments, indeed, did not con-
trol the sale of their advertising but farmed
it out. The late Gordon L. Ford, of Brook-
lyn, mada a fortune out of the columns of
the New York Tribune, which he controlled,
and as late as 1884 the Brooklyn Eagle sold
much of its space through an outside agent.
The early editor was not thinking business,
he wanted to express himself, but when he
did this powerfully, circulation followed and
on the head of circulation came advertising.
Yet advertising in the modern, sense de-
veloped slowly. Even in 1893, when the
World celebrated its tenth anniversary under
Mr. Pulitzer's ownership, the largest depart-
-*
ment store advertisement in the columns of
the 100-page edition issued in honor of the
event was but three columns. The news-
papers of the fifties and sixties printed little
100
THE NEWSPAPER 'TRADE
advertising from retailers. Their columns
were much used by wholesale merchants,
shipping men, with announcements of a
purely commercial character, and a liberal
representation of the ever-present medicine
man, but the retailer was mostly absent.
The late A. T. Stewart, first and greatest of
New York's retail merchants, was quite con-
tent with an advertisement 150 lines deep
across two columns.
One thing that delayed the development
of the display advertiser was the difficulty in
printing any announcement that was in ex-
cess of a single column set in small type.
For years the papers were printed from type
presses where the matter had to be made
up on " turtles " or sections of a cylinder.
Each column was therefore slightly curved,
and to insert a double column advertisement
was a mechanical problem, involving as it
did the breaking of the column rule and the
101
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
use of type above the average size. To meet
this exigency double price was usually
charged for display lines or taking out the
column rule. Most of the papers met the
demand for larger display by using logo-
types, or letters made out of standard sizes
of type, that is a large " A " would be built
up out of agate or nonpareil " A's," and so
more easily lent themselves to the curvature
of the " turtle." With the advent of stereo^
typing by the papier-mache process, which
permitted the casting of a curved plate, the
" turtle " gave way and the troublesome
broken column ceased to bother, but the
habit of double charges remained for many
years ; in fact until the typesetting machine
put the compositor on a weekly wage instead
of the piece system, for he, too, was paid extra
for broken column or tabular work, of which
setting logotypes was a part. So strong is
habit that the typefounders cast solid logo-
102
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
types after the " turtle " disappeared and
many papers used this form of display letter
long after the need of it disappeared, the
last to drop their use being the New York
Herald, which clung to them until the end
of the century.
Display advertising really dates from the
advent of the penny evening newspaper,
with its wide circulation and swift results.
Morning paper advertising was much like
the copy prevailing even to-day in England,
that is, it was " sign " advertising, promot-
ing the store rather than the goods. The
evening paper introduced the daily sale and
the bargain counter.
The usual editorial view is that there is
something nefarious about the business office.
It is just as mysterious a place to him as the
editorial room is to the boys down stairs.
The editor never can understand why the
business office sells a page which he could
103
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
use to better advantage for news or a feat-
ure. The business office folks cannot com-
prehend why the editors are always accumu-
lating libel suits, or printing things offensive
to advertisers ; why a reporter can never ex-
plain his expense account, or why the size
of the paper was raised after the " card "
went up, — the card being the business office
estimate of what the size should be on the
basis of business in hand. It makes no allow-
ance for the unruliness of events with which
the editor has to deal. It is this wholesome
variance that ensures independent and relia-
ble editing. Nothing could be more fatal
to a newspaper than supine obedience on the
part of " upstairs."
Business office opportunities are not so
prompt in their rewards as the editorial.
Following the usual rule, business promo-
tion is slow, but the employee keeps what he
gets, which is not the case " upstairs," where
104
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
the reward comes quickly but where the com-
petition is keener and where mistakes lead
to sudden fatalities. The reporter or editor
is always in peril of being " beaten " in the
news or becoming the victim of some error
of judgment, which upsets his progress and
often costs him his place. The clerical force,
pure and simple, is no better or worse off
than workers of other classes, though better
paid as a rule than minor employees in banks
and insurance companies. As in all other
things the rewards go to the producers. The
man who can develop circulation or procure
advertising gets the bundle !
As the newspaper begins with the editor,
editorial or reportorial experience is an in-
valuable equipment for business office man-
agement. Unless there is knowledge below
stairs of the fundamentals of newspaper mak-
ing with an understanding that rules cannot
provide success, there will be a good many
105
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
painful moments for the man who takes up
the task of management.
Not only should a business manager be in
sympathy with the editorial impulse but be
ablq to " stand for " many vagaries, which
would upset sound business judgment in
other lines. He is a good deal like the cap-
tain of a ship, he must be ready to meet
anything that comes along. The winds are
not laid for his advantage nor can he compel
a calm!
The mechanical cost of modern newspaper
production is very great, due to high wages,
short hours and much waste. The paper
must always be on an emergency basis —
prepared to throw away pages of matter at
the last moment to care for something newer
or more important. To meet this contin-
gency the composing room force is always
held at the maximum. Presses and power
must be here, prepared in the same ratio.
106
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
The lot of the newspaper compositor has
been much improved by the invention of the
typesetting machine. Under the perpetual
emergency conditions that prevail, the cost
of composition has not lessened over the
hand days, though more work is done on a
smaller floor space and with greater speed.
The effect of the machine, however, has been
to stabilize employment. In the hand days
many men were necessarily on call to meet
the irregular needs of the office. Only par-
tially employed, with uncertain hours, the
moral effect was unfortunate. Now the
holder of a " situation " has a sort of fran-
chise worth from $1600 to $2000 per year.
In New York the day scale for compositors
is $30 per week of six TMz-hour days, the
night $33, and the " lobster " shift, meaning
men brought in at 2 A.M., $36, for 6% hours.
Stereotyping, long an art with little change
in it, and for 40 years performed solely by
107
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
hand labor, was advanced by Henry A.
Wise Wood, who invented the auto-plate
in 1899, following it later with the " junior
auto-plate." The first machine was entirely
automatic, the latter partly so. The effect
of these machines was to save fully 2/3 of
the time usually devoted to dressing presses,
and thereby producing a large economy as
well as improving press room productivity
by increasing the running time of the
machines. The stereotyper is another well
paid mechanic. His night hours number six,
day 7%. For this his pay in New York is
$30 per week, the year's total often mount-
ing to $2000, counting in the over-time,
which by reason of the short regular hours
is not oppressive.
The ordinary press-hand in a press room
receives by the New York standard $25 per
week for six night hours, and 7% day. The
pressman in charge $30. In all sections of
108
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
the country the trades employed on news-
papers are usually paid above the standard
of other employments, while their regularity
of employment averages much higher. This,
of course, is even more important than a
high scale of pay. It is the total income that
counts.
The photo-engraver, a comparative new-
comer, is also an important wage earner,
ranking with the compositors and stereo-
typers. The ordinary mail hand is certain
to earn $1200 a year in a New York office.
Recently an important economic advance
has been made in the matter of standardizing
newspaper size. Great waste in white paper
and great cost in special machinery resulted
from a haphazard fixing of size by publish-
ers. Each machine turned out by the press
builders had to be special and the paper
maker was perpetually vexed to provide for
oddities in size. Under the leadership of the
109
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
late John Norris, Chairman, at the time, of
the Paper Committee of the American
Newspaper Publishers' Association, a move
to standardize began in 1910. He regarded
the 13^/2 em column, seven to a page, as the
handiest, but this had the defect of wasting
space in width of matter. The movement
resulted in a wide adaptation of the 12%
em column, eight to the page, introduced by
the New York World in 1889. This makes
possible the use of paper in 73-inch rolls,
enabling the paper manufacturer to cover
his machines more completely and further,
making paper interchangeable between
offices and so cutting down the stock on
hand. Often, in the odd size days, much
trouble followed shortages in varying widths.
Now the papers in a city, having all the same
width of roll, are much better insured in
their supply, and the benefits to the manu-
facturer in increased production due to more
no
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
complete covering of their wires are large.
The news print capacity of American and
Canadian mills reached in 1916 an output of
7081 tons per day!
ADVERTISING
ADVERTISING is the great art of attract-
ing attention. Life would be a dreary desert
indeed without the charm of interest aroused
by the unusual, the startling or the bizarre,
all of which terms fit advertising. The
Pharaoh who built the pyramids and carved
the Sphinx, whatever his motive, has adver-
tised Egypt for 3000 years. The builders
of the tower of Babel were undoubtedly the
executive committee of Babylon's Board of
Trade, intent upon doing something to put
the first city of Mesopotamia on the map, just
as the later Eiffel exalted Paris. The archi-
tect of the Parthenon picked out the most
conspicuous height above Athens to glorify
ill
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
Greece through all time and King Solomon's
temple was a master attraction for the City
of Jerusalem.
The peacock's tail, the expanded fan of
the turkey-gobbler, the drumming of the
partridge, the roar of the lion and the neck
of the giraffe are splendid specimens of
Nature's essays in the field, while the female
costume through all the ages has been de-
signed to attract the attention of man more
than to garb the lady !
The Venus of Milo advertises the perfect
form of woman and the Farnese Hercules
the perfection of masculine development.
Applied commercially, advertising falls
below the achievements of Nature and Art,
but displays a usefulness that raises it to the
dignity of a profession. To say what form
of advertising is the best advertising is
beyond the ken of men. It is safer to hold
to the view of the Kentucky Colonel when
112
,
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
asked to name a good whiskey. He said all
whiskey was good, but some kinds were bet-
ter than others. So it is with advertising.
We of the newspaper trade are apt to think
i
newspaper advertising better than any other
kind. There is some sound* reason behind
the view. To begin with, the universality of
newspaper reading provides the certainty of
reaching a large number of possible cus-
tomers, while the convenience served is so
great as to insure profitable response, always
assuming that the advertiser has something
to sell that people want to buy!
Because newspaper advertising is very
conspicuous and ever present it is sometimes
intimated that the advertiser controls the
columns of the popular press. Nothing
could be farther from the truth. Not only
does the advertiser not " control " news-
papers, but he seldom tries, and usually with
the result of a severe rebuke. Advertising
8 113
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
is a by-product of the newspaper, useful in
enabling it to sell itself at a much lower
cost than if it relied for income upon the
reader alone. Its value to the advertiser
naturally grows in a ratio with the paper's
hold upon the public. This fact, duly im-
pressed, is usually enough to convince the
sensible business man that his relationship
with the newspapers is decidedly formal
and does not extend beyond the counting
room, where he is entitled to know what cir-
culation he gets for his money and to a rate
as low as the next man. This is a degree of
fairness that prevails in good measure in the
newspaper trade. Doing business as it does
in the open, the rightly managed newspaper
has no place for secret negotiations, rebates
or special privileges and the paper succeeds
best that carries all its rates on its rate
cards. It is really and truly a common car-
rier and ought to operate like a railroad.
114
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
It is sold for a uniform price to all comers
and should have but one price for its adver-
tising columns.
Vast as the volume of advertising is in
American newspapers, the number of ad-
vertisers is surprisingly small. This does
not apply to the users of classified announce-
ments, the popular " wants," but to " dis-
play." A well crowded evening paper in
New York City in the centre of 7,500,000
population and innumerable establishments
is doing very well if it has 150 separate adver-
tisements in an issue, and a half of these will
be the small " ads " of theatres, excursions
and restaurants.
The " big " local advertisers can be
counted on the fingers of the two hands.
The fair sized ones may aggregate a score,
the " foreign " and " medical " make up the
rest. One of the reform waves of recent
years was the warfare on proprietary reme-
115
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
dies, with the result of much excluding from
newspapers, though many shut down with
reluctance under the gunfire of the critic;
for whatever may be said of the merits or
demerits of the proprietary articles, as an
advertiser the medicine man was long the
mainstay of the press, when other forms of
business were indifferent and utterly unre-
sponsive. Beginning with the London dai-
lies of the revolutionary period the pill and
potion man, and the purveyor of improve-
ments for the female face and form, have
been staunch users of newspaper space.
Worthy or not, they aided in creating an in-
dustry and an educator that is worthy, and
so must be esteemed in the newspaper offices,
whatever may be thought outside!
The department store expenditure in the
large centres is commonly figured at from 3%
to 4% per cent, upon the gross amount of
sales. A business of $10,000,000 annually
116
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
therefore indulges in an outlay of from
$350,000 to $450,000 in reaching the public.
The cost of merchandising is usually figured
at 25 per cent. So much must the customer
pay for advertising, wrapping and packing,
rental, delivery and clerk hire.
The work of the advertising solicitor is
important in all newspaper offices tmly in so
far as he brings in the first " copy." The
paper must do the rest. Experience alone
tells the " pulling " value of an advertise-
ment and the buying power of circulation.
Much soliciting energy is wasted forcing
business from the wrong lines. A solicitor
should study his paper with even more care
than an advertiser. The good jockey
" knows " the qualities of his horse. Too
few solicitors have the acquaintance they
ought to have with the powers of their
medium. Acquaintance and personal charm
have combined often to wheedle business
117
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
from an advertiser, where knowledge and
discrimination should have been employed.
It is pretty nearly possible to so apportion
" copy " as to make it pay in all newspapers.
One grade of readers can be relied upon to
respond to the advertising of expensive
wares, another to the medium and another
to the cheap. Different " copy " means that
every sail can be made to draw.
It is rather odd, but few advertisers are
willing initiators of the use of printer's ink.
With the example of sundry, singular suc-
cesses before them they begrudge the outlay
for publicity and regard the exceptional
space user as merely abnormally fortunate.
So most business men are repellent or on the
defensive, which makes the solicitor's job a
rather difficult one. But when he does suc-
ceed in picking up a line, it becomes an
attractive and profitable occupation.
One very able solicitor, arguing long and
118
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
eloquently with an obdurate business man,
was Startled by a gentle snore. His auditor
had actually gone to sleep under the spell of
the oration. The solicitor, a powerful man,
struck the sleeper a mighty slap on the
thigh. He awoke with a profane yell:
" What the do you mean by hitting
me?"
" What do you mean," was the cool reply,
" by going to sleep when I am giving you
the most valuable information you ever had a
chance to hear! "
He got the business.
In another case the widow of a clergyman
sought and obtained >a place as solicitor for
religious announcements on a great New
York newspaper, established as a religious
daily, but by some considered to have wan-
dered at times from the path! She was
warned that it would be a hard undertaking,
but full of zeal and faith in her large ac-
119
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
quaintance among her late husband's cleri-
cal friends, she went blithely to the task. In
three days she was back. Her eyes showed
traces of tears.
" I have seen fifteen of my husband's best
friends " she said. " They all were so sorry
for me. They knew I needed the salary, and
if only I had come to them from some nice
paper they would be only too happy to help
me, but from this one and so, I've got
to give it up."
" Nonsense," replied the business man-
ager who heard the tale of woe. " Go back
and ask them ' Do you come to bring the
righteous or sinners to repentance?' Be-
cause you can tell them if it's sinners they
are after, we probably have the largest crop
in town! "
She was plucky and went back with the
message. The paper is supreme to-day in
religious announcements.
120
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
A shrewd solicitor of summer-resort ad-
vertising attended, with the men from rival
papers, a Board of Trade meeting at Asbury
Park. Each man was asked to state the cir-
culation claimed by his paper. This youth
was called early. He gave his paper's figure
as 500,000. His chief rival came last. His
"circulation" was 700,000. Before the
meeting adjourned the representative of
" 500,000 " asked for a chance to say another
word.
" If I had been asked last," he said, " My
circulation would have been 700,000."
He got the business !
Another solicitor started out to develop a
line of classified " ads " for family pets under
" Dogs, Birds, etc." One German dealer in
these specialties resisted all blandishments.
He stuck to a rival paper as sufficient for
his needs. It happened that death notices
were a great feature in the paper he pre-
121
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
f erred and a very light one in that one repre-
sented by the solicitor. It was in the pneu-
monia season and nearly a page of the sad
announcements were present in the one and
but half a column in the other.
"Don't you want to stay in business?"
asked the agent.
"Sure; vy not?"
The solicitor opened up the two papers at
the death roll.
" Well, you can't if you stick to the .
The readers are all dying. Ours are
all alive. Better get on board! "
He did!
All solicitors are not so lucky in being
" pat." One very able New York advertis-
ing man whose affluence afforded him a coun-
try seat used many of its by-products as
agreeable means of introducing " business."
With his eye on the taste of a large adver-
tiser of proprietary medicine, he sent the
122
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
gentleman a collie pup. The pup bit off the
card on his collar and, as the event showed,
arrived anonymously at his destination — on
the outskirts of Philadelphia. After several
weeks' waiting for some word the solicitor
journeyed to the Quaker City and found his
man. He was rather distant. No headway
being made on the desired contract, he ven-
tured to inquire about the pup.
The advertiser broke out in sudden fury:
" So you're the idiot who sent us that
blanked, blanked pup, are you! I've been
wanting to kill you and the dog ever since
he came. So you're the fellow who sicked
that nuisance on me. Why, he's eaten up all
the rugs and shoes in the house. Come and
get him and do it quick! "
It is proper to say that the pup developed
into a model dog and cordiality and contracts
followed in due season.
A good advertising solicitor can make
123
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
from $5000 to $15,000 a year on a sizable
paper if he is diligent and productive. His
advertisers become his own, by newspaper
custom. His hours are such as he cares to
make them and work alone " drives " a man
of standing.
The " adsmith " is a modern adjunct to
the newspaper. He is the person who pre-
pares " copy " for the advertiser. Few news-
papers have had success in maintaining a
" copy " department, but the " adsmith " has
developed a field for himself. By study of
type, goods, the field and expression, he has
become much sought for as an expert in pub-
licity. Parallel with this very useful person
has come another — of no value to the news-
paper, and for a long time one who did much
to discredit it — the press agent, first a prod-
uct of the theatre and developing until he
reached the lofty pinnacles occupied by the
Standard Oil Company and the New York,
124
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
New Haven and Hartford Railroad. Be-
ginning merely as a person to provide repor-
ters with such information as his employer
cared to give out, he expanded himself into a
factor in publicity promotion in the securing
of vast amounts of space free of charge by
gilding his statements with interest, so that
they were eagerly welcomed in many, if not
all, editorial rooms. At last the counting
rooms became vaguely conscious that the
papers were being used and abused by these
ingenious gentlemen. Indeed, they earned
much discredit for the press, being responsi-
ble for a severe share of distrust, almost
proving the Populistic charge of corporation
control. Steps taken by the American News-
paper Publishers' Association found more
than 1000 of these busy gentlemen diligently
at work. They have been well broken up by
concentrated action on the part of the
A. N. P. A., but not before they had done
125
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
much harm in affecting the status of news-
paper honesty as well as curtailing legiti-
mate advertising on the part of their
employers.
ILLUSTRATING
THE newspaper office since 1884 has
become a more than complex affair, due to
improvements in mechanics and enlargement
of its scope by the addition of illustrations
and the production of supplements in color,
halftone and gravure. While once in a very
great while a daily newspaper would use a
" cut " or a war-map in its news columns, the
costly and slow process of wood-engraving
furnished the sole medium for illustration
and was out of reach by reason of time and
expense. In the seventies the coming of the
" chalk-plate " process caused the establish-
ment of a daily devoted mainly to pictures,
the New York Graphic, a costly venture for
its promoters. It existed for some years, but
126
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
without striking any popular chord. The
pictures, by reason of the process employed,
were coarse sketches, that really told a very
poor story of events.
Meantime photo-engraving developed. By
pen-and-inking a silver print the work of the
camera could be reproduced with tolerable
accuracy. Still the daily made little use of
the invention. In 1884, the New York
World began the first regular effort to illus-
trate a newspaper, V. Gribayedoff being the
pioneer artist and Walt McDougall the ear-
liest cartoonist. Their efforts grew in vol-
ume and other talent developed. When
the New York Recorder was established
it provided itself with a good art staff
whose work was made much of in silver
print, though the dynamiting of Russell
Sage in 1892 was the first event to be what
could be called fully illustrated. The head
of Norcross, the dynamiter, had been blown
127
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
from his body and was taken to police head-
quarters, where John S. Pughe, a slender boy
on the Recorder staff, who became Puck's
chief cartoonist, made a startling drawing of
it by candle light, the most striking bit of
work up to that time done by a newspaper
artist. That the night editor saw fit to print
it on the second page, did not detract from
the achievement. From that time progress
was rapid, but copious illustrating did not
develop until 1894, when the World estab-
lished the first " Sunday magazine supple-
ment " with pages free from advertisements
which gave a chance for conspicuous picto-
rial efforts and opened a market for art work
profitable to the artist and important to the
papers. The daily cartoon showed itself to
first and best advantage in the Evening
Telegram, where the late Charles G. Bush,
head of his profession, shone until trans-
planted to the Herald and later to the
128
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
World, in 1898. From that year till now
few papers of importance have heen without
their cartoonist — a powerful and invaluable
adjunct to the editorial page. It will be re-
membered that Thomas Nast was the father
of the American cartoon as a regular feature
and that Tweed offered him $100,000 to quit.
" Stop the d d pictures," the boss was
credited with remarking, " and I don't care
for the rest." It is true that to Nast's piti-
less pencil he owed his overthrow, and in the
cartoon, the newspaper of to-day finds one
of its keenest and most effective weapons.
The Recorder had an admirable cartoonist,
Dan McCarthy, who forsook the throttle of
a New York Central locomotive to become a
leader in his line. Before taking up cartoon-
ing McCarthy did general illustrating for
the Herald and in time was sent to Paris to
ornament the European edition. His return
to New York and his development as a car-
9 129
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
toonist occurred this wise, according to tradi-
tion. He received an order to go forthwith to
Trouville and went, expecting instructions
to follow. None came. He busied himself
with making a budget of local sketches and
sent them to the office. In return he received
a sharp rebuke for doing something he had
not been told to do. So he took to drink and
on the day when the Bennett coach rolled up
to the inn — the event which he had been sent
to depict — he eyed the load of Russian
Grand Dukes malevolently and asked the
whip, who was no less a person than his
chief, " what he paid those Kings for riding
around with him."
An early passage home followed, where
the key to the street was handed him. From
the Recorder Mr. McCarthy went to the
World. His best cartoon was the knot tied
in the British lion's tail during the agita-
tion following Mr. Cleveland's Venezuelan
130
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
message. It was printed January 9, 1896.
To-day the cartoonist earns a better sal-
ary than most hank presidents and ranks
with the best of the editors.
As white paper improved in texture it
became possible to print with reasonable
clearness from half-tone plates. At first
these were inserted in the stereotype plate,
but as this was impossible where many dupli-
cations were required, it was not long before
the photo-etchers could produce a plate that
stood stereotyping and now the use of
" cuts " is common in all kinds of papers.
They have had the effect of killing the de-
scriptive writer, once the pride of the city
staff, and of curtailing much wordiness. The
tendency of the day is for rather less illus-
trating in the daily issue and more on
Sunday.
The use of color was an idea that had the
germ in the World office, and taken from
131
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
there, where it had never got beyond experi-
ment, to that of the Recorder, where George
W. Turner succeeded each Sunday in print-
ing a red star in the advertisement of R. H.
Macy & Co., by the device of an auxiliary
cylinder which " struck in " the color spot on
a blank left in the black plate. Later, in
1893, the World was the first paper to em-
ploy color in embellishing illustrations and to
put in a multi-color press. This machine is
simply the rotary press with as many cylin-
ders as may be required, each of which trans-
fers its part of the color scheme to the pass-
ing web. Half-tone magazine presses that
do excellent work rapidly are in use, and
lately machine photogravure, introduced in
America by Charles W. Saalburg, has made
considerable headway as an addition to the
Sunday illustrating.
The " comic supplement " elsewhere de-
scribed has led to a wide use of " comics " in
132
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
morning and evening newspapers. The
Evening World introduced them to New
York in 1897, through Thomas E. Powers,
and followed him with the unique work of
Maurice Ketten, a talented importation from
France, with a wide hold on the American
reader. "Mutt and Jeff," a horse-play comic,
originated in the San Francisco Chronicle
and in due time reached New York, at last
syndicating " Bud " Fisher's work to a large
audience, reaching every town of importance
in the land. " Let George do it " is a phrase
engrafted in the language by George
McManus in the Evening World. Through
the syndicating process it has been possible
to build up large rewards for the man with a
good " comic " idea, a select few running
their incomes up as high as $40,000 to
$50,000 per year. The ordinary newspaper
artist of capacity is certain of pay running
from $2500 to $7500 per year.
133
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
The art department is a very costly ad-
junct to a large office. The wages of the
photo-engravers will run up to $75,000 a
year, and of the artists and photographers
to as much more. The newspaper photogra-
pher preceded his brother of the movies in
hunting subjects of interest, often taking
much risk in his pursuit of game. The
camera is as important to the production of a
modern newspaper as the reporter, and a
member of the snapshot squad is required to
have as much enterprise and perspicacity as
his brother, the news-gatherer. He must
know all the turns of his trade, be certain of
his subject and the most striking view to be
had ; able to develop his films in a hurry. It
is often but a scant hour from the snapshot
to the form.
The camera man has to exercise diplomacy
very often, and in the beginning of his exer-
tions met with many rebuffs, coupled with
134
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
occasional assaults from people who felt that
privacy was unduly invaded, but he won his
way and the prejudice has gone to join others
that formerly hampered news gathering.
CIRCULATION
COMMENTING on the slow death of a once
great newspaper, which was kept alive by an
apparently invincible advertising patronage,
Joseph Pulitzer remarked that the first thing
a newspaper got was circulation, the last
thing advertising.
In the operation of this rule he saw the
coming doom of the property. Its circula-
tion had succumbed to competition by a con-
temptuous failure to consider its rivals, due
to the strength of the advertising columns,
the management forgetting that the reader
fed the advertiser and that in due season his
absence would make itself known. There-
fore in a live newspaper establishment circu-
135
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
lation will always have first consideration.
Mr. Pulitzer watched his circulation figures
as closely as the prudent sea captain scans
his barometer and was no less anxious to
know why circulation went up than why it
went down. This no one could ever tell him.
The possessor of such certain knowledge
could acquire wealth beyond even modern
dreams of avarice.
There is one rule that has more certainty
in it than any other and it is a paraphrase of
General Nathan Bedford Forrest's formula
for military success: " Git thar fustest with
the mostest men."
" Get there first with the most news "
comes nearer insuring a lead than any other
idea that ever stimulated the circulation of a
newspaper. It does not cover it all, but in
pursuance of such a policy the energizing of
every item in a newspaper's make-up is
pretty sure to follow, and with it success.
136
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
The circulation department is a growth of
the last thirty years. For the century of
daily newspaper making that preceded 1885,
the paper found its way to the reader largely
by chance. People who wanted to sell news-
papers came to the offices at an early hour in
the morning, bought the sheets they desired
and in turn delivered them to subscribers or
sold them upon the streets. The New York
newsboy of the " Ragged Dick " period, and
of the days of the newsboys' lodging house in
New York, was a vagabond kept in vaga-
bondage by the precarious nature of his occu-
pation. Waifs and strays picked up a few
pennies by waylaying the passers-by early
and late and woefully exhibiting the armful
of papers on which they were " stuck." In
the smaller cities the carrier made his meagre
living by rising every morning at 3:30 and
going his rounds by dark, looking forward
to the first day of the New Year as the one
137
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
that would bring him temporary affluence
through the sale of " the carrier's address "
to his patrons.
This was usually a pretty bad poem set
within a rude border and drearily reciting the
troubles of the vendor. Sometimes a kindly
editor or budding genius penned the rhymes
with real merit. But the idea of pushing the
paper was usually beneath the dignity of the
ownership. Even such a great seller of news
as James Gordon Bennett, the elder, made
the reader hunt for his paper.
In the evening field the carrier also con-
trolled the distribution, such as it was, with a
moderate street sale " down town."
In considering the vast distribution of the
modern evening newspaper it seems incredi-
ble that this is a growth of less than thirty
years, and difficult to believe that evening
editions prospered in New York, Philadel-
phia, and Boston with circulations of from
four to ten thousand as late as 1880.
138
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
The first person to take the newspaper to
the reader with system and dispatch was
Victor F. Lawson, of the Chicago Daily
News, who established delivery points and
routes throughout the city with a thorough-
ness that led to an impregnable hold upon
the newspaper readers of that city. There
are two classes of papers — both successful —
one a creation of steady routine and a regular
pressure for sale; the other dealing in ideas
and making the most of events. Both suc-
ceed, but the first is the easiest to produce
and the most expensive to handle, for all
depends upon close and systematic delivery.
The reader does not seek the paper; the
paper lets no possible reader escape. The
Chicago News, the Philadelphia Bulletin,
and the Kansas City Star are conspicuous
examples of this type. The newspaper of
ideas and expression depends more upon the
passing throng and on aroused public inter-
139
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
est. It is much more subject to fluctuations
of sale than the routine type and requires far
greater energy and outlay in its editorial
production.
The cost of city delivery is very great,
fully one-half of the return from the retailer
going into the charge for delivering his sup-
plies. In the majority of cases a large loss
over the return is shown in white paper,
which must be met by advertising revenue — •
in a number of instances subtracting 20 or
more cents per line from this source to over-
come the aggregate expense, leaving the ex-
cess on the net rate to provide the hard-
earned profits.
Newspaper distribution in America is well
organized only in spots. The perfection of
system may be found in France where the
Paris newspapers enjoy a nationwide circu-
lation, due to the efficiency of their agents in
the cities and towns of the provinces. Paris
140
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
is a centre in a small country, no part of
which is well out of reach of a reasonable
time for delivery. This, coupled with the fact
that the Paris paper is really more of a publi-
cation than a news carrier, which extends the
life of its contents, accounts for the great cir-
culations of Le Matin, Le Petit Parisien,
Le Journal and Le Petit Journal. A Paris
morning newspaper of large circulation
starts its presses late in the afternoon and
runs continuously on various editions until
4: 00A.M.
In France, too, another factor is found,
lacking in America, and that is plenty of
reliable circulators willing to work for the
small profit from the sale of the newspapers.
A few extra francs a week will engage good
service by a capable man who regards the
addition to his income as a valuable asset.
He can be relied upon to do his work
properly. In America for the most part the
141
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
paper is at the mercy of boys who may or
may not come to time ; who dread the cold or
wet day, or dislike early rising, and are poor
collectors of money due them, and in turn
fail their employers.
The rural free delivery has done much for
newspaper distribution in the West, but is of
little service in the East. The post-office re-
gards second-class matter as an unprofitable
burden and does not permit the carrier to
deliver newspapers from addressed copies,
but insists that each shall be separately
wrapped and directed, thus greatly increas-
ing the work of sorting for the rural routes.
Papers can be sent in bulk to a post-office
with the name of the subscriber stamped on
each copy, but if meant to go out by carrier
in the country, must be " singles."
Thus cost is increased and convenience
vexed on a theory that if a carrier were
allowed to receive papers in bulk, delivering
142
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
and collecting, he might become attached to
the newspaper offering the best rewards, and
so operate unfairly against others.
No such difficulty exists in Germany
where the post-office takes over to an extent
the functions of a newsdealer, orders publi-
cations direct from the publisher, pays the
charges and collects from the subscriber.
This has the disadvantage of government
control of circulation that might in season be
applied to the crushing of an offensive sheet.
The French system of direct dealing with
an agent of the publisher's own choosing is
therefore the nearest to safety and good ser-
vice. Of late years, with their keenness for
comprehending its earning power, the He-
brew immigrants have seized the news trade
with its percentage of from 25 to 40 per cent,
of profit and have stabilized it to a degree,
making possible the abolition of the waste of
" returns " from unsold papers and giving
143
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
an attention to business such as the shifting,
uncertain boy could never be made to apply.
The subscriber, once the mainstay of the
newspaper, is now the least of its supporters.
The papers with the largest circulations usu-
ally have the smallest subscription lists. The
New York morning newspaper with the
greatest output has less than 10,000 names
on its mail galleys. Dailies making a
specialty of financial, business or shipping
jiews rule larger in direct relationship, but
the convenience of the delivery by dealer, and
the doing away with the need of advance
payments, has cut out the " old subscriber,"
who felt that he had almost a proprietary
interest in his paper and at times asserted
this belief most disagreeably, as for instance
the one who wrote Horace Greeley, fiercely
demanding that he " stop " the Tribune in-
stantly. This Mr. Greeley meekly declined
to do. No paper ever felt the wrath of the
144
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
subscriber so heavily as did the founder of
the Tribune. When he went bail for Jeffer-
son Davis his weekly list was decimated and
his daily received a curtailment from which it
never rallied in his time. The indignant sub-
scribers refused to take the paper from the
post-office, and, following the custom at the
period, when the postage was collected from
the addressee, the P. O. sent back the un-
claimed copies by the cart load.
Catering to the subscriber has therefore
ceased to be a newspaper weakness. The
old-fashioned publisher who lived on his
mail list was in perpetual terror and often
unduly influenced by the complaints of the
man who sent in his remittance yearly. Now
the relations are impersonal and the paper's
success depends upon its command of inter-
est, instead of opinion.
A very famous newspaper in an eastern
city changed hands after a long stay as the
10 145
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
Swindling support of an estate. From first
place it had slipped to sixth in circulation!
It. had J long followed the trend of "the 'sub*
scriber and repelled new ideas. The pur*
chaser took a census of his 14,000 readers and
found their average age *vas 64 years ! Some
radical steps reduced the average age to 34
years and multiplied the number by five!
Before the day of the modern circulation
manager, no daily newspaper resorted to ad*-
vertising itself, except by the annual pros-
pectus put out through the country weeklies
in return, for an " exchange " at the New
Year. Then, in 1891, a newspaper cir-
culation was made almost over night by
spectacular advertising. The New York
Recorder, started in February of that year,
acquired an excellent following through the
fact that James B. Duke, with the thrill of
success upon him as a tobacco merchant,
seized the platforms of the elevated roads, to
146
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
carry great poster^ announcing the new
arrival in city journalism. That the paper
failed later was due not to its advertising
basis, but to editorial weaknesses, following
loss of interest in the property by its owners.
The circulation manager who would push
his paper to success will find powerful adver-
tising an efficient aid. Lord Northcliff e once
told me that he had successfully launched six
weeklies in London on varied versions of
" East Lynne," using dramatic posters to
herald the coming of each sheet!
The early weekly " story " papers, now
eclipsed by the popular monthlies, were
" lifted " by advertising. Robert Bonner, of
the New York Ledger, taught the trick.
His advertisements were often a page in size
and mainly reiterations of a single sentence
or two. His favorite device was to buy a
page in the New York Herald, letting the
cost be known, with the result of a never-
147
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
failing rise. But of course he always had
something to sell I
Patrick and Stephen Farrelly, the makers
of the American News Company, were boys
in the circulation department of the Ledger.
Its office was at the corner of Spruce and
William streets, New York. When Henry
Ward Beecher's novel "Norwood" appeared
in the Ledger, after the sensational an-
nouncements described, a line of New York-
ers reaching from Broadway and Ann
Streets, and winding through the interme-
diary blocks would form on publication
mornings, eager to secure the first copies
containing the rather mediocre tale!
Mr. Artemus Ward once burlesqued
Ledger advertising in this fashion :
It is the all-firedest paper ever printed.
It is the all-firedest paper ever printed. v
It is the all-firedest paper ever printed.
It is the all-firedest paper ever printed.
148
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
It's the cussedest best paper in the world.
It's the cussedest best paper in the world.
It's the cussedest best paper in the world.
It's the cussedest best paper in the world.
It's a moral paper.
It's a moral paper.
It's a moral paper.
It's a moral paper.
Sold at all the corner groceries.
Sold at all the corner groceries.
Sold at all the corner groceries.
Sold at all the corner groceries.
All of which went to the Ledger's
advantage !
Some delusions in circulation departments
cost the owners dear. One of these is that
the dealers sell the paper, whereas the public
buy. Much money has been wasted in sub-
sidies, free stands and unsalable copies that
might have gone profitably into better mat-
ter and swifter deliveries. The excuse for
this hideous waste of " returns," meaning the
taking back of papers for which there is no
149
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
demand, is " representation " — a belief that
the advertiser will feel that the particular
paper is not " circulated " because it is not
visible on news-stands long after the selling
period has passed. If the advertiser is really
thinking very deeply on the subject it must
occur to him that a pile of unsold papers in-
dicates considerable lack of interest in their
contents!
With a daily consumption of news print
aggregating 5000 tons an average return of
ten per cent, means 500 tons per day of
waste, or to put it more potently the needless
sacrifice of the spruce trees on fifty acres of
land ! Financially it figures $20,000 a day in
money loss to the press !
The successful papers in New York and
a few other cities are nonreturnable, but the
evil exists almost universally and is one of
the greatest pilferers of newspaper earnings.
The average editor is apt to think that if
150
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
his paper is not " represented " in this fash-
ion its circulation is being neglected. The
real reason for unsold heaps is a poor paper.
The managing editor of a great New York
daily, that had successfully cut off returns,
complained to the manager that he was un-
able to get the morning edition at Fifty-
ninth Street and Eighth Avenue.
" What time was it? " he was asked.
" About eleven o'clock! "
" Well," was the reply, " if I ever hear that
you can buy this paper at that hour we'll get
a new managing editor! "
Which epitomizes the point!
THE COUNTRY PAPER
AMERICA is the fertile home of the rural
press. Nowhere in the world can be found
so many communities provided with one or
more " local " newspapers, devoted to telling
the neighbors what is going on about and
among themselves. There are about 20,000
151
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
rural weeklies in the United States con-
ducted with varying degrees of enterprise
and profit, but all of immeasurable benefit
in the way of disseminating intelligence and
keeping their public informed.
It is a field that should keep at least
100,000 persons well and comfortably em-
ployed and afford an annual opening for
new talent of respectable proportions. The
editor and owner is usually one of the work-
men, more or less desultorily employed, often
a printer who has added a paper to the prod-
ucts of his shop and content if he can glean
" journeyman's " wages out of the enter-
prise. Occasionally he is a politician who has
felt the call, or a clergyman who has failed
to preach himself into a prosperous pulpit,
or a lawyer who has not met expectations at
the bar. Too often in the past he has been a
man who failed at other things and turned
to " editing " as a last resort. This has pro-
152
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
duced a large mortality in the country press,
much of it undeserved, if the publisher could
have had a little training in business or edi-
torial lines, instead of drifting into the busi-
ness. But as drifting is the American way
it has to be put up with. It seems, though,
that a more correct sense of destination is
arising through the growing prosperity of
the country and a greater appreciation of the
value of the rural press.
Life in the office of the small weekly means
a chance to do almost everything that can be
done; in making a newspaper. If it is done
well and with diligence, profit must ensue, a
profit quite comparable with the returns paid
the lawyer, doctor or other professional man
of the country town.
There is no better property to own nor a
more pleasant life to lead than that which
should go with editing a country newspaper.
It is a common jest to speak of the " poor "
153
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
editor. Editors sometimes lend themselves
to the idea. No editor in any good American
town of two thousand inhabitants ought to
be poor, going by local standards, if he will
follow these lines and guide his course
accordingly :
1. Run his paper entirely as a newspaper.
Do not meddle in politics of any sort. Do not
try to improve the community any faster
than it wants to be improved and do not
borrow money of your advertisers or any
so-called " leading citizens." Get it of the
bank, which is nonpartisan and only wants
interest in return for the money.
2. Have no editorials unless they be little
elaborations of facts. The tendency to blow
the bugle is almost irresistible if the horn is
handy.
3. Get a good correspondent in every
town, big or little, in your territory and
print what he writes so long as he does not lie
154
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
or insult anybody. Do not edit his English,
even if a little twisted; it hurts his feel-
ings and makes his meaning obscure to his
neighbors. This is one of the secrets of
keeping country correspondents and getting
good out of them. They are invaluable.
4. Don't do your work or your advertis-
ing for nothing. Remember that as a rule
you have a monopoly of the field. When the
agent sends ten dollars in cash for fifty
dollars' worth of advertising, and the pub-
lisher prints it because he does not know
when he will see ten dollars again, he makes
a great mistake. Nobody can make money
by doing fifty dollars' worth of business for
ten, dollars, and in accepting the ten the
publisher establishes a rate that he will never
be able to increase on the foreign list because
in making quotations against rivals the fa-
vored agent is always able to hold the field.
5. The small community is a sensitive
155
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
community. The editorial lash cuts it more
deeply than any blow that can be dealt. Lay
low and print the news. This does not mean
that a man need be a coward or a sneak
because he runs a country paper. It means
that the community does not require his ad-
vice or his guidance and that when he tries
to sell them something they do not want he
makes a mistake. They do want the news
and they will always pay for it.
6. The country " items " are often
laughed at, but no greater error could be
made than to belittle their importance.
They are the life of the paper, and however
trivial, often give the most pleasure to that
very valuable " single seal " list of subscrib-
ers who pay in advance and who, scattered
all over the world, want all the news from
"home."
7. There is " interest " in almost every-
thing that happens, could you but find it, as
156
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
you must to be a successful maker of news-
papers. Above all, be particular to print
the things about which your constituency
is already informed by personal contact.
Nothing is so interesting as to read about an
event we have seen wholly or in part. The
reader likes to compare the printed report
with his own recollection. He wants to
know if the reporter saw the dog bite the
boy.
The simple art of house painting fur-
nishes many items that are laughed at, but
often they please the subscriber and interest
the neighborhood. Births, deaths and mar-
riages should be carefully collected and
scandals avoided in a country paper. Little
headlines help. Most country editors pay
too little attention to attractive make-up.
Careful job printing, careful setting of ad-
vertisements, promptness in getting out
work, are prime requisites for success.
157
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
8. Be careful of your collections. When
people get so they call you by your first
name it is hard to collect from them. Don't
let bills run. All pay out and no pay in
leads to borrowing, and borrowing leads to
ruin.
9. In keeping books charge up a fair sum
for the value of your own services. Don't
assume that your share of the labor is
"thrown in" just because you happen to
own the plant. Charge up the rent to the
business even if you own the building. Un-
reckoned overhead has ruined many a
printer or kept him poor. In this way you
can establish the true cost of operating and
maintain proper prices for job work and
advertising. Keep track of the earning
power of all the items that enter into the
working of the shop. Don't run presses " to
pay the help." Run them to pay the boss.
10. Don't take a back seat in business
158
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
affairs. The newspaper is the life-centre of
the town — its throbbing heart. The suc-
cessful newspaper breeds a successful town.
It should not place itself in the position of
begging support. The town needs the news-
paper more than the newspaper needs the
town. The vitality of modern life does not
give time for word of mouth to circulate.
The newspaper is the spokesman, the stimu-
lator, the unifier, the only friend of the com-
munity at large.
The small city daily has become in most
instances an extremely profitable enterprise.
There has been in the first sixteen years of
the century a great advance in the appear-
ance and contents of the minor town dailies*
far more, if the truth be told, than in their
metropolitan competitors. Indeed, so strong
a barrier have the " country " dailies formed
that the dream of a " national " daily can
only be a dream! The country editor now
159
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
leaves little to be awaited for beyond opinion
from his metropolitan brothers. Cities of
20,000 or even less produce one or two
papers of undeniable quality. In Ohio, the
Associated Dailies represent a membership
of 120, all prosperous and potential in their
cities, earning from $10,000 to $35,000 a year
each for their owners in many instances, and
affording great benefits to their towns. The
country daily is the best defender the local
merchant has from the city and mail order
competitor, if he will but use it as he should.
Cooperation is at the bottom of the suc-
cess of the modern small city daily. It en-
joys a membership in the great Associated
Press, or can subscribe to the commercially
managed United, or International, Press
services. These three give the publisher the
best of everything, in crisp, and usually well-
digested form, ready for the compositor.
Numerous syndicates, either independent, or
160
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
newspapers selling their by-products, afford
" features " of interest and a competent sup-
ply of pictures. The editor does not have to
be behind the age in anything. This leaves
him free to garner and winnow local news
where he is beyond the competition of the
metropolis. By the same process of locali-
zation the large paper becomes more and
more local and has a general appeal only so
far as events in a big centre have an inter-
est greater than a similar occurrence in
Poughkeepsie. There are limits to the size
at which a paper of large circulation can be
published and these lead it to discard every-
thing but the essentials if it is to be success-
fully produced. This makes it impossible,
even if early delivery were feasible, which is
limited by time and distance, to "cover"
local events in competition with the home
paper.
We are becoming more and more " local "
11 161
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
in everything in America, even though we
travel more and know more. The " home "
town is the place we think about and
" home " affairs engross far beyond those of
the state or the nation, as was once the case.
There has been a sharp reverse in this respect
from the days when Mr. Bennett thought
it would be a great card to break the
monopoly enjoyed by three Washington
papers for printing the debates of Congress
and offered to do it without a subsidy, in
which purpose, fortunately for the Herald,
he was defeated, and so had to keep on print-
ing things that would interest New Yorkers.
It is difficult to get any inkling of what in-
dividual Congressmen are now doing through
the city press and the Metropolitan papers
pay little or no attention to the doings at
the State Capitals — unless scandal breeds.
The country daily has, therefore, a free
and valuable opening for making up this re-
162
THE NEWSPAPER TRADE
mission. It can look out for its district in
the halls of legislation for all local values
and still supply its readers with the news of
the world at large.
Circulations of from 5000 to 20,000 are the
rule. As the cost of production has grown
with size, it has killed the old four-page,
cheaply made newspaper, and so reduced the
number of publications in many towns, to the
general advantage. These were usually
papers of opinion. They have been suc-
ceeded by papers of purpose. Towns of
25,000 to 40,000 population, with one morn-
ing and one evening newspaper, are well sup-
plied and not overloaded. The tax on the
advertiser and reader is reasonable and the
profits to the publisher sure.
14 DAY USE
RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED
LOAN DEPT.
This book is due on the last date stamped below, or
on the date to which renewed.
Renewed books are subject to immediate recall.
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