Produced by David Widger
By Charles Dudley Warner
Our theme for the hour is the American Newspaper. It is a subject inwhich everybody is interested, and about which it is not polite to saythat anybody is not well informed; for, although there are scatteredthrough the land many persons, I am sorry to say, unable to pay for anewspaper, I have never yet heard of anybody unable to edit one.
The topic has many points of view, and invites various study and comment.In our limited time we must select one only. We have heard a great dealabout the power, the opportunity, the duty, the "mission," of the press.The time has come for a more philosophical treatment of it, for aninquiry into its relations to our complex civilization, for some ethicalaccount of it as one of the developments of our day, and for somediscussion of the effect it is producing, and likely to produce, on theeducation of the people. Has the time come, or is it near at hand, whenwe can point to a person who is alert, superficial, ready and shallow,self-confident and half-informed, and say, "There is a product of theAmerican newspaper"? The newspaper is not a willful creation, nor anisolated phenomenon, but the legitimate outcome of our age, as much asour system of popular education. And I trust that some competent observerwill make, perhaps for this association, a philosophical study of it. Mytask here is a much humbler one. I have thought that it may not beunprofitable to treat the newspaper from a practical and even somewhatmechanical point of view.
The newspaper is a private enterprise. Its object is to make money forits owner. Whatever motive may be given out for starting a newspaper,expectation of profit by it is the real one, whether the newspaper isreligious, political, scientific, or literary. The exceptional cases ofnewspapers devoted to ideas or "causes" without regard to profit are sofew as not to affect the rule. Commonly, the cause, the sect, the party,the trade, the delusion, the idea, gets its newspaper, its organ, itsadvocate, only when some individual thinks he can see a pecuniary returnin establishing it.
This motive is not lower than that which leads people into any otheroccupation or profession. To make a living, and to have a career, is theoriginal incentive in all cases. Even in purely philanthropicalenterprises the driving-wheel that keeps them in motion for any length oftime is the salary paid the working members. So powerful is thisincentive that sometimes the wheel will continue to turn round when thereis no grist to grind. It sometimes happens that the friction of thephilanthropic machinery is so great that but very little power istransmitted to the object for which the machinery was made. I knew adevoted agent of the American Colonization Society, who, for severalyears, collected in Connecticut just enough, for the cause, to buy hisclothes, and pay his board at a good hotel.
It is scarcely necessary to say, except to prevent a possiblemisapprehension, that the editor who has no high ideals, no intention ofbenefiting his fellow-men by his newspaper, and uses it unscrupulously asa means of money-making only, sinks to the level of the physician and thelawyer who have no higher conception of their callings than that theyoffer opportunities for getting money by appeals to credulity, and byassisting in evasions of the law.
If the excellence of a newspaper is not always measured by itsprofitableness, it is generally true that, if it does not pay its owner,it is valueless to the public. Not all newspapers which make money aregood, for some succeed by catering to the lowest tastes of respectablepeople, and to