the fastest rotary presses. The field of political caricature had heretofore belonged exclusively to the weekly papers, but the great dailies now seized upon it, and commanded the service of the cleverest caricaturists. Newspapers found a way to put the “half-tone” etching of a photograph, such as had heretofore been printed only on slow flat presses, bodily into the stereotype plate for the great quadruple and octuple presses; and thereafter portraits and photographs of important groups on notable occasions began to appear, embodied in the text describing the occurrences, a few hours after the camera had been turned on them, in papers printed at the rate of thirty and forty thousand an hour. In this development of illustrated daily journalism America rapidly went far beyond other countries.
News agencies multiplied and gave cheaper service. The New York Associated Press had been the chief agency for the whole country. It admitted new customers with great caution, and its refusal to admit was almost prohibitory, while its withdrawal of news from established papers was practically fatal. It was owned by the leading New York journals. Their disagreements led to the success of a rival, the United Press. The New York Associated Press finally dissolved, most of the New York members became connected with the United Press, and many of their Western and Southern clients organized the Associated Press of Illinois, more nearly on a mutual plan. The United Press finally failed, and most of its New York members went into the Associated Press of Illinois, which in turn was forced into plans for reorganization by decisions of Illinois courts against its rules for confining its services to its own members. One result of these successive changes was to encourage new papers by making it easy for them to secure a comprehensive news service, and thus to threaten the value of the old papers. Another was the struggle to increase the volume of the service, leading to reports of multitudes of occurrences formerly left without notice in the great news centres, and extension of agencies into the remotest hamlets, and less scrupulous care in the consideration and preparation of the reports filed at many points for transmission. News syndicates for special purposes also developed, as well as small news associations, sometimes with a service sufficient for the wants of many papers. The almost official authenticity which the public formerly attributed to an Associated Press despatch measurably declined; and the dailies found more difficulty in sifting and deciding upon the news that came to them, and incurred more individual responsibility for what they printed.
The great accumulation of private fortunes also changed the newspapers. Millionaires came to think it advantageous to own newspapers, openly or secretly, which could be conducted without reference to direct profits, for the sake primarily of political, social or business considerations. To secure large circulations for such enterprises they were willing to sell the paper for long periods at much below the cost of manufacture, and to spend money for news and writers more lavishly than the legitimate business of established journals would allow. Great business corporations seeking for favourable or fearing adverse legislation sometimes made secret newspaper investments for the same purpose.
These various new conditions, affecting the newspaper press of the United States with ever-increasing force, gradually changed the average .character of the papers and their effect upon their readers. A large circulation became the only evidence of success and the only way to make the sale of a newspaper below cost ultimately a source of profit. A disposition to lower the character in order to catch the largest audience naturally followed. Criminal news was reported more fully than formerly, with more piquant details. Competitors outdid each other in the effort to treat all news with unprecedented sensationalism. The lowest possible price was regarded as essential to the largest possible circulation, and so a favourite price even for large newspapers became one cent to the public, and consequently only half a cent to the publishers, whose business was practically all at wholesale with dealers and news companies. The feeling that the most must be given for the money prompted also the great increase in size, only made possible by the reductions in paper, composition, presswork, &c., already noted. Yet mere quantity and mere sensation after a time palled on the jaded appetite, and the spice of intense personality became necessary. As most people like to see their names in print, and can bear criticism of their neighbours with composure, these two chords of human nature were incessantly played upon.
The principal feature in the development of modern newspapers
is the importance attached to obtaining, and prominently
displaying, “news” of all sorts, and incidentally
there has been a considerable change of view as to what
sort of news should be given prominence. Sport and
finance are treated at greater length and more popularly;
Characteristics
of modern newspapers.
and, partly owing to the largely increased
number of papers and consequent greater competition, partly
to a desire to appeal to the larger public, which is now able to
read and ready to buy reading-matter, there has been a tendency
to follow the tastes of the vast number of people who can read
at all rather than of those to whom reading means a very
high standard of literary and intellectual enjoyment. This has
involved a more popular form of presenting news, not only in
a less literary style and by the presentation of “tit-bits” of
information with an appeal to cruder sentiments, but also in a
more liberal use of headlines and of similar devices for catching
the eye of the reader. “Personal journalism,” i.e. paragraphs
about the private life or personal appearance of individuals—either
men or women—of note or notoriety in society or public
affairs, has become far more marked; and in this respect, as
in many others, encouragement has been given to a spirit of
inquisitiveness, and also to a widespread inclination either to
flatter or be oneself flattered, the latter desire being indeed conspicuously
prevalent in these “democratic days” even among
the classes which once affected to despise such publicity.
The modern impulse, culminating in England in the last decade of the 19th century in what was then called the “New Journalism,” was a direct product of American conditions and ways of life, but in Great Britain it was also the result of the democratic movement produced by the Education Act of 1870 and the Reform Act of 1885; and it affected more or less all countries which came within the influence of free institutions. The most generally adopted American innovation (for, though not known before even in England, it was practically a new thing as carried out in American newspapers) was the “interview” (the report in dialogue form of a conversation with some prominent person, whose views were thus elicited by a reporter), which during the early ’nineties was taken up in varying degrees by English newspapers; it was “cheap copy”—the word “copy” covering in journalistic slang any matter in the shape of an article—and could easily be made both informing and interesting; and “interviewing” caused a large increase in the journalistic profession, notably among women. The rage for the “interview” again declined in vogue outside American journalism in proportion as people of importance became less ready to talk for publication—or for nothing.
From the highest class of paper downwards, however, real news—and especially early news—has been more and more sought after, and all the force of organization both within individual newspaper offices and outside them in the shape of news agencies, has been applied to the purpose of obtaining early news and publishing it as quickly as possible. In this matter the Press has certainly been helped most materially not only by the advance in telegraphic facilities (see Reporting) but by all the other new rapid methods of production in Typesetting (see Typography) and Press-work (see Printing) which have been the feature of the modern period. The vastly increased amount of telegraphic work now done has perhaps not been all pure gain to the best sort of journalism. It has to some extent weakened the effect of the considered article, and led to hasty conclusions and precipitate publication, with results that sometimes cannot be compensated for by any later contradiction or modification. In some cases a reaction ensued. Take for instance the case of war correspondence. The prestige of the
