Marie Corelli - "Ardath"

Horatio Alger [supposed] - "Nothing to Eat"

Jane Austen - "Pride and Prejudice"

Emile Souvestre - "An Attic Philosopher, v1"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Public Opinion

W >> Walter Lippmann >> Public Opinion




The democratic fallacy has been its preoccupation with the origin of
government rather than with the processes and results. The democrat
has always assumed that if political power could be derived in the
right way, it would be beneficent. His whole attention has been on the
source of power, since he is hypnotized by the belief that the great
thing is to express the will of the people, first because expression
is the highest interest of man, and second because the will is
instinctively good. But no amount of regulation at the source of a
river will completely control its behavior, and while democrats have
been absorbed in trying to find a good mechanism for originating
social power, that is to say a good mechanism of voting and
representation, they neglected almost every other interest of men. For
no matter how power originates, the crucial interest is in how power
is exercised. What determines the quality of civilization is the use
made of power. And that use cannot be controlled at the source.

If you try to control government wholly at the source, you inevitably
make all the vital decisions invisible. For since there is no instinct
which automatically makes political decisions that produce a good
life, the men who actually exercise power not only fail to express the
will of the people, because on most questions no will exists, but they
exercise power according to opinions which are hidden from the
electorate.

If, then, you root out of the democratic philosophy the whole
assumption in all its ramifications that government is instinctive,
and that therefore it can be managed by self-centered opinions, what
becomes of the democratic faith in the dignity of man? It takes a
fresh lease of life by associating itself with the whole personality
instead of with a meager aspect of it. For the traditional democrat
risked the dignity of man on one very precarious assumption, that he
would exhibit that dignity instinctively in wise laws and good
government. Voters did not do that, and so the democrat was forever
being made to look a little silly by tough-minded men. But if, instead
of hanging human dignity on the one assumption about self-government,
you insist that man's dignity requires a standard of living, in which
his capacities are properly exercised, the whole problem changes. The
criteria which you then apply to government are whether it is
producing a certain minimum of health, of decent housing, of material
necessities, of education, of freedom, of pleasures, of beauty, not
simply whether at the sacrifice of all these things, it vibrates to
the self-centered opinions that happen to be floating around in men's
minds. In the degree to which these criteria can be made exact and
objective, political decision, which is inevitably the concern of
comparatively few people, is actually brought into relation with the
interests of men.

There is no prospect, in any time which we can conceive, that the
whole invisible environment will be so clear to all men that they will
spontaneously arrive at sound public opinions on the whole business of
government. And even if there were a prospect, it is extremely
doubtful whether many of us would wish to be bothered, or would take
the time to form an opinion on "any and every form of social action"
which affects us. The only prospect which is not visionary is that
each of us in his own sphere will act more and more on a realistic
picture of the invisible world, and that we shall develop more and
more men who are expert in keeping these pictures realistic. Outside
the rather narrow range of our own possible attention, social control
depends upon devising standards of living and methods of audit by
which the acts of public officials and industrial directors are
measured. We cannot ourselves inspire or guide all these acts, as the
mystical democrat has always imagined. But we can steadily increase
our real control over these acts by insisting that all of them shall
be plainly recorded, and their results objectively measured. I should
say, perhaps, that we can progressively hope to insist. For the
working out of such standards and of such audits has only begun.




PART VII

NEWSPAPERS

CHAPTER XXI. THE BUYING PUBLIC
" XXII. THE CONSTANT READER
" XXIII. THE NATURE OF NEWS
" XXIV. NEWS, TRUTH, AND A CONCLUSION




CHAPTER XXI

THE BUYING PUBLIC

1

THE idea that men have to go forth and study the world in order to
govern it, has played a very minor part in political thought. It could
figure very little, because the machinery for reporting the world in
any way useful to government made comparatively little progress from
the time of Aristotle to the age in which the premises of democracy
were established.

Therefore, if you had asked a pioneer democrat where the information
was to come from on which the will of the people was to be based, he
would have been puzzled by the question. It would have seemed a little
as if you had asked him where his life or his soul came from. The will
of the people, he almost always assumed, exists at all times; the duty
of political science was to work out the inventions of the ballot and
representative government. If they were properly worked out and
applied under the right conditions, such as exist in the
self-contained village or the self-contained shop, the mechanism would
somehow overcome the brevity of attention which Aristotle had
observed, and the narrowness of its range, which the theory of a
self-contained community tacitly acknowledged. We have seen how even
at this late date the guild socialists are transfixed by the notion
that if only you can build on the right unit of voting and
representation, an intricate cooperative commonwealth is possible.

Convinced that the wisdom was there if only you could find it,
democrats have treated the problem of making public opinions as a
problem in civil liberties. [Footnote: The best study is Prof.
Zechariah Chafee's, _Freedom of Speech_.] "Who ever knew Truth
put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?" [Footnote: Milton,
_Areopagitica_, cited at the opening of Mr. Chafee's book. For
comment on this classic doctrine of liberty as stated by Milton, John
Stuart Mill, and Mr. Bertrand Russel, see my _Liberty and the
News_, Ch. II.] Supposing that no one has ever seen it put to the
worse, are we to believe then that the truth is generated by the
encounter, like fire by rubbing two sticks? Behind this classic
doctrine of liberty, which American democrats embodied in their Bill
of Rights, there are, in fact, several different theories of the
origin of truth. One is a faith that in the competition of opinions,
the truest will win because there is a peculiar strength in the truth.
This is probably sound if you allow the competition to extend over a
sufficiently long time. When men argue in this vein they have in mind
the verdict of history, and they think specifically of heretics
persecuted when they lived, canonized after they were dead. Milton's
question rests also on a belief that the capacity to recognize truth
is inherent in all men, and that truth freely put in circulation will
win acceptance. It derives no less from the experience, which has
shown that men are not likely to discover truth if they cannot speak
it, except under the eye of an uncomprehending policeman.

No one can possibly overestimate the practical value of these civil
liberties, nor the importance of maintaining them. When they are in
jeopardy, the human spirit is in jeopardy, and should there come a
time when they have to be curtailed, as during a war, the suppression
of thought is a risk to civilization which might prevent its recovery
from the effects of war, if the hysterics, who exploit the necessity,
were numerous enough to carry over into peace the taboos of war.
Fortunately, the mass of men is too tolerant long to enjoy the
professional inquisitors, as gradually, under the criticism of men not
willing to be terrorized, they are revealed as mean-spirited creatures
who nine-tenths of the time do not know what they are talking
about. [Footnote: _Cf._ for example, the publications of the Lusk
Committee in New York, and the public statements and prophecies of Mr.
Mitchell Palmer, who was Attorney-General of the United States during
the period of President Wilson's illness.]

But in spite of its fundamental importance, civil liberty in this
sense does not guarantee public opinion in the modern world. For it
always assumes, either that truth is spontaneous, or that the means of
securing truth exist when there is no external interference. But when
you are dealing with an invisible environment, the assumption is
false. The truth about distant or complex matters is not self-evident,
and the machinery for assembling information is technical and
expensive. Yet political science, and especially democratic political
science, has never freed itself from the original assumption of
Aristotle's politics sufficiently to restate the premises, so that
political thought might come to grips with the problem of how to make
the invisible world visible to the citizens of a modern state.

So deep is the tradition, that until quite recently, for example,
political science was taught in our colleges as if newspapers did not
exist. I am not referring to schools of journalism, for they are trade
schools, intended to prepare men and women for a career. I am
referring to political science as expounded to future business men,
lawyers, public officials, and citizens at large. In that science a
study of the press and the sources of popular information found no
place. It is a curious fact. To anyone not immersed in the routine
interests of political science, it is almost inexplicable that no
American student of government, no American sociologist, has ever
written a book on news-gathering. There are occasional references to
the press, and statements that it is not, or that it ought to be,
"free" and "truthful." But I can find almost nothing else. And this
disdain of the professionals finds its counterpart in public opinions.
Universally it is admitted that the press is the chief means of
contact with the unseen environment. And practically everywhere it is
assumed that the press should do spontaneously for us what primitive
democracy imagined each of us could do spontaneously for himself, that
every day and twice a day it will present us with a true picture of
all the outer world in which we are interested.

2

This insistent and ancient belief that truth is not earned, but
inspired, revealed, supplied gratis, comes out very plainly in our
economic prejudices as readers of newspapers. We expect the newspaper
to serve us with truth however unprofitable the truth may be. For this
difficult and often dangerous service, which we recognize as
fundamental, we expected to pay until recently the smallest coin
turned out by the mint. We have accustomed ourselves now to paying two
and even three cents on weekdays, and on Sundays, for an illustrated
encyclopedia and vaudeville entertainment attached, we have screwed
ourselves up to paying a nickel or even a dime. Nobody thinks for a
moment that he ought to pay for his newspaper. He expects the
fountains of truth to bubble, but he enters into no contract, legal or
moral, involving any risk, cost or trouble to himself. He will pay a
nominal price when it suits him, will stop paying whenever it suits
him, will turn to another paper when that suits him. Somebody has said
quite aptly that the newspaper editor has to be re-elected every day.

This casual and one-sided relationship between readers and press is an
anomaly of our civilization. There is nothing else quite like it, and
it is, therefore, hard to compare the press with any other business or
institution. It is not a business pure and simple, partly because the
product is regularly sold below cost, but chiefly because the
community applies one ethical measure to the press and another to
trade or manufacture. Ethically a newspaper is judged as if it were a
church or a school. But if you try to compare it with these you fail;
the taxpayer pays for the public school, the private school is endowed
or supported by tuition fees, there are subsidies and collections for
the church. You cannot compare journalism with law, medicine or
engineering, for in every one of these professions the consumer pays
for the service. A free press, if you judge by the attitude of the
readers, means newspapers that are virtually given away.

Yet the critics of the press are merely voicing the moral standards of
the community, when they expect such an institution to live on the
same plane as that on which the school, the church, and the
disinterested professions are supposed to live. This illustrates again
the concave character of democracy. No need for artificially acquired
information is felt to exist. The information must come naturally,
that is to say gratis, if not out of the heart of the citizen, then
gratis out of the newspaper. The citizen will pay for his telephone,
his railroad rides, his motor car, his entertainment. But he does not
pay openly for his news.

He will, however, pay handsomely for the privilege of having someone
read about him. He will pay directly to advertise. And he will pay
indirectly for the advertisements of other people, because that
payment, being concealed in the price of commodities is part of an
invisible environment that he does not effectively comprehend. It
would be regarded as an outrage to have to pay openly the price of a
good ice cream soda for all the news of the world, though the public
will pay that and more when it buys the advertised commodities. The
public pays for the press, but only when the payment is concealed.

3

Circulation is, therefore, the means to an end. It becomes an asset
only when it can be sold to the advertiser, who buys it with revenues
secured through indirect taxation of the reader. [Footnote: "An
established newspaper is entitled to fix its advertising rates so that
its net receipts from circulation may be left on the credit side of
the profit and loss account. To arrive at net receipts, I would deduct
from the gross the cost of promotion, distribution, and other expenses
incidental to circulation." From an address by Mr. Adolph S. Ochs,
publisher of _the New York Times,_ at the Philadelphia Convention
of the Associated Advertising Clubs of The World, June 26, 1916.
Cited, Elmer Davis, _History of The New York Times,_ 1851-1921,
pp. 397-398.] The kind of circulation which the advertiser will buy
depends on what he has to sell. It may be "quality" or "mass." On the
whole there is no sharp dividing line, for in respect to most
commodities sold by advertising, the customers are neither the small
class of the very rich nor the very poor. They are the people with
enough surplus over bare necessities to exercise discretion in their
buying. The paper, therefore, which goes into the homes of the fairly
prosperous is by and large the one which offers most to the
advertiser. It may also go into the homes of the poor, but except for
certain lines of goods, an analytical advertising agent does not rate
that circulation as a great asset, unless, as seems to be the case
with certain of Mr. Hearst's properties, the circulation is enormous.

A newspaper which angers those whom it pays best to reach through
advertisements is a bad medium for an advertiser. And since no one
ever claimed that advertising was philanthropy, advertisers buy space
in those publications which are fairly certain to reach their future
customers. One need not spend much time worrying about the unreported
scandals of the dry-goods merchants. They represent nothing really
significant, and incidents of this sort are less common than many
critics of the press suppose. The real problem is that the readers of
a newspaper, unaccustomed to paying the cost of newsgathering, can be
capitalized only by turning them into circulation that can be sold to
manufacturers and merchants. And those whom it is most important to
capitalize are those who have the most money to spend. Such a press is
bound to respect the point of view of the buying public. It is for
this buying public that newspapers are edited and published, for
without that support the newspaper cannot live. A newspaper can flout
an advertiser, it can attack a powerful banking or traction interest,
but if it alienates the buying public, it loses the one indispensable
asset of its existence.

Mr. John L. Given, [Footnote: _Making a Newspaper_, p. 13. This
is the best technical book I know, and should be read by everyone who
undertakes to discuss the press. Mr. G. B. Diblee, who wrote the
volume on _The Newspaper_ in the Home University Library says (p.
253), that "on the press for pressmen I only know of one good book,
Mr. Given's."] formerly of the New York Evening Sun, stated in 1914
that out of over two thousand three hundred dailies published in the
United States, there were about one hundred and seventy-five printed
in cities having over one hundred thousand inhabitants. These
constitute the press for "general news." They are the key papers which
collect the news dealing with great events, and even the people who do
not read any one of the one hundred and seventy-five depend ultimately
upon them for news of the outer world. For they make up the great
press associations which cooperate in the exchange of news. Each is,
therefore, not only the informant of its own readers, but it is the
local reporter for the newspapers of other cities. The rural press and
the special press by and large, take their general news from these key
papers. And among these there are some very much richer than others,
so that for international news, in the main, the whole press of the
nation may depend upon the reports of the press associations and the
special services of a few metropolitan dailies.

Roughly speaking, the economic support for general news gathering is
in the price paid for advertised goods by the fairly prosperous
sections of cities with more than one hundred thousand inhabitants.
These buying publics are composed of the members of families, who
depend for their income chiefly on trade, merchandising, the direction
of manufacture, and finance. They are the clientele among whom it pays
best to advertise in a newspaper. They wield a concentrated purchasing
power, which may be less in volume than the aggregate for farmers and
workingmen; but within the radius covered by a daily newspaper they
are the quickest assets.

4

They have, moreover, a double claim to attention. They are not only
the best customers for the advertiser, they include the advertisers.
Therefore the impression made by the newspapers on this public matters
deeply. Fortunately this public is not unanimous. It may be
"capitalistic" but it contains divergent views on what capitalism is,
and how it is to be run. Except in times of danger, this respectable
opinion is sufficiently divided to permit of considerable differences
of policy. These would be greater still if it were not that publishers
are themselves usually members of these urban communities, and
honestly see the world through the lenses of their associates and
friends.

They are engaged in a speculative business, [Footnote: Sometimes so
speculative that in order to secure credit the publisher has to go
into bondage to his creditors. Information on this point is very
difficult to obtain, and for that reason its general importance is
often much exaggerated.] which depends on the general condition of
trade, and more peculiarly on a circulation based not on a marriage
contract with their readers, but on free love. The object of every
publisher is, therefore, to turn his circulation from a medley of
catch-as-catch-can news stand buyers into a devoted band of constant
readers. A newspaper that can really depend upon the loyalty of its
readers is as independent as a newspaper can be, given the economics
of modern journalism. [Footnote: "It is an axiom in newspaper
publishing--'more readers, more independence of the influence of
advertisers; fewer readers and more dependence on the advertiser' It
may seem like a contradiction (yet it is the truth) to assert: the
greater the number of advertisers, the less influence they are
individually able to exercise with the publisher." Adolph S. Ochs,
_of. supra._] A body of readers who stay by it through thick and
thin is a power greater than any which the individual advertiser can
wield, and a power great enough to break up a combination of
advertisers. Therefore, whenever you find a newspaper betraying its
readers for the sake of an advertiser, you can be fairly certain
either that the publisher sincerely shares the views of the
advertiser, or that he thinks, perhaps mistakenly, he cannot count
upon the support of his readers if he openly resists dictation. It is
a question of whether the readers, who do not pay in cash for their
news, will pay for it in loyalty.




CHAPTER XXII

THE CONSTANT READER

I

THE loyalty of the buying public to a newspaper is not stipulated in
any bond. In almost every other enterprise the person who expects to
be served enters into an agreement that controls his passing whims. At
least he pays for what he obtains. In the publishing of periodicals
the nearest approach to an agreement for a definite time is the paid
subscription, and that is not, I believe, a great factor in the
economy of a metropolitan daily. The reader is the sole and the daily
judge of his loyalty, and there can be no suit against him for breach
of promise or nonsupport.

Though everything turns on the constancy of the reader, there does not
exist even a vague tradition to call that fact to the reader's mind.
His constancy depends on how he happens to feel, or on his habits. And
these depend not simply on the quality of the news, but more often on
a number of obscure elements that in our casual relation to the press,
we hardly take the trouble to make conscious. The most important of
these is that each of us tends to judge a newspaper, if we judge it at
all, by its treatment of that part of the news in which we feel
ourselves involved. The newspaper deals with a multitude of events
beyond our experience. But it deals also with some events within our
experience. And by its handling of those events we most frequently
decide to like it or dislike it, to trust it or refuse to have the
sheet in the house. If the newspaper gives a satisfactory account of
that which we think we know, our business, our church, our party, it
is fairly certain to be immune from violent criticism by us. What
better criterion does the man at the breakfast table possess than that
the newspaper version checks up with his own opinion? Therefore, most
men tend to hold the newspaper most strictly accountable in their
capacity, not of general readers, but of special pleaders on matters
of their own experience.

Rarely is anyone but the interested party able to test the accuracy of
a report. If the news is local, and if there is competition, the
editor knows that he will probably hear from the man who thinks his
portrait unfair and inaccurate. But if the news is not local, the
corrective diminishes as the subject matter recedes into the distance.
The only people who can correct what they think is a false picture of
themselves printed in another city are members of groups well enough
organized to hire publicity men.

Now it is interesting to note that the general reader of a newspaper
has no standing in law if he thinks he is being misled by the news. It
is only the aggrieved party who can sue for slander or libel, and he
has to prove a material injury to himself. The law embodies the
tradition that general news is not a matter of common concern,
[Footnote: The reader will not mistake this as a plea for censorship.
It might, however, be a good thing if there were competent tribunals,
preferably not official ones, where charges of untruthfulness and
unfairness in the general news could be sifted. _Cf. Liberty and the
News,_ pp. 73-76. ] except as to matter which is vaguely described
as immoral or seditious.

But the body of the news, though unchecked as a whole by the
disinterested reader, consists of items about which some readers have
very definite preconceptions. Those items are the data of his
judgment, and news which men read without this personal criterion,
they judge by some other standard than their standard of accuracy.
They are dealing here with a subject matter which to them is
indistinguishable from fiction. The canon of truth cannot be applied.
They do not boggle over such news if it conforms to their stereotypes,
and they continue to read it if it interests them. [Footnote: Note, for
example, how absent is indignation in Mr. Upton Sinclair against
socialist papers, even those which are as malignantly unfair to
employers as certain of the papers cited by him are unfair to
radicals.]

2

There are newspapers, even in large cities, edited on the principle
that the readers wish to read about themselves. The theory is that if
enough people see their own names in the paper often enough, can read
about their weddings, funerals, sociables, foreign travels, lodge
meetings, school prizes, their fiftieth birthdays, their sixtieth
birthdays, their silver weddings, their outings and clambakes, they
will make a reliable circulation.