Writing History 300-word Discussion Essay

University of Northern Iowa Newspaper Mass Production Author(syf 5 R \ : + R Z D U d Source: The North American Review, Vol. 225, No. 842 (Apr., 1928yf S S 4 Published by: University of Northern Iowa Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25110468 Accessed: 16-02-2017 23:35 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms University of Northern Iowa is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The North American Review This content downloaded from 129.25.131.235 on Thu, 16 Feb 2017 23:35:13 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms NEWSPAPER MASS PRODUCTION BY ROY W. HOWARD As a nation we Americans love to be menaced. Like poor re lations, menaces are something we have with us always. Life would scarcely be complete without them?normalcy would be impossible. And we must have variety, for menaces, those of the sort which threaten our life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi ness, are ephemeral. Their vogue is for the most part short lived, and styles change. We newspaper men know. The truth compels admission that, taken by and large, we have been rather frequent menace merchandisers ourselves in times past and pres ent. Now we are by way of being hoist on our own petard. The very latest thing in national menaces is the "chain" or group operation of newspapers. You have probably never felt the menace?and you more probably never will?but you are cer tainly destined to hear a great deal about it in the immediate future. Two thousand daily newspapers in the United States are concerned. Some are proponents of the idea, some are oppo nents, but all are interested, because the group operation idea is obviously only in its infancy and is certain to spread. Even though the true journalist insists upon viewing his vocation as a profession, as the editorial effort most certainly is, the task of producing daily newspapers successfully is today a most complex operation, involving the superimposing of professional efforts upon a solid business foundation. The business aspects of the operation are amenable to every economic law that determines success or failure in any other line of commercial endeavor, and with the realization of this fact has come the development of the group operation of individual prop erties?scientific mass production (one of the chief elements in our present day prosperityyf D S S O L H G W R Q H Z V S D S H U P D N L Q J . Some of the criticism of the menace of group ownership is, un doubtedly, sincere. Mere magnitude in an enterprise suffices This content downloaded from 129.25.131.235 on Thu, 16 Feb 2017 23:35:13 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms NEWSPAPER MASS PRODUCTION 421 to terrify a certain type of mind. Some of the criticism is merely the result of misconception and misunderstanding, but most of it is the result of self-interest, born of the reactionism that opposes all progress, and of the not uncommon fear of modernized com petition. But, regardless of its inspiration, the criticism is of the menace of what may happen, rather than of anything that has happened. In this connection, it is well to remember that successful and con tinued chain operation of newspapers has been practised in the United States for a half century. Since the menace is not something which has swooped down on us over night, bringing new terrors and mysterious attributes, threatening unprecedented repercussions for which no antidote is known, we can at least take time to examine the phenomenon with calmness and dispassion. At most, its workings are evolu tionary rather than revolutionary. By what it has effected, in way of change for better or for worse, it has cast ahead of it an easily traceable shadow of its future probable development. "Chain journalism," as its critics prefer to designate it, is nothing more than the editing and operation of a group of news papers in different cities by a single corporation, or by a group of corporations, with a centralized control. Chain newspaper operation needs no apology. Newspapers in the long run, almost without exception, succeed or fail according to their ability to serve the public interests of their community. What is true of a single newspaper is equally true of a group. That chain operation makes for financial stability, even critics of the system will admit. This is a matter of first rate importance to the public which depends upon a newspaper for uncensored facts and free editorial elucidation of those facts. With financial stability and economic independence (granted the operation is in the hands of men whose sole interest is in journalism, men who are free from financial, social and political entanglements, as the successful group operators of the future are apt to beyf F R P H V a return to the fearlessness of the old time editors of the days before the production of a daily newspaper became a great and expensive manufacturing job. The temptation for a selfish or a sinister interest in the community, whether this influence be a banker, This content downloaded from 129.25.131.235 on Thu, 16 Feb 2017 23:35:13 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 422 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW a merchant, a politician or a public utility to bring pressure to bear on a newspaper solely dependent upon that community for its revenue, is naturally greater than is true in the case of a news paper which is a unit of a strong chain with financial resources on call well outside the immediate zone of pressure. After all, the chief concern of a community is that the motives of its newspaper shall be unmixed and shall have no selfish or special interest to serve. If a newspaper is poorly written, of bad typography, inadequate in its news coverage or impotent in its editorial efforts, the public can quickly detect the weakness. A more insidious shortcoming and one which sometimes takes longer to detect results from the owner having a personal ax to grind. In chain ownership this latter tendency must inevitably be easier to detect. A frequent objection to chain ownership of newspapers is that it results in standardization. After all the answer to this indict ment is to be found in whether the standardization process pro duces a better product for a larger number of American people. The answer is found in the fact that in consequence of mass pro duction methods now employed by the big newspaper chains, millions of people in small communities and rural districts are receiving from their local press daily newspapers that exceed in completeness of world news coverage, in entertainment and in editorial value anything that was produced in the great metropoli tan districts a generation ago. This tremendous advance in the development of the small dailies of the country, which is a direct result of syndication and chain operation, has, by a system of setting in action identical thought processes in all communities of the nation at almost identically the same time, annihilated provincialism in the United States and contributed to the devel opment of a true American hegemony that is the marvel of the rest of the world. Production of a daily newspaper of today has become a complex job?the work of highly skilled experts. Chain operation enables the mobilization of this high priced talent at a minimum cost to each unit of the chain. The widely diversified editorial product of these experts presented in a modern newspaper constitutes a better mental diet than the newspapers of a generation ago which This content downloaded from 129.25.131.235 on Thu, 16 Feb 2017 23:35:13 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms NEWSPAPER MASS PRODUCTION 428 were the undiluted reflection of the ideas, the ambitions and the prejudices of a single man, sometimes a genius?but only some times. The passing of personal journalism is not a great calamity. If it has cost us some picturesque characters, and if we are being served with a less trenchant style of editorial, there are compen sating advantages. In a great democracy such as ours the out standing need of the hour is greater information and greater tolerance. Sincere efforts at enlightenment and education by the press are more important than self-appointed leadership. The public has no desire to see this country governed by its newspa pers any more than it desires to see it governed by partisan political bosses. The frequently heard statement that the entire American press is losing its influence, is the veriest bunk. No newspaper in this country has lost any influence in the past generation that it deserved to keep. Two kinds of newspapers have rapidly and completely lost their influence. Newspapers edited by demagogues seeking to inflame public opinion and stampede mass action for their own aggrandizement, and newspapers willing to prostitute themselves in the services of vested interests and public exploiters have al most completely passed out of the picture. Both of these types can be spared. The successful newspapers of tomorrow will be the ones which devote more and more of their energy to enabling their readers to think intelligently for themselves, and less of their efforts to attempts to do the public's thinking for it. It may require an optimist to accept this statement, but I believe that thinking is coming into vogue. It even may become a popular fad. Certainly the journalist who fails to reckon with the heightening level of mass education and even mass intelligence in this coun try, is due for a rude awakening. Journalism in America has always obeyed the law of the survival of the fittest. In this land where business is no longer forced to apologize for being "big", provided it is accepted as honest and provided it functions with a decent consideration for public interest, the uniting of far flung individual newspapers into chains or groups, into effective organizations under single This content downloaded from 129.25.131.235 on Thu, 16 Feb 2017 23:35:13 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 424 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW corporate ownership, is as inevitable as the unification of various small railroads into great continental systems was a generation ago. The improvement in the service will be correspondingly great. The danger does not lie in the creation of national or sectional groups or chains. The danger for American news papers of today and tomorrow lies in the tendency toward mo nopolization of individual fields, or toward the elimination of competition and the subjection of a city or community to the dictatorship of a single publisher. Such a publisher, granted he has ability and means, is much more likely to become a menace when he seeks to crush or render impotent all competition in a restricted field, than if he takes a fair share of the business of a given city or community, recognizes the benign effect of compe tition on both his business and his community, and transfers his surplus talent and investment to another field where a lack of competition and the arrogance of a would-be journalistic monopolist may tempt him. The Interstate Commerce laws were not aimed at consolida tions of railroads which were non-competing. They were not designed to prevent building up of bigger and more efficient lines of business. They were designed to prevent consolidations which meant elimination of competition and the creation of monopoly. Chain newspaper development does not mean journalistic monopoly. It means elimination of economic weaklings; fewer but more virile ownerships. It means recog nition of the passing of so-called personal journalism, which too often meant private journalism with private interests put ahead of public interests; private hates and private favors with partisan political obligations to be met before considerations of com munity service. The development means that American jour nalism, which with all its shortcomings is years ahead of that of any other nation on earth (England not exceptedyf K D V H Q W H U H d upon a new phase from which there can be no turning back. The supreme test of every group will be whether the dominant influence is editorial; whether service is put ahead of profit. Wherever this test is honestly met, chain journalism will offer no menace to any public or private interests. This content downloaded from 129.25.131.235 on Thu, 16 Feb 2017 23:35:13 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms