The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1883-01-06
THE NEWSPAPER PLETHORA.
An Evil from Which the Reading and Bust
ness Public Is Now Suffering.
Greensburg Standard.

ness Public Is NOW Suffering.
Greensburg Standard.
The country is o%verrun, crammed, satia-
ted, by alleged Observation-Disclosures and
half-printed sheets. The average counties of
this State have from three to five, some of
them six to eight, papers, where they should
have but two or three, and which their citi-
zens are compelled, strongly against their in
clinations, and in some instances almost
b~lacknailed, to support. Tn subscription
patronage of all those papers comes very
largely from the same persons, who are com
PEELED to pay for what they do not want and
have no kind of use for. But
the greatest burden falls upon the
business man, who is called upon to adver-
tise his goods or wares, mainly ~ the same
set of readers, in all these ia, ,ers-requiring
him to pay five or six times Tor what should
be but two, or at most three. And while this
IS the case as to the patrons, ii is worse as to
the papers themselves. With only such a
number astne country could fairly support,
the publishers could afford an improved
panSr and still not do more than a fair living
business, while the reader would get more
for less money. These things will correct
themselves, however, on the well-known
principal of the survival of the fittest.
Richmond Palladium.
One great obstacle 10 this much-desired
contamination DIETER newspapers) is the
multiplicity of newspapers in almost every
community. The business is, so to speak,
ridden to death. In nearly all the larger
places in Indiana, for instance, there is an
over-supply of papers, and in many of the
minor towns and even villages there are
rival papers eating out each others vitals. In
some counties where one or the other
political party is largely predominant, there
are several organs or brevet organs snarl-
ing and swapping at each other, and
wrangling over the scanty party
patronage that is thrown to them.
like raw meat to a cage full of
byenas. Frequently they are more violent
and implacable in their emnity toward each
other than toward the common enemy.
Business men are solicited and bedeviled for
advertisements and subscriptions until they
get disguised. AS a consequence the whole
business suffers, and many papers live on the
verge of dissolution that could make a re-
spectacle living for their owners and pub
fishers and attaches, if competition were not
so excessive and ruinous.
In these days of patent iusides," plates
and other cheap printing devices, almost
anybody with a 800 or so, and a stock OF
auGaoity, can start an alleged newspaper.
There is no law against it, unfortunately.
ihe consequence is that the land is filled
with papers, good, bad and indifferent.
Papers that might prosper and grow and
perfect themselves under more favorable
conditions, are crowded and smothered by
the pressure, like stalks of corn in a wilder
ness of woods. The life is literally sapped
away from them, and they are deprived of
the vitalizing principle that make some OF
the great city newspapers such magnificent
specimens oil journalism, and that bring so
rich a return to the communities that pa
troniZe them.
These evils have a tendency to correct
themselves, through the beneficent opera
ton of the principle of the survival o: the
fttest." Every year, every ~month-yea.
every week-witnesses the decline aud fall
of numerous newspapers, some of which
might exclaim, in anguish of heart, like the
short-lived baby:
"Since so early I am done for,
wonder what [ was begun fOIl"