St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1884-03-19
AMERICAN JOURNALISM.
Some IF the Recent Tendencies DISGUISE
Tn the Nnnbott0,, lfoooz;,,e for A rr;l Mr.


city dailies combated what was called ''sen-
sationalisn" in the press, a practice of mag
nifying the importance of news by startling
head lines, which gave to page the appear
ance of carrying some very remarkable in
| formation, when there was really nothing to
| be told but the ordinary occurrences of the
| day. There grew out OF these protests a re-
| form which consisted in giving space and
prominence of position to matters of news,
est to intelligent people. OF late there has
been in many papers a return to sensational
| ism, not in the old form, but in new and
a worse one; not in headlines, but in the
deterioration Of the old standard Of the kind
OF news proper for publication, and the rela-
tive degree of Importance to be given to diff
ferent classes Of news. An entire class of
events. which used to be excluded from
papers Of the better sort, now finds place in
some of them, and other classes which used
to be put in corners and in small type I'M
der the head of ''Crimes and Casualties. - is
now paradcd upon the first page with in
gcnious headings calculated to prckoke Gu
riosity The doings of legislative bodies and
of scientific convOcations, the thoughtful dis
| courses of famous men, the news of social
reforms and Of the intellectual movements
Of the world and to a great extent of its
business affairs, are often summarized or
omitted altogether, to give space for columns
about divorce suits, Opponents, church
scandals, murders, forgeries, bgamies and
vice and gossip of alb sort. Even dailies of
an old and higher reputation for respectable
ity have fallen into the current and changed
their characters. Their news pages have
become queer combination lawless-
ness and scandal, savoring both of the
bar-room and OF the gossipy tea-party.
FLIPPANCY IN EDITORIALS
Running side by side with the tendency
towards sensationalism in its new form, and
reaching out beyond it, so as to affect papers
that are still respectable in the old sense of
the word. is manifest drift toward curtness
and fippancy-a touch-and-go style of treat
ing all subjects, disposition to make fell
citous point in the wording of paragraph
rather than to convey an idea, way of skip
ping over the surface of things in a half-hu-
morous, half-sarcastic mood, which makes a
paper what is called "brght'' and '.newsyn
The patient, thoughtful editorial writer who
puts conscientious work into his article is
voted an old-fashioned bore, and forced to
make room for the clipper paragrapher, who
has quaint or funny knack of putting SEN
fences together, and of treating life as jest,
in the spirit of the elegy on the tombstone of
the poet Cav. The aim of this new school of
newspaper writing is to tickle the fancy rath-
er than to inform the mind. You are enter
tanned while reading its efforts; they are like
whipped syabub and hampaign-light,
| ,,Ia 10 faly bnf
read columns of them without getting any
thing that you eau remember next day. 1t
would not be possible to introduce into Amer
lea the essay-lilke style of editorial which
characterizes the great English papers, be-
cause it is not adapted to our national habits
of thought. Yet in intellectual rank, it is a
long way ahead of most of the work done in
editorial columns in our daily journals. The
long, solid articles of the London Times or
the Daily Meas are addressed to rational peo-
pie, who want facts and arguments on mat
tiers of current interest put into finished
literary style. Our new fashioned editorial
writing goes to the other extreme, and ap-
pears to be turned out on the idea that the
readers only desire to be amused or excited,
and that any thorough treatment of public
questions would bore them. There is, of
course, legitimate field for journals that
seek to be only entertaining. But surely
there is a constituency, and large one, who
want to get some mental profit out of the hour
spent in reading their daily paper.
ADVERTISING MORE GENERAL IN LONDON
EiFG4 THAN IN NEW YORK.
The cheapening of rates has arisen from a
desire on the part of newspapers of the bet
ter class to obtain q larger circulation. Their
proprietors saw the population tributary to
their news centres rapidly increase, without
any marked addition to their subscription
lists. The gain all seemed to go to the small
low-priced papers. They saw, too, that the
great London dailies, like the NeocS, the TEL
egraph and the Standard, could boast of circu-
lations approaching 200, 900 each, while there
was not an eight-page paper in New York,
with one exception, or in any other Ameri-
can city, that printed $4,000 copies day
through the week. The London papers, eX-
cept the Times, are sold for one penny-two
cents. Why should not an American paper
of equal size gain great circulation and a
profitable business by reducing its price to
two centsa The question was natural one,
but the publishers who made haste to answer
it in the affirmative and to act accordingly,
have, / believe, made a mistake. New York
is not London. With its suburbs it has only
two millions of people against London's five.
Instead of the thirty millions of people
in England who can be reached
by London morning paper before
sunset, there are less than ten
millions living within an equal radius of
New York, and by no means all of them are
the natural constituency of our metropolitan
| journals. In two hours ride eastward a
region is reached where people regard Bos-
ton as the centre of the universe and care
little for New York and its affairs. Two
hours west of New York lies the province of
which Philadelphia is the commercial and
| journalistic capital Thus the field of IL
New York daily is circumscribed in two di-
rections, and is only far-reaching within the
boundaries of the State of New York. Besides
the London tradespeople are more general if
not more liberal advertisers than those of
New York. In New York, advertising more
and more tends to confne itself to special
trade journals and to avoid the daily papers.
Take the theatre, railroad and steamship
notices, and the advertisements of a few
| great dry-goods and clothing concerns and
publishing houses out of the New York
dailies and there would not be much left in
their advertising pages excepting, of course,
! those of the one fortunate sheet which has
almost monopoly of the ''wants." Not one
retailer in thousand advertises in the news
| papers, and the wholesale trade is rarely
represented at all in their columns In
crease of population and business in the
| American metropolis has by no means
brought corresponding increase of adver-
Using patronage.
| A SATISFACTORY PHASE.
One feature of the present phase of Jour
nalism is especially satisfactory The news
papers are more free from the influence of