Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1886-09-25
OF NEWSPAPER READING.

Mr.. Levey, in the North American Rericy,
descants upon the mental injury of too
much reading of newspapers. The grava-
men of his complaint is that the local and
night news editors spice the paper so
highly with records of the vile and sensa-
tional, the horrible and criminal, that the
inveterate newspaper reader gets a men
tai bias in favor of that sort of morning
stimulant with his toast and coffee; that
so far from the ordinary paper being a
mirror Of society and the days doings, it
mainly deals with those things that relate
only to the vulgar and vicious. Hence
Mr.. Leyey concludes that there are some
seasons of the year when 1t must be diff
cult for the average newspaper reader to
divest himself Of the impression that a
majority of the public are engaged in mu-
tual assassination. At these seasons one
may anticipate being confronted with
headlines of the iiercest type with such
reassuring titles as A Carnival of Crimen
or in such journals as affect the %allitera-
tive: Bloody, Brutal Butchery Boom
ing? OF course, in reality, crime is nc
more lrequentthan common, but newspaper
space is much cheaper
There is altogether too much truth in
this statement for it to be ignored. If it
is true that "the newspaper is a history Of
the world for a day" then this is 4 fear
fully bad world, and so utterly deprayed
and sunken in crime and misery that it
would be a blessing to the universe were it
blotted out. Yet we cannot but feel deep
pity for him, in speculation, when we fancy
any man attempting to run q newspaper
on the principal of adjusting the space to
be given to criminal, horrible and frivo-
lous records, proportionately to their i'm
portauee in the great mass Of news of
mankind and the record of the great whirl
of the worlds activities. Such a news
paper man" would probably find his Jour
nal voted It bore and a nuisance within Il
week, aud It world be uotahle by its alb
sence from the hands of readers.
The New York Post, commenting u,on
the paper Of Mr.. Levey, wit,ily estimates
what The Judgment Of the reader OF the
Eornins Journal ought 70 he il i; were pub
lished upon the principle suggested. It
concludes that the reader, in the
,lso Of Il newspaper recital Of the horse
whipping of a truant lover by u Brooklyn
servant girl, or the murder of a New York
wife by 4 drunken husband, applying the
rule that the newspaper is a miniature
picture of society, must conclude "that
about ten thousand betrayed servant girls
horsewhipped flithleSs lovers in the cities
Of New York and Brooklyn every evening,
and hat about the same number of
drunken husbands murdered wives in tene-
ment-houses every night, And not only
this, but that the bulk of the population
are occupied day by day in getting at the
particulars Of each case, and want ex-
planatory Illustrations to enable them to
comprehend it, such as diagrams showing
where the servant girl stood when she
struck the first blow, or where the wife fell
when the husband fractured her skull.
But in a true picture of society in this
city, such incidents would be mentioned in
two lines of nonpareil, or only rarely no
ticed at MI. Nobody outside the persons
Immediately affected gives a thought to
them alter laying the newspaper down, or
remembers anything about them the next
day. In other words, they have no social
importance at all. They do not fill any
space in the public mind, or ~perceptibly
affect in any way the lives of the bulk OF
the population"
Why, then. do the " newspaper men =
violate the law of proportion and the rela-
tivity of news Importance 10 such an ex-
tent that the unsophistieated mind might
infer that our people are mainly given
over to slogging matches and picnics, and
our chief activities consist of murders, Sc,
auctions, suicides. arson, robbery, outrages,
defalcation and scandal?
The newspaper man." whose eye is
upon the c~ounting-room, viii reply that il
is because OF the operation of the law Of sup
ply and demand that he is not the keeper
of public or private conscience that he re.
snonds 10 cali . that he does not give it t.
be understood that the records of his col
umns are types of the chief important &C
s~iyities of the world. He viii moralize sui
tciently to say that the assumption mus
be that the rest of the world is behaving
itself, since he publishes new of the in
fractions Of law, deceney, order and moral
ity by the few; that indeed the reader i
not justified in concluding that the dali,
paper is a mirror of everyday life, or thai