St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1891-07-15
Mastery Exposure Of Sensa-
tional Tendencies Of Mod
ern Papers.
Circulation Liar and His Twin
Brother, the Advertising
TpiekSteP.
Advertising Signals Consti-
tute an Exchange for the
Vicious.

OulCdSO Ddllg NoWos Will HCduquai OOAS
at New York. 1t is seldom that the
counting room of a newspaper or the
sensational tendencies of the modern
newspaper have received such a scoring.
But Mr.. Siegfried can be allowed to
speak for himself. He said:
The controlling motive and the direct
purpose Of the average newspaper are
financial profit. Now and then publ
cation is founded and continued, even
at loss, to promote party, social, re-
ligiouS or other ends, but through the
monetary unselfishneSs of patriotism,
doXy, patty, faith. fad or fanaticiSm
may be the generic impulse, there re-
main hope and striving for gain. Six
teen years ago the giants of newspaper
dom were asked for their opinions as to
the objective point of newspaper motive
and work. Whitelaw Reid said that the
idea and object of the modern daily
newspaper are to collect and give news,
with the prOmptest and best eluclda-
ton and discussion thereof; that is. the
selling of these in the open market;
primarily a merchant of news"
Obviously, there is and must be cease
less, incisive and mercileSs competition
in securing and holding circulatiOns, as
we'll as in the outward statements made
of individual calculations to those who
purchase advertising space. In this, as
in all other forms OF enterprise, there
are honest, clean-cut and buSlneSS-like
methods, and there are the methods of
the time-serYer, the trickster and the
liar.
The vastly greater number of publ
cations secure and hold their clientage
by making the best possible goods,
pushing them upon public patronage by
aggressive and busineSs-like means, and
selling at the lowest price consistent
with excellence of product and fairness
alike to producer and consumer. But
of the baser sort. which embody
G. An UnhOlY Alliance
between the editorial room and the
counting room, to the end that, regard
less of the good Of the people as whole
and of the honor aud rights of men and
women as individuals, the two forces
shall work together, with no end save
that Of selling the paper" there are
always enough to make rugged paths
for those who walk uprightly, and to
contribute to instability of values on
the one hand. and on the other TO flood
ing the country with publications which
the home and the world would be bet
rightly made and rightly sold pa
pers than of the other sort,
and the business man, the
working man, the professional man, the
family. no matter of what taste, or po-
litical faith. or economic bias, or social
status, or financial plenty or paucity.
can have the daily and weekly visits of
newspapers which are able, brilliant,
comprehensive, clean and honest. But
all the while these men and families will
have pressed upon their attention and
patronage, by every device and artifice
of the energetic and more or less
INSCRIPTIONS Publisher,
other papers equally able and brilliant
and comprehensive, but bringing also
their burden of needless SenSatiOnaliSm
and mendacity, undue expansion of all
manner of scandal. application of
every detail and kind Of crime, and
every phase of covert innuendO or
open attack upon official doing and
private Characteristic whole internal
mass procured, and stimulated and
broadcast among the people by the
business end of it." with the one and
only intent of securing and holding cir
culation.
Take a representative and pertinent
the East, but the source of RESPONSE
bility for which IS found in the West.
Eight years ago there were III New
York ten or eleven standard newspa-
perS, as ably and exclusively edited
and as theoretically and successfully
conducted busineSs-wiSe as they are
now. Even at their worst they were
decently mindful of life'S proprieties and
moralitieS, and they thrOve by legiti
mate sale of the most and best news
and the best possible calculation and
discussion thereof The father could
bring the paper of his choice to his
breakfast table with no fear that his
own moral sense and self-respect
might be outraged, or that the
Face of His Wife
might be crimsoned and the minds of
his children befouled. But there came
from out of the West new forces, quick
to see the larger opportunity opened in
the very center of 100000 of people,
and almost i'll night came the meta
| morphOsis of the old world into the new.
1t was deity given out that existing
conditions were inadequate to the bet
ter deserts of the Knickerbocker, the
Jerseyman and the Yankee, and that a
new purVeyor of more highly seasoned
~
their rights and interests was hither
| from the land of life and movement-at
two cents per copy. There was panic
| in New York newspaper counting
rooms, and prices tumbled from the
| three and four cents of fair profit to the
| two and three cents of bare cost or less.
| The new factors in Decentralization cared
nothing for competition in prices or
| legitimate goods, for they had other
! ideas of coddling the dear people.
Ready for their purpose lay disin-
| tegrated Liberty waiting for rock upon
| which to plant her feet and raise her
torch, and the new combination between
the world, the flesh and the devil. wait
| ing and ready for access to the pockets
| of the public. was only too ready to set
up liberty and itself at one stroke, if
only the joint operation could be done
without expense to itself. The people
said, What wonderful enterprise ="
''What generous SPIRIT" The COM
| bination, with tongue in
Cheek and Finger
| laid alongside nose, said to itself, as it
| saw its circulation spring in one bound
| from five figures to six, verify, we've
| got theIeI for these on the Hudson are
greater gudgeOns than are they on the
| MlSSlSSlpDI. Il rom IutH uIlIll now,
with an outward semblance and con-
slant pretense of serving the people !;
with blare of trumpet and rattle of
drum; with finding Stanley, who never
! had been lost; with scurryiug peripa-
tetic petticoats around the globe; with
| all manner of unprofeSSional and
illegitmate devices; with So
called contests and schemes
without limit in number, kind or
degree; with every cunningly devised
form of appeal to-curiosity and cupidity
from then until now that combination
has been struggling to hold an audi
ence of the uDdiscriminating and the
unthinkIng. But, further, and worse
and of more general pertinence and i'm
portance is the fact that short-sighted
instinct of self-preservation has led
other papers to follow somewhat at a
distance in this demoraiizing race. Few
of them have gone to such lengths, but
the tendency to literary, mental and
moral dissipation induced by hitherto
unknown form of competition has