The age-herald., 1897-11-14
THE PARIS NEWSPAPERS  Things About Them That Are
 Odd to American Eyes. .. "A LElSURELY DISPOSITION In Regard to News Makeup of French Papers Their Features-EditOrial Department
 Collections of News and Their Readers.

Paris, Nov. 6.-Late one afternoon last spring an American newspaper man ran
 across the editor-in-chief of one of the l most prominent Paris evening newspa-
 pers. He was sitting on the uerrasse of l the Cafe de Ia Paix, and upon the dinlin- utive table in front of him was glass of
 aIbsnthe. Hardly an hour before had 1 occurred a calamity which had stirred
 Paris to its center. More than a hun
 dred people, the flower of French fashion,
 had been burned to death in the ruins
 of the Bazar de la Carite. The news
 had been brought-to the boulevards by
 word of mouth; hundreds of victims, was
 the report, and among them all the great
 people of the old regl me. It was the big
 gest p:ece of news dn twenty years; all
 Paris was aghast.
 The editor-in-cilief beckcned to the AmeiNcan and pointed to a seat beside
 him. He was greatly excited although
 he assumed calmness.
 | what a deSola5Ing' thing it is!' he crled. An, my friend, France has re-
 ceqved cruel blow! We'll We must bear
 up; We must have foGtftude. We French,
 whatever else We are, are brave" He went on, waxing reminiscent, then | political.
 Presently the Anse1fcan's nose for news | dmpelled hdm to remark that none of the
 papers seemed yet to have get out an | extra
 The Frenchmans glance was really re- | proachful. Always thinking of tine dollarsl"
 What a practical people, you Amer jeans!
 1ne American explained, rather strong | ly, that trustworthy news regarding tine | calamity would relieve pubdc anxiety | a5 yet there was nothing but dreadful | rumorS, and each was becoming more distressing.
 An extra!' echoed the editor again
 Then, with an injured air, he pulled out | his watch. Why, my dear fellow, do you know | that dine in half an hourr'
 The American laughed, impolitely.
 Tomorrow, my friend, tomorrow said the Frenchman gently. You will be able to read it all tomorrow. It is too late this evening"
 Ut was then not 6 o'clock. At 2 the PresSe, a puny little sheet published late to give the result of the races, had no in formation about the fire. At 10 a pe- ligiouS paper, the Croix, got out an ex- tra. Its printing office adjodned the scene of the disaster, and some of its composihors had helped at the rescue; but it printed nothing but the rumors of
 the street. Toward midnight two CT three of the evening papers, the reporters
 of which had finished their dime IS and
 made the usual rounds of the thea CTS | on free tickets, tumbled over each other
 at the police station nearest the scene of l the Csaster. They got no news, but
 some extras came out announcing in big 1 black type the facts that everybody knew u- In the morning each of the papers had
 two or three columns, not more than
 2,000 words still mostly rumors. On the second day they printed the police re-
 ports, which were curious things to read On the third day the news began to be something like trustworthy, and was of the character that an American paper
 would have had in press within an hour; | there was a diagram of the scene of the | fire, and two or three nasty sketches of | the ruins were given in one of the most | enterprising papers. But it was only
 when the weekly illustrated papers came
 out, on the fourth day. that the real story of the calamity was told. From that | time until the expiration of three weeks
 the news came out in dri blets, and at the l end of the month the French press, with
 many repetitions, had told such a story of the burning of the Bazaar de la Charite
 as an ordinary American paper in a town
 of 50,000 people would have told upon the | following morning. ,- This little incident, the American
 newspaper man thought, struck the key
 note of French journalism. Roughly | speaking, a German newspaper prints the | day before yesterdays news, a French
 newspaper last weeks. Even then it is
 done cautiously, because there seems to | be nothing that a German or French | journalist ds more afraid of than live news. He treats it as he would treat | the bus. ness end of a broken electric wire. When he runs against anything
 of any real importance he is over
 whelmed But if the press of France
 and Germany is chiefly noted for the
 cheerful way in which it drags you back
 into the forgotten past, it is at least bet 4au tf,oH aoF Ttfo1x md Gr,aif
 publication of papers in those countries.
 as many people have doubtless re-
 marked might be deferred indefinitely
 so far as real news is concerned. Mosh
 of the 120.0O0 Americans who have been in Europe this year must have reached
 the conclusion that if one wishes to know
 what is going on dn France, in England
 and in Germay, as we'll as in the rest
 of the world, the best place in which to
 learn 1t is America.
 The foreign journalists are not alone to
 blame for this state of affairs; the public
 dsmand-or rather the lack of it-is also
 responsible. A Frenchman, for in-
 stance, doesn't care whether there IS any news in his paper or not, and he fsn even
 particular what time he gets it. That lis because his education has not been de- vised to give him general interests, such as the average American has. His morn 1 ings to start with, are usually occu- pied with his own affairs; outside matters may Only De COIlSlueTtu at fG5 ACiouASs
 The morning papers, consequently, are
 always on sale at the liosks until the evening, and, indeed. until the next day; and dn Paris, probably the only large clty in the world where such a condition .ex- ists, there are always more morning pa-
 pers sold in the afternoon than dn the
 morning. The morning paper even com
 petes with the evening paper dn some quarters But that is not especially significant because the evening papers, with one exception, rarely have so much as a single paragraph that has not been copied out of the morning papers-bodHy, without credit, and without the change of a word. If there are any later de velopments they may possibly get Into the morning paper of the next day, but never by any chance into the evening paper.
 There are seyenty-nine daily papers dn Paris. and al of them put together would hardly make one of the first-class, viewed with American eyes. The greater number of these are morning papers. and