The herald., 1897-09-07
A GREAT OPPORTUNITY MISSED

A GREAT OPPORTUNITY MISSED
There II no denying the fact that a
newspaper may be made with money.
Indeed. money Is q prime essential. for
while good newspaper. with plenty Of
advertising and large circulation, may
be q profitable investment. newspaper
that does not pay Is perhaps the great
est money burner that can be named.
But Is unlimited capital. and the use
Of that capital regardless Of expense"
a good thing for the community and for
the newspaper business generally? That
depends, to a very large degree. upon the
man who spends the money and the
character Of the newspaper that Is made
with It, It is great thing, in the news
paper business, to have unlimited cap
ital. There is no genuine newspaper
man but has dreamed and planned what
1t would do. what a great newspaper he
would make, If he only had the necessary
capital to work with.
There Is in this country at the present
time a young man Of ability who has
been able to realize the newspaper mans
dream Of unlimited capital. He owns
two newspapers, one in the east and the
ether in the west, and he has undoubt-
edly made them a great success,
from one point of view. Expense is
never considered in his establishments.
Is anything wanted to make the papers
better-better is hardly the proper word
buy it. In certain kinds of enterprise,
such as can be bought with money. these
papers may be said to excel.
But unlimited capital alone will not
make the model lnewspaper-the greatest
newspaper-any more than fine clothes
will make the gentleman. Newspapers
have standards that are high or low, as
the case may be. From this point of
view it cannot we'll be maintained that
the young man with unlimited capital
has made a great and enduring success,
unless, indeed, sensationalism be
called success, or sensationalism be the
true newspaper standard.
In fact, the chief product wrought Of
unlimited capital has been what has
come to be known as yellow journal
ism," or sensationalism OF low, not to
say degrading, character, sensational
ism that is certainly degrading to jour-
nalism. A great many people of taste
and intelligence think that yellow jour-
nalism degrades the newspaper reading
public. It is certainly most unfortunate
that unlimited capital has not produced
something better, that its energies have
ard Of American newspapers.
There is another regrettable feature
about unlimited capital in journalism as
it is exploited in the cases cited, that,
while it may not particularly interest
the general public, vitality affects the
carrying on of the newspaper business
We have shown that the unlimited use of
money in the specific instances named
has lowered rather than elevated the
true newspaper standard. 1t has also
made it impossible for other newspapers
in the same field to be profitably con-
Quoted
When Mr. Hearst took the Examiner,
the Chronicle was not only good news
paper, but it was profitable investment.
Probably the Call was paying expenses.
The Examiner at once proceeded to set
the pace. and the other papers were, of
course, compelled to follow.
l.
probable that the Examiner has re-
couped itself for the immense sums that
have been expended; the profits of the
Chronicle have been curtailed in the in
evitable rivalry; the Call has been
sinkhole Of expense, a burden that only
millionaire like its present owner could
carry.
If the general public had been made
the gamer through all this unlimited"
system, IL the newspaper standard had
been elevated, there could be no fault to
find. Competition is a mighty good
thing in the newspaper field, as in other
lines Of business. But the net result
has been yellow journalism"
The young man with unlimited capital
has missed a glorious opportunity, and
he has injured the newspaper business
without affording adequate compensa-
ton.