The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1906-05-20
c, ". KNAPP ON THE
PULITZER PLAN
A Publisher ForeSeeS New Era
in Journalism
WILL COME IN TEN YEARS
Believes There VIII Be More General
Use of Half News and Half Ed.
torIal ArtlcIes-Abuse Of
Headlines.
From the New York Herald.

FROM the New YORK Herald.
Remarking upon the discussions of news
paper making in the Herald apropos of
the reerudescence of Albert Pulitzer,
Charles W. Knapp, publisher of the st.
Louis Republic who is at Breton Hall.
Indicated yesterday that he expected
| journalism would undergo several changes
In the next ten years, one of which would
be more general use of half-news, half
editorial articles, such as the magazines
have found successful.
| He said relative to Mr.. Pulitzer:
He finds two indictments-that the New
York newspapers all dull. and to the
| blind man, who has them read to him, all
alike
Criticism of newspapers is always easy.
No newspaper manager or editor is with
out ability to pick flaws In American jour-
nalism. 1t is full of flaws. These are due,
.. L should say, to the demands of the read
ers-they do not represent necessarily
what the editors want
How do you determine that readers de-
| mand this and that?"
| by experimentation. II you don't meet
a favorable response to certain Efforts
you have made to please readers, you
drop those efforts and exert yourself along
different lines.
| las to Albert Pulitzer and his past eff
! forts and successes, | am not well in
formed. His brother Joseph Pulitzer, has
contributed a great deal by the force of
his personality and his mental originality
to the development of New York Journal
! ism and the journalism of the whole coun-
try. He broadened its influence.
Nobody doubts that the typical news
paper of ten years from now will be radi-
cally different from what it Is today. In
every large city newspapers have been
| leading the reader, to a greater or less ex-
tent a sort of yellow debauch. From this
there is quite clearly apparently revolt
| on the part of the reader. | say this
without asserting for moment to thu
! view that New York newspapers are all
alike and relatively dull.
An Abuse of Headlines.
Between the Herald and the Journal,
| for example there Is wide gap. Each ap-
| peals distinctly to different class of
readers, and they are conducted so diff
ferently that the blind man could scarcely
help discerning it. The Herald. following
Mr. BENEFITS individual theories, is dis
tinctly an interesting newspaper without
being in any respect yellow.
| " There is a gross abuse of headlines In
| newspapers. 1t is particularly an abuse in
New York. Very few newspapers In other
| city have dropped to the level OF misusing
| headlines to the extent that several have
| in New York city Many large cities have
| not one newspaper which has gone to the
| extereme of exaggeration of the metropol-
itan dailes.
"You think people are finding the sensa-
| ticnal press a bore?
IT will not undertake to forecast the
| coming journalism in this country except
| to express my confident belief that two
| changes are comng-first, that the news
| paper of the future will be accurate in
| the presentation of facts and more pre-
| else in the language employed to set forth
| the facts; second, that neither the Sun
| day nor the week day newspaper will
| grow any smaller. If they change at all
| they will contain more pages instead of
/ fewer.
| There Is greater need today for bet
| ter written newspaper than hitherto, be-
| cause the constituency upon which a
| newspaper must rely for support includes
| nowadays a relatively larger number of
persons who critical and who are
| judges of lirerary style They are af-
fronted by the slovenly English, by the
| lack of form. in which American news
papers too often given them the occur
| rences of the day. A better literary style
p, will retard in some measure the natural
, tendency toward larger instead of smaller
! newspapers.
viii Be More carefuIness.
Public attention increasingly centers
| upon the accuracy of newspapers by rea-
son of the extreme indifference to accu-
racy in the so-caled 'yellows.' There was
an example this morning-the dispatch
DENYING the truth of the report printed
| widely that the recent earthquake had
practically produced a transformation in
| Yellowstone Park. suppose some repor-
ter thought that would make a good
| story so wrote it out of hand
perhaps he was asked to write it by
| editor or publisher"
"Oh, ] know the pressure that is
| brought upon the writers. I've had to do
| with both ends. It's hard to come in and
say there's nothing in it. But there will
! be more carefulness by and by-more
| carefulness as to matter and as TO man
/ ner 1t will be required that the fact
| shall be as 1t is. and that it shall be
told tersely clearly. in a way to salts
I oil