The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1909-10-29


the welfare of the country, or the in
ldividuals composing the country. IT
never hesitates to blacken the whitest
character. or to declare the devil a
saint. Like great rat, which grows
sleek and fat on corruption and filth
and by its vile existence spreads dis
ease and death, so the yellow journal
lis a source of moral corruption, in
| flaming the passions of the weak and
brutal, producing and encouraging all
of a president to the petty misdeeds of
the cheap sport.
The whole atmosphere of the yellow
journal is putrd with immortality and
sensationalism, deadly with possibilities
for evil. The whole spirit of yellow
journalism is summed up in the words
of a prominent st. Louis newspaper
man, who said that the most successful
newspaper manager was the man who
always knew where hell was going to
break out next and had a reporter on
the spot.
Such is the yellow journal 1t is the
story of the breaking out of hell, told
in way that fascinates the weak and
blinds the foolish, making them think
that the whole life of this world con-
sists in the breaking out of hell
You hear great deal said about
the good the yellow journals do. How
they are always getting up some bepe
fit for the poor or starting some in
vestigation and prosecution of civic
boodling and robbing the people. This
is true. They have to their credit
many such movements. But their en-
terprise in such affairs should not make
us close our eyes to their unhealthy
yellowness which is all done so very
plainly for the purpose of increasing
their circulation and so making money
that their efforts seems to besmirch the
names of charity and civic righteous
ness.
Such papers pay their owners. Dur
ing the Spanish American war the New
York Journal and World had a circula.
ton of 100000 apiece. There are
really but few out and out yellow
journals in the country. st. Louis and
Cincinnati are the worst afflicted cit
les. New York and Chicago have both
very yellow and very conservative pa
pers. The tone of the Chicago Press
was in 1897 considered to be the best
of any of the large cities.
As we are getting rid of fever laden
swamps, of mosquitoes, of flies, so may
we loose our yellow journals.
But though there are few out and
out yellow journals, a streak of yellow
sometimes, perhaps faint, but still
streak of yellow, does appear now and
then in most American papers in the
giving of too much room to news of
crime and vice, the telling of such
things in a light joky way, as though
it were funny instead of something to
deplore; in the acceptance of adver-
tisements which on the face of them
are for the unwary and of evil or
fraudulent intent, the giving to the
paper the atmosphere of French mu
journal has the atmosphere of French
problem play. Some others not being
quite so bad have the atmosphere of a
French musical comedy. The less we
have of either the better.
OF course we can never take from ali
the papers, and we would not if we
could, certain vulgarity of garishness
and sensationalism, because there is a
large mass of people who will only
read paper of that kind. They can
never see a thing unless it is set before
them in sharp contrasts of black and
white, and blue, and green and red.
They must have things set out before
them boldly, distinctly and in a certain
way coarsely or they won't compre
bend. They won't read paper which
! comes to them in any other form than
this. If the papers become too re-
fired they will never reach this class
at all.
But while it may be necessary in
order to reach this class of people that
some papers tell the story of the
worlds daily life with a certain gar
ishness, with coarseness, with brutal
directness, and I will say here, we all
need to have the papers straightforward
and frank, we never want them 80 re.
fined that they lose all strength and
their voice becomes the voice of the
dandy at ladies' pink tea-stll we
want them to get rid of all the venom
of yellow journalism and tell tie story
in such a way that all that is eood ard
: true will stand out in clear re.jA an1
evil be shown in it's true colors OF
shame and misery, and not the oppo-
site, as is the way of yellow journals.
There is another more wide spread
evil resulting from this spirit of COM
mercialism, an evil which effects a
greater number of dailies.
The paper to sell well, and so get the
advertising and make money must be
"newsy" for the majority of people re-
semble somewhat the Athenians who
spent their time in either hearing OF
telling some new thing.
In the tremendous pressure which is
brought to bear to make the paper
"newsy," it has come about that the
newspaper has tended to degenerate
from real journalism to mere gossiping