Serving as it does newspapers of all classes, creeds, and political and sectional opinions and prejudices, it is absolutely necessary that the news sent out by the Associated Press shall be colorless statements of facts, and for that reason the existence of such an organization is a public good. That it furnishes almost all the news that most newspapers print, and is the foundation of the service of nearly every paper in the country compensates somewhat for the tremendous influence the organization wields against the establishment of any more papers. It is the beginning of a monopoly; under the circumstances, a beneficial rather than a harmful one, for it tends to restrict the "individuality" and the bias of opinion and taste to other than the news pages. And if there were space to go into the organizations that supply in bulk "special" reading matter, anecdotes, descriptive articles, stories and serials, the sameness of third and fourth rate papers everywhere would be accounted for, but the improvement with financial success of the matter distributed would show commercialism bearing another boon to the commonplace man.

That, however, is not the view of the enterprising individual publisher. To him the improving quality of the output of the

"literary syndicates" is no inducement to depend upon them, for the equality with other papers is deadly to competition, and the matter-of-fact monotony of the "A. P.," as he calls the Associated Press re ports, though indispensable, are only the basis of his news service. His object is not to inform the world. Neither is that what his readers expect of him. The theory which underlies the methods of conducting the business (especially, though not exclusively, at the beginning of an enter prise) is that most people buy a newspaper for a sensation, and the reward for gratifying this demand is advertisement which increases circulation. When a man opens his paper on his way down-town after breakfast, or on his way home after a day's work, he wants a surprise-shocks, laughter, tears. If it were something to think about that he wanted, the best commodity to offer for sale might be editorials, essays, and important facts. But the commercial journalist, after studying and testing his market. is convinced that his customers prefer something to talk about. There are some who do not, but they are quickly disposed of.

"What good does it do me," said a successful manager, "to send a man off in a day dream? I might as well put him to sleep. What I want is the reader who likes

to talk, and then I want to set him talking; to make him turn to the next man and ask him if he has read something in my paper. That advertises the paper and sells it, which is the thing I am after. I have no mission, you know."

So the expenditure of a newspaper that is operated on a large scale, was as follows

last year: Editorial and literary matter, $220,000; local news, $290,000; illustrations, $180,000; correspondents, $125,ooo; telegraph, $65,000; cable, $27,000; mechanical department, $410,500; paper, $617,000; business office, ink, rent, light, etc., $219,000. This paper has a very expensive staff of editorial writers, but the

$220,000 is largely for special articles of a very miscellaneous character. Most papers of the same class the cheap "great daily "-put about two per cent. of their total expenditure on this item.

And this apportionment and the paper that results from it are not to be attributed to the intellectual make-up of the publisher. In this very case, he intended, when he was looking about for an opening in New York, to establish the highest class newspaper that the city ever had. It was only when he found that field closed to him that he turned, like the Philadelphia man, to the cheap journal. The commercial journalist's newspaper is very seldom to his taste. He usually reads and would prefer to conduct some other paper than his own. He might not be able to. That the finished product of his efforts is not utterly unsatisfactory to him shows limitations of mind. But the day of the personal organ is waning, and the new journalism is the result of a strictly commercial exploitation

"We have to be pretty careful about that, for while it would increase the circulation it would lose me a small class of readers who are worth a good deal to some of our advertisers."

The only instance encountered (out of Chicago) of moral restraint in a typical newspaper business man, except where the talk was obviously for publication, was in a New York circulation manager. He was lauding sensationalism to an extreme when a protest checked him.

"Of course," said he, "when I speak of sensationalism I don't mean extra sensationalism." What do you

"Extra sensationalism? mean by that?"

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"I'll give you an example. One day as I was looking over the cases' I saw an article that told how to crack a safe. I kicked to the proprietor about it, and he killed it. That article would have a tendency to teach something immoral, and I call that extra sensationalism."

From the point of view of science the neglect of the ethics and æsthetics of the business is offset in a measure by the keen regard for psychology. The more intelligent publishers had the relation of effect and means down almost to formal statement, but the plainest and truest expres-. sion came from those who acted by intui

tion; they were never secretive or apologetic when their first suspicions were lulled. They liked the tricks of the trade.

One of the commonest and most offensive of these tricks is the use of the "scare head," large, heavily inked headlines, that set forth as in bulletins the salient facts of a news article. A business manager who was enlightened enough to admit that this device was in bad taste found psychological justification for it in the profound sensation produced by the simultaneous impression upon the mind of all the striking features. There was art in that, he said. It told the news, moreover, as an excited messenger would who came running breathless from the scene; and that was the way news was brought in ancient times. A franker man in the same town said:

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The beauty of the scare head is that it scares. And, besides, it catches the eye on a news-stand or over the shoulder of the man who has bought the paper."

It is the managing editor who wields this instrument of the trade, and in his hands it is one of the means by which the paper is colored to reach and hold the kind of readers the publisher conceives to be of his field. If he aims at political partisans the manager sees that the colorless reports of political news that come into the office from the Associated Press are interpreted in the headings. Thus an anti-administration paper in New York printed over a brief, plain statement that a congress under President Cleveland convened that day, the sarcastic phrase, "Congress on His Hands," which determined, no doubt, the mood of the reader throughout the article. If the publisher is planning simply for the largest possible number of customers, sensationalism is the motive of the headings. Another means of attaining either end is to "edit" the Press despatches, and the managing editor of a metropolitan journal has a staff of "copy readers" and telegraph editors who do this work, along with the correcting of

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bad English and the condensing which are absolutely necessary. These skilful men also "cut down" or "spread" a piece of news according to its value for the particular purposes of the paper. suicide which in a staid paper would be worth no more than three lines on an inside page might occupy a column on the front page of a strictly commercial sheet, while a bit of political news that is unpleasant reading for a Democrat would be short in the paper made up to catch his custom, and for the opposite reason expanded by the Republican organ. The facts are rarely twisted. That is utterly unnecessary, and when it is done it is due rather to lack of skill than to dishonesty. The business manager will not readily risk being discredited by his rivals, for that loses him circulation. He has tried it and has found that a "fake" does not pay.

The most approved method of getting news suited to the assumed predilection of the readers is to have it collected by the paper's own correspondents and reporters, of whom the enterprising publishers have large and expensive staffs. They are men trained in the methods, and sometimes filled with the spirit of their chief, the managing editor, who selects and directs them. They know what facts to take and what to leave or subordinate, so that the accounts of the same event by writers for different papers may both be correct

while not at all alike. The managing editor, or, if the subject is local, his lieutenant, the city editor, studies his staff, developing the peculiar faculties for description, perception, speed, accuracy, shrewd understanding, imagination, humor -of each man, and then, adding men from elsewhere who possess abilities lacking in those at hand, he is in a position to assign without very obvious instruction just the right man to any given piece of work. They do independently many of the subjects covered "

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by the "flimsy," as the press reports are called. Through them also the managing editor reaches out for news that no other paper has, for "beats," which are believed to be one of the most effective expedients for increasing the circulation and prestige of a newspaper. An exclusive story is supposed to cause talk, to suggest purchasing to the man who has it not, to mix up generally in discussion the paper and its "beat," and, best of all, perhaps, to instil in the reader interest and pride in "his paper's " triumph. It is to the new journalism what common opinion was to the old, a good shared by the reader and his paper. A business mana

ger told me that the publication every day of the circulation had the same effect, and he went on to explain that this was natural because it played on the gambling passion, which was stronger than love.

Another device of the managing editor for the advertisement of his paper is "featuring," which is to distend and print conspicuously under scare heads accounts of any subject that is supposed to be interesting. In a city like New York, for instance, where crimes are committed every day, a managing editor can make an "epidemic of crime" at almost any time by ordering the thefts, burglaries, highway robberies, and murders which would be reported ordinarily in small paragraphs and distributed about in the corners of the paper, to be spread out at length in the writing and then grouped with pictures on one page. Care must be exercised not to overdo one subject, for the theory of sensationalism includes the belief that the average newspaper reader's mind is as fickle as it is shallow, so the managing editor has to be always on the lookout for fresh material or novel ideas. This is the most difficult duty he has, and the few fertile journalistic minds are very highly prized. An editorial writer in Chicago said that a New York newspaper proprietor had offered him $10,000 a year to submit each day an "original idea." But originality is not indispensable. Old schemes that have not been used for a long time are revived. Trust agitation is always effective, but charity is the best; the newspaper finds and describes distress, then tells how it brought relief to the suffering. The "constant reader" can have a share in this "featuring,"

for subscription lists are opened to all, full acknowledgment being made in print. It does not matter much what the paper uses in this way, and sometimes the agitation takes the form of an exposure of some political or other public corruption, when the community is served and the newspaper advertised as well. One business manager said a campaign against such an evil paid best in the end, because it was a practical demonstration of the power of the press.

Not one managing editor in a hundred directs his department to his taste. Besides the limitations set by his own conception of the market, he has to regard the notions others have of it and of the best means of supplying it, for he is a subordinate. He is the agent of some master-mind that may be in any person, on or off the paper. There is one case of a managing editor, acting as the representative of an absentee proprietor, but even this fortunate man is said to hold his position by his delicate sense of the desires of the owner, who keeps him under constant secret supervision by telegraph. Other owners let their business managers represent them to the heads of the other departments, sometimes to the subordinates as well. But there has to be a publisher who is legally responsible, for libel, for instance, and though he may be the editor-in-chief, the business manager, or the managing editor, I have used that title to designate the central power which carries out in all branches of the business of newspaper-making the general policy that gives unity to them all and individuality to their printed product.

While the managing editor, thus controlled, is organizing his various departments, the publisher goes to work upon the business office, beginning by selecting a chief who is to superintend downstairs, just as the managing editor does above. He appoints a business manager, whose duties are not only, as in the old days of journalism, to reap what the editorial staffs have sown, but to push the business of the paper in all directions. The work is divided into departments here also the composing, press, and stereotyping rooms, with foremen in charge; the delivery department, with a superintendent of delivery and his lieutenant, the superintendent of the mailing

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