}

THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER: A STUDY IN

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY.

There is a widespread prejudice against the newspapers, based on the belief that they cannot be trusted to report truly the current events in the world's life on account of incompetence or venality. But in spite of this distrust we are almost altogether dependent upon them for our knowledge of widely interesting events. As the organization of society becomes more complex and far-reaching, the importance of the newspaper in the distribution of intelligence inevitably increases. The modern social man finds himself in much the same position as the ancient individual who first discovered confusion in his sensations and believed that his senses were deceiving him. The newspaper is to society much what sight and hearing are to the individual, and it is a momentous day when the cominunity, overwhelmed with newspaper sensations, begins to doubt and to discriminate. The function of the newspaper in a wellordered society is to control the state through the authority of facts, not to drive nations and social classes headlong into war through the power of passion and prejudice.

The influence of the newspaper, especially the daily, felt most in cities. There social organization is more complex, the problems of government are more acute, the people are readier to follow after some new thing, the individual is more immediately dependent on his fellows, than in the country. In cities the newspaper can deliver itself. Early every morning it blockades one's door, asking to be read, and every day on the streets and in the cars it clamorously assails those who go about their business. Under these conditious the newspaper, no longer sought so much as seeking, becomes a specially potent factor in city life, and,

pandering as it often does to man's social passions, it fastens itself upon him and stimulates his mind to superficial and sometimes unhealthy interests.

The newspaper habit has many vicious consequences. The children in the public schools are often urged to read the papers and keep track of the world's news. And it cannot be denied that the newspaper serves an important end in bringing men to social consciousness and in giving them data upon which to form social judgments. But we must deplore and, so far as possible, overcome the evils of habitual newspaper reading. These evils are, chiefly, three: first, the waste of much time and mental energy in reading unimportant news and opinions, and premature, untrue, or imperfect accounts of important matters; second, the awakening of prejudices and the enkindling of passions through the partisan bias or commercial greed of newspaper managers; third, the loading of the mind with cheap literature and the development of an aversion for books and sustained thought. Thus the daily newspaper often tends to make the intellectual life of its readers one continuous series of petty excitements, a veritable life of the social senses," and to shut their minds, by mere fulness of occupation, against any appeal that does not find a voice in the daily news sheet.

The daily newspaper is one of the many influences that make a city civilization different, for better and for worse, from a country civilization. And as the science of government is the science of the manipulation of social forces for the furtherance of public order and the common weal, the problems of city government can be solved only by insight into the peculiar characteristics of city people and of city life. The study of the newspaper as a factor in social. organization is, therefore, of prime importance to those who are concerned with municipal affairs.

The development of modern journalism is a bewildering fact. The American Newspaper Directory divides the

papers into classes according to their accredited bona fide circulation, as follows:

But

There are still other classes, which have a smaller circulation and include by far the larger number of dailies. if we confine our attention to the six classes, A to F, and if we count one morning and one afternoon edition as separate papers, we find that there were in 1897, all told, 250 dailies having a circulation of 7,500 or more published in the United States. Of these papers, 224 are printed in English, twenty-two in German, two in Bohemian, one in Danish, and one in French. According to circulation these papers are distributed as follows:

These 250 leading dailies are distributed among the dif

erent sections of the country as follows:

Of the forty-five states in the Union there are sixteen which have no daily papers with an accredited circulation

of 7,500. The states having the largest numbers of such papers are:

On the streets of New York City and its suburbs there are daily offered to the unsuspecting public newspapers which contain reading matter, exclusive of advertisements, sufficient to fill 4,000 or 5,000 pages of Economic Studies, and in the twenty-one principal news circles of the United States the papers publish every day the equivalent of seventy books containing 100,000 words each. Fortunately for the public, the daily paper is, in the main, a local institution.

Every great city is a news centre. The possible constituency of a daily paper may be counted as comprising every one who lives within two or three hours' distance of the newspaper office. Nowadays, with our multiplied railroads and trolley lines, a daily paper may hope to have some direct popular influence over an area with a radius of, perhaps, fifty miles. The larger the population of this area, the more numerous, as a rule, are the papers published there; and the greater is the bulk of reading matter daily offered to the same constituency. In Detroit the citizen is beset by only four important dailies; in New York city he is beset by twenty or more. If we take the fiftymile radius as representing approximately the distance to which a daily paper may have a general sale, we shall have twenty-one principal news circles in the United States, including within their limits all of the cities which had a population of over 100,000 in 1890. A few of these circles include more than one such city. The accompanying table shows the twenty-one news circles with population

Kansas City

675,000 450,000 1,250,000
350,000 775,000 1,350,000
450,000 550,000 1,100,000
325,000 600,000 1,000,000
300,000 300,000 700,000

200,000 225,000

425,000 125,000 300,000

500,000 4

350,000 250,000 100,000 400,000 4
150,000 100,000 50,000 200,000 4