The Palladium of the Provinces
Anderson, George E.
THE divorcement of the country newspaper from partisan politics has been steadily progressing during the past twenty-five years and has come to be generally recognized as inevitable. The...
...It cost less to get them out but the income was much less in proportion than it now is...
...As to general features, comparing country newspapers of today with what they were twenty or twenty-five years ago, I am disposed to believe that the present-day publication is far better than its predecessors...
...Aye, there's the rub...
...The flivver and the telephone, especially the telephone, have changed things...
...It has a field peculiarly its own...
...Trace back the origin of the term, and one comes to a more primitive day, not much over a quarter of a century ago, when many country dailies and most country weeklies were printed on one large sheet...
...Later the bicycle and an occasional elevator facilitated things somewhat...
...Louis—when the trains were on time...
...The first-hand touch is lacking...
...But the romance has gone out of the business," my old colleague complained...
...The time has gone when youngsters, as in my day, literally run around town to visit the courts, the state house, the city hall, the undertakers and other sources of news, in a final rush for the afternoon editions...
...The local news and any late grape-vine telegraphic news and perhaps some local editorial matter, made up the outside of the paper, the other side of the sheet, which was printed at home...
...Twenty years or so ago comparatively few country dailies really made money, except, perhaps, in the fact that they were being built up into more valuable properties...
...The secret of the increased price lies in the fact that the paper was a profitable proposition at even the bloated value...
...Many important cities which a few years ago supported, or were supposed to support, four newspapers now actually support two...
...The comic strip stretches Its forced fun across every sheet in the land...
...The world is covered in a manner that scarcely seemed possible to the provincial newspaper twenty years or so ago, but it is syndicate product...
...That is a matter of opinion rather than of fact, and far be it from me to impose a personal judgment upon a reluctant newspaper fraternity...
...The old spirit has gone out of it...
...and, where it is partisan at all, its partisanship is no longer offensive and grows beautifully less...
...Dotty Dimples or a Florida market menu for a Minnesota town...
...Conceding that both the abilities and the field of the average provincial editor in the United States do not promise the success of "Marse Henry" Watterson, Samuel Bowles or William Allen White, or that of perhaps a score of somewhat lesser lights, it must be admitted that there is still a field for personal journalism and that there is still a demand for commanding personalities in the provincial press...
...Nevertheless these are not the only criteria of an ideal provincial newspaper or any other newspaper...
...Even in this, however, complaint may well hesitate...
...In short, papers have become standardized...
...Much human interest material has been supplanted by the "feature" element...
...It really was not as funny then as it seems now...
...It is merely a news machine...
...Most matter now published is better prepared than in the old days...
...Such values are typical of the business in general...
...Country journalism no longer represents a profession or calling...
...The irresponsible competitor in most newspaper fields has been eliminated, and with this has come a tendency to combine...
...Standardization has introduced in the country newspaper field a thousand and one features which represent a distinct advance in the range, quality and quantity of reading matter of a general nature...
...In conducting a country daily nowadays a publisher pays much less attention to politics and more to the business office, and he has found that the new policy pays...
...Most non-metropolitan newspaper men readily admit that there is too much of this good thing in their publications...
...Nevertheless I venture the opinion that the typical non-metropolitan daily has lost much of its chief charm and power by attempting to lift itself out of its proper class and aping the methods and features of its metropolitan contemporaries which of necessity lack that direct personal touch with their readers possible only in comparatively small communities...
...I have no particular quarrel with the comic strip...
...The time when the typical daily paper in a city of from twentyfive to one hundred thousand inhabitants, or even more, was a party organ subservient merely to party needs has given way to a regime wherein a newspaper publisher realizes that to appeal to the members of one party is to appeal to but half of a possible clientele...
...It is neither necessary nor desirable that it should return to the days of political organ-grinding and shiny, threadbare editorial trousers, but at least it should bespeak for itself that individuality which the standardizing policy of today tends to eliminate...
...Many of them acknowledge that their metropolitan features are leading them into a static situation next door to the morgue...
...It is a little over twenty-two years since the writer gave up the publication of a daily newspaper in the capital city of a Mississippi valley state, and most of that score and more of summers and winters have been spent abroad...
...There were the same dark, dingy and somewhat disreputable editorial rooms, the same desks in disarray, the same old constant click of the telegraph instrument, the same rat-tat-tat of the typewriters, noises in the street outside, the roar of the press and the cries of newsboys as the edition went to press, the same old paper and printers' ink smell—almost everything seemed the same...
...Nor does it follow necessarily that this impersonal, neutral sort of newspaper can be the only successful provincial newspaper...
...Once a local daily was local...
...In those days many provincial dailies were edited largely with saw and mitre...
...It not only reflected the intimate life of the community in all such community's peculiarities, but it also reflected directly the personality and character of its editor and publisher, who more often than not were united in the same person...
...This personality, this individuality, might not always have been attractive in the highest degree, were not always gems of purest rays serene, but what they were they were without doubt or question, and they left a stamp upon the community they served which was distinctive and on the whole inspiring...
...A telephone story was a story without local color, without finish, a piece of imperfect workmanship...
...But the craft survived and soon came progress in the shape of column-size stereotype plates containing telegraphic news and miscellany which also came daily by express—^when the trains arrived—and enabled us to print the entire paper at home...
...My old colleagues tell me there is a demand for such features...
...and by these mats are many of the provincial dailies of today—and many more pretentious journals as well—largely constituted...
...The spirit of the telephone permeates everything...
...The literary standard on the whole is higher...
...Most country newspapers nowadays are dead in the way of local color, brightness, crispness, newsiness...
...We have health advice, crossword puzzles, bridge games, advice on how to raise children, beauty hints, fashions, full directions for the lovelorn —what will you or what have you...
...The provincial press has a high calling...
...The provincial daily also is being standardized out of its proper relation with its clientele...
...The broad range of sympathetic interest in home affairs, the never-ending panorama of local life pictured by home folk for home folk, only too often have given way to the metropolitan interpretation of life...
...Of course public taste may have changed, but there are some comic strips which would have seemed quite silly in the moron days of twenty-five years ago...
...Still later came the stereotype matrix or mat with the "feature" matter...
...The inside of such a paper, consisting of telegraphic and general news, and often of editorial matter as well, was printed in a metropolis by a "newspaper agency...
...That paper was sold In 1900 for something less than $50,000, and that was considered a very fair price...
...And a surprising thing about it is that much of it comes...
...A present-day country newspaper seldom reflects the personality of its editor or publisher...
...Now it requires no great amount of philosophy or acumen to realize that the chief charm, and in a way the chief strength, of a provincial newspaper in the old days was its individuality...
...The contrast between the provincial daily paper of today and its prototype of twenty-five years ago, brought into strong relief by this absence, is striking...
...Most papers contain more actual information, especially In the way of telegraphic reports, than ever before...
...The telephone we regarded as a last-minute resort...
...They also tell me that all the papers have them...
...There are a few outstanding examples in which editors of the old-fashioned, personal journalism sort have built up newspaper properties of commanding influence and with national, even international, reputations...
...nowadays It is part of a chain and the chief difference between a Maine and a California country newspaper is in the names in the society columns—and often there is little difference there...
...The greatest change In the provincial newspapers in the United States in the past twenty-five years has come in a business way...
...To us it meant second-hand news...
...A younger generation had come to the fore but as a newspaper clientele there was practically no change in it...
...In many respects they are better newspapers, because they are stronger in the business office...
...Moreover this Is a phase of the situation with which one cannot quarrel successfully, for it has always been an axiom of the newspaper craft that it is unwise to quarrel with one's bread and butter...
...It certainly approaches the metropolitan standard more closely, though that may be a fault rather than a virtue...
...They sit at a telephone and expect it to come to them...
...Nowadays the provincial newspaper, even more definitely than its metropolitan contemporary, attempts to appeal to all members of its community...
...There is less pure community matter and more Dotty Dimples matter from a metropolitan syndicate...
...In divorcing the business from politics, also, there has been less of a tendency on the part of politicians to invade the newspaper field by establishing personal organs, and the evanescent fly-by-night sheet is now practically unknown...
...So each paper remains in the standardized procession...
...Doubtless such material serves a purpose and meets a demand which can be reached in no better way...
...On the other hand, most country dailies today pay a good return upon large investments...
...There were not so many readers compared with the population, and advertising rates were comparatively low...
...I had acquired it on my reportorlal rounds, literally running up stairways two steps at a time to get the latest news before going to press...
...Doubtless also Dotty Dimples has her usefulness...
...Yet the paper when last sold was no better newspaper, no better edited, no higher in its standing in the community or In the state...
...Three years ago, the same paper was sold for over $200,000—and that, too, was considered a fair price...
...The newspaper establishments had been enlarged and improved somewhat, but not sensationally...
...The blighting American passion for uniformity has come to control the newspaper craft...
...The half-printed sheets were sent to the city of publication by express a few hours before publication was due...
...Perhaps we had better keep Dotty and let nature take its course with the comic strip...
...The flivver was unknown...
...This tendency has also been intensified— let me approach this phase of the change with due caution and circumspection—by a practical monopoly of telegraphic news held by some of the older papers through their ownership of a telegraphic service franchise...
...On the first paper I served we used to receive the metropolitan half of our issue from St...
...Though larger, it was essentially the same community...
...Too much "patent insides" the modern provincial publisher admits...
...Has it been for the better...
...A few months ago I visited the old home town...
...There were some really great men in the craft...
...These youngsters"— he waved a hand at half a dozen young reporters—" don't know what it is to go out and get news...
...Not in the matter of news...
...It has become a business...
...It lacks life...
...The comic strip was conceived in cleverness, delivered into real and prosperous life and now has been exposed upon the rocks of syndicated banality...
...When the trains were late, however, or if the edition failed to arrive—here let us pause in complete silence for five minutes while we contemplate real tragedy...
...I think it is beyond question that the country newspaper of today in its neutral, impersonal standards has less influence' upon a community than its more virile though perhaps less financially successful predecessor...
...All these factors work for a stronger newspaper and inferentially we naturally anticipate that they work for better newspapers...
...In due time the remains will be properly removed...
...Of course most such present-day newspapers receive at least a fair telegraphic service, some of them even a metropolitan service, and the miscellaneous material received by the mat route today is far in advance of that served in the old days...
...it really contained no more or better news, all things considered, than when it was sold a quarter of a century ago...
...But are they better...
...Such enterprises cost too much, even in these days of million-dollar primary elections...
...The situation is illustrated by my old paper...
...After all, why should a country daily attempt to compete with the metropolitan newspapers...
...I remember when I was first examined physically for life insurance, the examining physician was astounded at my lung power...
Vol. 6 • June 1927 • No. 6
