Commercialism and Journalism — Story, Setting & Ideas

Senate was up for discussion, the publicity given it through an article he wrote for "The Independent" had more to do with its passage than anything he said in its behalf on the floor of the upper house;--that is, his article was a paying advertisement of the bill. And in mentioning the incident to you, I give "The Independent" a good advertisement.

Universities advertise themselves in many and devious ways--sometimes by the remarkable utterances of their professors, as at Chicago; sometimes by the victories of their athletes, as at Yale; and sometimes by the treatment of their women students, as at Wesleyan. But perhaps the most extraordinary case of university advertising that has come to my attention was when, not so very long ago, a certain state institution of the Middle West bought editorials in the country press at advertising rates for the sole purpose of influencing the state legislature to make them a larger appropriation. In other words the University authorities took money forced from a reluctant legislature to make the legislature give them still more money.

The charitable organizations are now beginning to advertise in the public press for donations, and even churches are falling into line. The Rev. Charles Stelzle, one of the most conspicuous leaders of the Presbyterian Church, has just published a book entitled "Principles of Successful Church Advertising," in which he says:--

From all parts of the world there come stories of losses in [church] membership, either comparative or actual. In the face of this, dare the Church sit back and leave untried a single method which may win men to Christ, provided that this method be legitimate?... The Church should advertise because of the greatness of its commission, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature." To fulfill this command does not mean that Christian men are to confine themselves to the methods of those who first heard the commission.

The question whether advertising pays will never be known in the individual case, for, like marriage, you can't tell till you try it. But in the aggregate, also like marriage, there is no doubt of its value. The tremendous power of persistent advertising to carry an idea of almost any kind into the minds of the people and stamp it there, is amazing. How many "Sunny Jims," for instance, are there in this audience? If there are none, it is singular; for learned judges have referred to him in their decisions, sermons have been preached, and volumes written about him, though it took a million dollars and two years of persistent work to introduce this modern "Mark Tapley" to the public. Have you a little fairy in your home? Do you live in Spotless Town? Do you use any of the 57 varieties? "There's a reason." "That's all." Formerly a speaker used a quotation from the Bible or Shakespeare when he wanted to strike a common chord. Nowadays he works in an allusion to some advertising phrase, and is sure of instant and universal recognition.

The Socialists and other utopian critics, who are supposed to drill to the bedrock of questions, have looked upon advertising as essentially a parasite upon the production and distribution of wealth. They tell us that in the good time coming, advertising will be relegated to the scrap-heap of outworn social machinery, along with war, race prejudice, millionaires, the lower education of women, and other things of an undesirable nature. This has not been the experience, however, of those "sinister offenders" who have come nearest to the cooeperative ownership of wealth in this country--I refer of course to "The Trusts." When the breakfast food trust was formed, one of the chief reasons for the combination was that the rival companies thus hoped to save the cost of advertising that had hitherto been required when they sold their food-stuffs in competition with each other. But they very soon found that their sales fell off after they stopped advertising, and they kept on falling off until the advertising was resumed. This teaches us that the American people have not enough gumption to buy even the staple products they need except through the stimulus of hypnotic suggestion--which is nothing but another name for advertising. Even such a benevolent institution as a great life insurance company could not get much new business on its own merits. If all the money now spent on agents' commissions, advertising, yellow-dog funds, and palatial offices were devoted sacredly to the reduction of the rates of insurance, probably fewer rather than more persons would insure. The American people have to pay to be told what is good for them, otherwise they would soon abolish editors, professors, and all the rest of us who get paid for preaching what others practice.

Now while advertising pays the consumer who buys, the advertiser who sells, and the publisher who brings both together, there is a limit to the amount of advertising which can be "carried" by a certain amount of reading matter. In newspapers we see the result of this in the vast Sunday editions, with sometimes fifty or a hundred detachable pages. In the magazines the case is different. Interesting and attractive as magazine advertising has become--it certainly should be so, considering the advertisers pay good money to put it before the people--it is not enough alone to sell a magazine, and when it forms more than half or two thirds of the number the issue becomes too bulky and the value of the advertising pages themselves decreases. In making sandwiches the ham must not be sliced too thin. That necessitates starting a new magazine; and so we find from three to a dozen periodicals issued by the same house, often similar in character and apparently rivals. This accounts for the multiplication of magazines. It is not a yearning for more love stories.

Thus you see advertising has made possible the great complex papers and magazines of the day with their corps of trained editors, reporters, and advertising writers, in numbers and intellectual calibre comparable with the faculty of a good-sized university. Advertising makes it possible to issue a paper far below the cost of manufacturing--all to the benefit of the consumer. So far as I know there is not an important daily, weekly, or monthly in America that can be manufactured at the selling price. But, on the other hand, with the growth of advertising a department had to be created in every paper for its handling. As advertising still further increased, rival papers competed for it and the professional solicitor became a necessary adjunct of every paper, until now the advertising department is the most important branch of the publication business, for it is the real source of the profits. Because the solicitor seeks the advertiser, and, therefore, is in the position of one asking for favors, he puts himself under obligations to the advertiser, and so in his keenness to bring in revenue for his paper, he is often tempted to ask the aid of the editor in appeasing the advertiser. Thus the advertiser tends to control the policy of the paper.

And this is the explanation of the condition that confronts most publications to-day. By throwing the preponderating weight of commercialism into the scales of production, advertising is at the present moment by far the greatest menace to the disinterested practice of a profession upon which the diffusion of intelligence most largely depends. If journalism is no longer a profession, but a commercial enterprise, it is due to the growth of advertising, and nothing else.

There was a time, not so very long ago, when journalism was on the verge of developing a system of professional ethics, based on other considerations than those of the cash register. Then a Greeley, Bowles, Medill, Dana, or Raymond, with a hand-press and a printer's devil, could start a paper as good as any university consisting of Mark Hopkins, a student, and a log. In those days the universal question was, "What does old Greeley have to say?" because old Greeley was the ultimate source of his own utterances. Imagine the rage he would have flown into if any one had dared insinuate that the advertisers dictated a single sentence in "The Tribune"! But now the advertisers are aggressive. They are becoming organized. They look upon the giving of an advertisement to a publisher as something of a favor, for which they have a right to expect additional courtesies in the news and editorial columns.

Advertising is also responsible for the fact that our papers are no longer organs but organizations. The individuality of the great editor, once supreme, has become less and less a power, till finally it vanishes into mere innocuous anonymity. To show you how far the editor has receded into public obscurity, it is only necessary to try to recall the portrayal of a modern editor in a recent play. Stage lawyers, stage physicians, and stage preachers abound; when you think of them your mind calls up a very definite image. But no one has yet attempted to portray the typical editor, and it is doubtful if the populace would recognize him if he were portrayed, for the modern editor is a mystery.

Despite the editorial impersonality which controls modern newspapers, the editors still touch life in more points than any other class of men. And for this reason, if for no other, it is important to know the limitations under which they work. I leave aside the limitations that come from within the editor himself; for manifestly ignorance, prejudice, venality and the like, in the editor are in no wise different from similar faults in other men.

There are just two temptations, however, peculiar to the editor, that tend to limit his freedom: first, the fear of the advertisers, and second, the fear of the subscribers. The advertisers when offended stop their advertisements; the readers, their subscriptions. The editor who is afraid to offend both must make a colorless paper indeed. He must discuss only those things about which every one agrees or nobody cares. The attitude of such an editor to his readers is, "Gape, sinner, and swallow," and to his advertisers, as Senator Brandegee said at a recent Yale Commencement in regard to a proposed Rockefeller bequest, "Bring on your tainted money." As a rule, the yellows are most in awe of the mob, while the so-called respectables fear the advertising interests.

Now let me take up in some detail the influences brought to bear upon us which tend to make us swerve from the straight and narrow path. I invite your attention first of all to the Press Agent, that indispensable adjunct of all projects that have something to gain or to fear from publicity. I have seen the claim made in print, though doubtless it is a press agent's story, that there are ten thousand press agents in the city of New York,--that is, men and women employed to boom people and enterprises in the papers and magazines. You are familiar with the theatrical press agent, the most harmless, jovial, inventive, and resourceful of his kind. He is the one who writes the articles signed by Grand Opera singers which appear in the magazines. It is he who gets up stories about Miss "Pansy Pinktoes," her milk-baths, the loss of her diamonds, the rich men who follow her. It is he who got for me an interview with a Filipino chief at Coney Island three summers ago, whose unconventional remarks and original philosophy on America and the inhabitants thereof startled me no less than our readers.

When the press agent has no news, he manufactures it. The readers of the New York papers the other day read that a prominent Socialist, who occupied a box in the theatre where a play was given in which Socialism is attacked, stood up and offered to harangue the audience between the acts. The actor who played the role of the wicked capitalist came on the stage and invited the audience to vote whether they cared to hear the Socialist or him. The audience thereupon voted both down. But the management the next Sunday evening very kindly offered the use of the stage for a debate on Socialism, to which the leading Socialists and anti-Socialists of the city were invited. The meeting was a great success, and all the reporters in town were present, just as by some singular coincidence they happened to be on the first night.

One of our most successful operatic managers--impressario, I believe, is the more correct appellation--was about to produce the opera of "Salome," which had been taken off the rival stage after its first performance, on the assumption that New York was shocked. The singer was not only to sing the part, if one can sing a Strauss opera, but was also to dance it. Finally, about a week before the opera was produced, a new soprano was engaged to sing another role hitherto taken by the prospective Salome. Instantly the dread headlines on all the front pages of the metropolitan press announced that Miss Garden would resign before Madame Cavalieri should sing in any of _her_ roles. Mr. Hammerstein's "eyes twinkled," as the reporters besieged him. He said he guessed he could untangle matters. Out of the kindness of his heart he had thought the rehearsals of "Salome" were too fatiguing for Miss Garden, and so got assistance for her. After a three or four days' operatic war, in which literally columns of printers' ink was shed, the _entente cordiale_ was resumed, and the song-birds became doves of peace again. The New York "Evening Post" printed the next day an editorial entitled, "Genius in Advertising"; and a week later the opera, or rather the song and dance of "Salome," was given, with seats selling at ten dollars apiece, and "standing room only" signs at the box-office.

This desire for publicity on the part of the histrionic profession goes so far, that often absolute fakes are sent out to the poor, unsuspecting editor. Here is a statement that was printed, let us hope in good faith, in one of the Brooklyn papers not long ago. It referred to the leading lady in a popular stock company.

Miss S. has a remarkably fine collection of miniatures painted on ivory. Her attention was attracted to them several years ago by a miniature of one of her ancestors, painted by Edward Greene Malbone, which came into her possession. The delicate quality of the painter's art that was of necessity lavished upon the ivory pleased her as an amateur and she began to collect. Miss S. has haunted the antique shops of Manhattan and Brooklyn during the few leisure moments that came to her, in her search after miniatures. She now owns something like one hundred examples of famous miniatures. One of her greatest treasures is a portrait of John Dray, by that master-painter of miniatures, Richard Cosway.

The publication of this article brought such a number of requests from the friends of Miss S. to see her collection, that the ingenious press agent was obliged to invent and publish another fabrication--this time of a midnight robbery in which the collection disappeared. This shameless story was told me by the press agent himself, and he gave me from his scrap-book the fake clipping I have just read.

Similarly the imitation riots, and protests from delegations of negroes, where Thomas Dixon's Ku-Klux play, "The Clansman," was to be produced, were often due to the initiative of the enterprising press agent--at least so he told me.

I would not have you think, however, that the press bureau is not in many instances a perfectly legitimate institution, and cannot be used with all propriety by religious, reform, political, and other organizations. The woman's suffrage movement, for instance, has a well-equipped and organized bureau; while the two great political parties during campaign times have sent out for many years news-articles and editorials of great value to the country and partisan press.

Perhaps the most efficacious press bureau of the legitimate kind is that of the Christian Scientists. Every time an editor prints anything derogatory to the Rev. Mary Baker G. Eddy, or her influential cult, a suave and professionally happy gentleman immediately sends his card into the sanctum, and, holding the offensive clipping in one hand, together with a brief and well-written reply, says with the utmost courtesy:--

"Inasmuch, my good sir, as you deemed it worth while to devote so much of your valuable space to spreading broadcast before your intelligent audience an error about Christian Science, I feel sure that your sense of justice will make plain to you the privilege of giving us space to demonstrate the real truth of the matter."

To the editor with a conscience--and some of us still have the vestiges of one--this is a hard argument to evade; and as a result Christian Science gets twice as much notice in the papers as it would were there no smiling press agent to follow up every unfavorable reference, no matter how obscure the publication. The next time the editor wants to point a jest at the expense of Christian Science, he thinks twice and then substitutes some other cause that does not employ an editorial rectifier.

But perhaps the best use of a publicity bureau was made recently by the street-railway company of Roanoke, Virginia, and the water company of Scranton, Pennsylvania. Both of these companies had become very unpopular, one as a result of poor street-car service, and the other on account of a typhoid epidemic supposed to have been started from the pollution of the company's reservoir. Both companies appropriated a good sum of money, hired a press agent, and bought advertising space in the local papers every day for a month or more. These advertisements gave the companies' side of the case with such candor and convincing fairness that they soon became the talk of the town, personal letters were written to the papers about them, and the hostility toward them very quickly turned to a feeling of good-will. It pays to take the public into your confidence.

And now the staid "Rail-Road Age-Gazette" has sounded the call for a great press agent to arise and stem the growing public hostility to the railroads. The "Age-Gazette" did not use the phrase "press agent," as the appellation has not as yet come into its full dignity. It employed the more euphonious term "Railroad Diplomatist." Still, high-sounding titles have their use, as when some of my brother editors call their "reporters" "Special Commissioners," and their foreign correspondents "Journalistic Ambassadors."

We had a Peace and Arbitration Congress in New York two years ago. Being chairman of the Press Committee, I employed a firm of press agents to get for us the maximum amount of publicity. As a result we received over ten thousand clippings from the papers of the United States alone. I do not mean to claim that the Congress would not have been extensively noticed without the deft work of the agents; but they unquestionably helped a great deal. The newspapers welcome them when they represent such well-known philanthropic institutions as the Peace Society, the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and the People's Institute, because the copy they "turn in" requires little or no further editing before it is sent to the printer. But when they are employed to promote financial ventures, wars on labor unions, anti-municipal ownership campaigns, or other private and class interests, then the editors discount what they provide and they actually do more harm than good to the cause they are intended to promote.

Press agents, however, are sometimes enabled to get illegitimate matter into our best papers. I recall to your memory the reports favorable to the companies sent out during the great insurance investigations in New York. "Collier's" has told the whole story.[2] One of the agents employed testified on the witness-stand that a great insurance company agreed to pay a dollar a line for what he could get into the papers. He made his own arrangements with the journals that took his stuff, and the difference between the price he had to pay and the dollar a line he got from the insurance company was to be his private rake-off. He succeeded in securing the publication of six dispatches of about two hundred and fifty words, in such well-known newspapers as the St. Paul "Pioneer Press," the Boston "Herald," the Toledo "Blade," the Buffalo "Courier," the Florida "Times-Union," the Atlanta "Constitution," and the Wilmington "News." It is only fair to state, however, that there was nothing in the evidence to show whether the papers went into the arrangement on a business basis, or were fooled into thinking the dispatches they published were genuine reports of the proceedings before the committee.

[2] _Collier's_, Nov. 11, 1905.