It should be said, however, that the daily newspaper is not
alone responsible for this: it is what the age and the community where it
is published make it. So far as I have observed, the majority of the
readers in America peruses eagerly three columns about a mill between an
English and a naturalized American prize-fighter, but will only glance at
a column report of a debate in the English parliament which involves a
radical change in the whole policy of England; and devours a page about
the Chantilly races, while it ignores a paragraph concerning the
suppression of the Jesuit schools.
Our newspapers are overwhelmed with material that is of no importance.
The obvious remedy for this would be more intelligent direction in the
collection of news, and more careful sifting and supervision of it when
gathered. It becomes every day more apparent to every manager that such
discrimination is more necessary. There is no limit to the various
intelligence and gossip that our complex life offers--no paper is big
enough to contain it; no reader has time enough to read it. And the
journal must cease to be a sort of waste-basket at the end of a telegraph
wire, into which any reporter, telegraph operator, or gossip-monger can
dump whatever he pleases.
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