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Classical Mechanics 8 01 MIT edX Edition Peter
Dourmashkin Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Peter Dourmashkin
ISBN(s): 9781119918028, 1119918022
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 158.65 MB
Year: 2013
Language: english
 Classical Mechanics: MIT 8.01 Course Notes

Dedication  ....................................................................................................................................    
Acknowledgements  ...................................................................................................................    
Chapter  1  Introduction  to  Classical  Mechanics  ...............................................................    
Chapter  2  Units,  Dimensional  Analysis,  Problem  Solving,  and  Estimation  ............    
Chapter  3  Vectors  ......................................................................................................................    
Chapter  4  One  Dimensional  Kinematics  ............................................................................    
Chapter  5  Two  Dimensional  Kinematics  ...........................................................................    
Chapter  6  Circular  Motion  ......................................................................................................    
Chapter  7  Newton’s  Laws  of  Motion  ....................................................................................    
Chapter  8  Applications  of  Newton’s  Second  Law  ............................................................    
Chapter  9  Circular  Motion  Dynamics  ..................................................................................    
Chapter  10  Momentum,  System  of  Particles,  and  Conservation  of  Momentum  ...    
Chapter  11  Reference  Frames  ...............................................................................................    
Chapter  12  Momentum  and  the  Flow  of  Mass  ..................................................................    
Chapter  13  Energy,  Kinetic  Energy,  and  Work  ................................................................    
Chapter  14  Potential  Energy  and  Conservation  of  Energy  ..........................................    
Chapter  15  Collision  Theory  ..................................................................................................    
Chapter  16  Two  Dimensional  Rotational  Kinematics  ...................................................    
Chapter  17  Two  Dimensional  Rotational  Dynamics  ......................................................    
Chapter  18  Static  Equilibrium  ...............................................................................................    
Chapter  19  Angular  Momentum  ...........................................................................................    
Chapter  20  Rigid  Body:  Translation  and  Rotational  Motion  Kinematics  for  
Fixed  Axis  Rotation  ...................................................................................................................    
Chapter  21  Rigid  Body  Dynamics:  Rotation  and  Translation  about  a  Fixed  Axis    
Chapter  22  Three  Dimensional  Rotations  and  Gyroscopes  .........................................    
Chapter  23  Simple  Harmonic  Motion  ..................................................................................    
Chapter  24  Physical  Pendulum  .............................................................................................    
Chapter  25  Celestial  Mechanics  ............................................................................................    
Physical  Constants  .....................................................................................................................    
Astronomical  Data  .....................................................................................................................    
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1 Introduction to Classical Mechanics
Chapter 2 Units, Dimensional Analysis, Problem Solving, and
Estimation
Chapter 3 Vectors
Chapter 4 One Dimensional Kinematics
Chapter 5 Two Dimensional Kinematics
Chapter 6 Circular Motion
Chapter 7 Newton’s Laws of Motion
Chapter 8 Applications of Newton’s Second Law
Chapter 9 Circular Motion Dynamics
Chapter 10 Momentum, System of Particles, and Conservation
of Momentum
Chapter 11 Reference Frames
Chapter 12 Momentum and the Flow of Mass
Chapter 13 Energy, Kinetic Energy, and Work
Chapter 14 Potential Energy and Conservation of Energy
Chapter 15 Collision Theory
Chapter 16 Two Dimensional Rotational Kinematics
Chapter 17 Two Dimensional Rotational Dynamics
Chapter 18 Static Equilibrium
Chapter 19 Angular Momentum
Chapter 20 Rigid Body: Translation and Rotational Motion
Kinematics for Fixed Axis Rotation
Chapter 21 Rigid Body Dynamics: Rotation and Translation
about a Fixed Axis
Chapter 22 Three Dimensional Rotations and Gyroscopes
Chapter 23 Simple Harmonic Motion
Chapter 24 Physical Pendulum
Chapter 25 Celestial Mechanics
Physical Constants
Astronomical Data
For Dorothea
 Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the many contributions of my friends, colleagues, and

family, without which the completion of these course notes would never have been
possible.

Craig Watkins, whose efforts have contributed to all aspect of these course notes,
especially to the appendices of various chapters, and to the celestial mechanics chapter in
particular.

John Belcher, for his tireless efforts in improving undergraduate education at MIT,
especially by creating the TEAL (Technology Enabled Active Learning) program for
first-year physics students at MIT.

Thomas Greytak, for his dedication both in the classroom and to improving physics
education at MIT. His presentations of mechanics were an inspiration for many parts of
these course notes.

Deepto Chakrabarty, for our many discussions prompted by his insightful understanding
of classical mechanics.

Andy Neely, and his years of devotion towards making TEAL work.

Camille Dourmashkin-Cagol, for her painting, “Beethoven’s Pathétique No. 1,” on the
front and back cover of this book.

I am eternally grateful to the Physics Department at MIT, especially Edwin Bertschinger,

for his devotion to undergraduate education.

I would also like to thank the following people for their contributions to TEAL and to the
development of these course notes: Sen-Ben Liao, Sahana Murthy, Saif Rayyan, Eric
Mazur, Daniel Kleppner, Marin Soljačić, David Pritchard, Eric Hudson, Enectali
Figueroa-Feliciano, Joseph Formaggio, Jeff Gore, Christoph Paus, Marcus Klute, David
Litster, Alan Guth, Walter Lewin, Matthew Strafuss, Daniel Kelleher, Nancy Savioli,
Nancy Boyce, and Catherine Modica.

And finally, I would like to thank my wife, Dorothea, and my two daughters, Clarissa and
Camille, for their patience and understanding.
 Chapter 1 The History and Limitations of Classical Mechanics

Chapter 1 The History and Limitations of Classical Mechanics ............. 2

Chapter 1 The History and Limitations of Classical Mechanics
Classical mechanics is the mathematical science that studies the displacement of bodies
under the action of forces. Gailieo Galilee initiated the modern era of mechanics by using
mathematics to describe the motion of bodies. His Mechanics, published in 1623,
introduced the concepts of force and described the constant accelerated motion of objects
near the surface of the Earth. Sixty years later Newton formulated his Laws of Motion,
which he published in 1687 under the title, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia
Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy). In the third book,
subtitled De mundi systemate (On the system of the world), Newton solved the greatest
scientific problem of his time by applying his Universal Law of Gravitation to determine
the motion of planets. Newton established a mathematical approach to the analysis of
physical phenomena in which he stated that it was unnecessary to introduce final causes
(hypothesis) that have no experimental basis, “Hypotheses non fingo (I frame no
hypotheses), but that physical models are built from experimental observations and then
made general by induction. This led to a great century of applications of the principles of
Newtonian mechanics to many new problems culminating in the work of Leonhard Euler.
Euler began a systematic study of the three dimensional motion of rigid bodies, leading to
a set of dynamical equations now known as Euler’s Equations of Motion.

Alongside this development and refinement of the concept of force and its
application to the description of motion, the concept of energy slowly emerged,
culminating in the middle of the nineteenth century in the discovery of the principle of
conservation of energy and its immediate applications to the laws of thermodynamics.
Conservation principles are now central to our study of mechanics; the conservation of
momentum, energy, and angular momentum enabled a new reformulation of classical
mechanics.

During this period, the experimental methodology and mathematical tools of

Newtonian mechanics were applied to other non-rigid systems of particles leading to the
development of continuum mechanics. The theories of fluid mechanics, wave mechanics,
and electromagnetism emerged leading to the development of the wave theory of light.
However there were many perplexing aspects of the wave theory of light, for example
does light propagate through a medium, the “ether”. A series of optics experiments,
culminating in the Michelson-Morley experiment in 1887 ruled out the hypothesis of a
stationary medium. Many attempts were made to reconcile the experimental evidence
with classical mechanics but the challenges were more fundamental. The basics concepts
of absolute time and absolute space, which Newton had defined in the Principia, were
themselves inadequate to explain a host of experimental observations. Einstein, by
insisting on a fundamental rethinking of the concepts of space and time, and the relativity
of motion, in his special theory of relativity (1905) was able to resolve the apparent
conflicts between optics and Newtonian mechanics. In particular, special relativity
provides the necessary framework for describing the motion of rapidly moving objects
(speed greater than v > 0.1 c ).
 A second limitation on the validity of Newtonian mechanics appeared at the
microscopic length scale. A new theory, statistical mechanics, was developed relating the
microscopic properties of individual atoms and molecules to the macroscopic or bulk
thermodynamic properties of materials. Started in the middle of the nineteenth century,
new observations at very small scales revealed anomalies in the predicted behavior of
gases. It became increasingly clear that classical mechanics did not adequately explain a
wide range of newly discovered phenomena at the atomic and sub-atomic length scales.
An essential realization was that the language of classical mechanics was not even
adequate to qualitatively describe certain microscopic phenomena. By the early part of
the twentieth century, quantum mechanics provided a mathematical description of
microscopic phenomena in complete agreement with our empirical knowledge of all non-
relativistic phenomena.

In the twentieth century, as experimental observations led to a more detailed

knowledge of the large-scale properties of the universe, Newton’s Universal Law of
Gravitation no longer accurately modeled the observed universe and needed to be
replaced by general relativity. By the end of the twentieth century and beginning of the
twenty-first century, many new observations, for example the accelerated expansion of
the Universe, have required introduction of new concepts like dark energy that may lead
once again to a fundamental rethinking of the basic concepts of physics in order to
explain observed phenomena.
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will be the only cities with morning dailies. It is reported by
competent witnesses that the one-newspaper towns are not only well
content with this state of affairs, but that they actively resist any
attempt to change the situation, the merchants in some cases
banding together voluntarily to maintain the monopoly by refusing
advertising to those wishing to start competition.
It is of course true that in the larger cities of the East there are
other causes than the lack of advertising to account for the
disappearance of certain newspapers. Many of them have deserved to
perish because they were inefficiently managed or improperly edited.
The Boston Transcript declares that the reason for the Journal’s
demise was lack “of that singleness and clearness of direction and
purpose which alone establish confidence in and guarantee abiding
support of a newspaper.” If some of the Hearst newspapers may be
cited as examples of successful journals that have neither clearness
nor honesty of purpose, it is not to be questioned that a newspaper
with clear-cut, vigorous personalities behind it is far more likely to
survive than one that does not have them. But it does not help the
situation to point out, as does the Columbia (S. C.) State, that
“sentiment and passion” have been responsible for the launching of
many of the newspaper wrecks; for often sentiment and the
righteous passion of indignation have been responsible for the
foundation of notable newspapers such as the New York Tribune,
whose financial success was, for a time at least, quite notable. It is
the danger that newspaper conditions, because of the enormously
increased costs and this tendency to monopoly, may prevent people
who are actuated by passion and sentiment from founding
newspapers, which is causing many students of the situation much
concern. What is to be the hope for the advocates of new-born and
unpopular reforms if they cannot have a press of their own, as the
Abolitionists and the founders of the Republican party set up theirs
in a remarkably short time, usually with poverty-stricken bank
accounts?
If no good American can read of cities having only one newspaper
without concern,—since democracy depends largely upon the
presenting of both sides of every issue,—it does not add any comfort
to know that it would take millions to found a new paper, on a
strictly business basis, in our largest cities. Only extremely wealthy
men could undertake such a venture,—precisely as the rejuvenated
Chicago Herald has been financed by a group of the city’s wealthiest
magnates,—and even then the success of the undertaking would be
questionable if it were not possible to secure the Associated Press
service for the newcomer.
The “journal of protest,” it may be truthfully said, is to-day being
confined, outside of the Socialistic press, to weeklies of varying types,
of which the Survey, the Public, and the St. Louis Mirror, are
examples; and scores of them fall by the wayside. The large sums
necessary to establish a journal of opinion are being demonstrated by
the New Republic. Gone is the day when a Liberator can be founded
with a couple of hundred dollars as capital. The struggle of the New
York Call to keep alive, and that of some of our Jewish newspapers,
are clear proof that conditions to-day make strongly against those
who are fired by passion and sentiment to give a new and radical
message to the world.
True, there is still opportunity in small towns for editorial courage
and ability; William Allen White has demonstrated that. But in the
small towns the increased costs due to the war are being felt as
keenly as in the larger cities. Ayer’s Newspaper Directory shows a
steady shrinkage during the last three years in the weeklies, semi-
weeklies, tri-weeklies, and semi-monthlies, there being 300 less in
1916 than in 1914. There lies before me a list of 76 dailies and
weeklies over which the funeral rites have been held since January 1,
1917; to some of them the government has administered the coup de
grace. There are three Montreal journals among them, and a number
of little German publications, together with the notorious Appeal to
Reason and a couple of farm journals: 21 states are represented in
the list, which is surely not complete.
Many dailies have sought to save themselves by increasing their
price to two cents, as in Chicago, Pittsburg, Buffalo, and
Philadelphia; and everywhere there has been a raising of mail-
subscription and advertising rates, in an effort to offset the
enormous and persistent rise in the cost of paper and labor. It is
indisputable, however, that, if we are in for a long war, many of the
weaker city dailies and the country dailies must go to the wall, just as
there have been similar failures in every one of the warring nations
of Europe.
 Surveying the newspaper field as a whole, there has not been of
late years a marked development of the tendency to group together a
number of newspapers under one ownership in the manner of
Northcliffe. Mr. Hearst, thanks be to fortune, has not added to his
string lately; his group of Examiners, Journals, and Americans is
popularly believed not to be making any large sums of money for
him, because the weaker members offset the earnings of the
prosperous ones, and there is reputed to be great managerial waste.
[2]
When Mr. Munsey buys another daily, he usually sells an
unprosperous one or adds another grave to his private and sizable
newspaper cemetery. The Scripps-McRae Syndicate, comprising
some 22 dailies, has not added to its number since 1911.
2. Mr. Hearst acquired the Boston Advertiser in November 1917, shortly after
this article was written.-Ed.
In Michigan the Booth Brothers control six clean, independent
papers, which, for the local reasons given above, exercise a
remarkable influence. The situation in that state shows clearly how
comparatively easy it would be for rich business men, with selfish or
partisan purpose, to dominate public opinion there and poison the
public mind against anything they disliked. It is a situation to cause
much uneasiness when one looks into the more distant future and
considers the distrust of the press because of a far-reaching belief
that the large city newspaper, being a several-million-dollar affair,
must necessarily have managers in close alliance with other men in
great business enterprises,—the chamber of commerce, the
merchants’ association group,—and therefore wholly detached from
the aspirations of the plain people.
Those who feel thus will be disturbed by another remarkable
consolidation in the field of newspaper-making—the recent
absorption of a large portion of the business of the American Press
Association by the Western Newspaper Union. The latter now has an
almost absolute monopoly in supplying “plate” and “ready to print”
matter to the small daily newspapers and the country weeklies
—“patent insides” is a more familiar term. The Western Newspaper
Union to-day furnishes plate matter to nearly fourteen thousand
newspapers—a stupendous number. In 1912 a United States court in
Chicago forbade this very consolidation as one in restraint of trade;
to-day it permits it because the great rise in the cost of plate matter,
from four to seventeen cents a pound, seems to necessitate the
extinction of the old competition and the establishment of a
monopoly. The court was convinced that this field of newspaper
enterprise will no longer support two rival concerns. An immense
power which could be used to influence public opinion is thus placed
in the hands of the officers of a money-making concern, for news
matter is furnished as well as news photogravures.
Only the other day I heard of a boast that a laudatory article
praising a certain astute Democratic politician had appeared in no
less than 7,000 publications of the Union’s clients. Who can estimate
the value of such an advertisement? Who can deny the power
enormously to influence rural public opinion for better or for worse?
Who can deny that the very innocent aspect of such a publication
makes it a particularly easy, as well as effective, way of conducting
propaganda for better or for worse? So far it has been to the
advantage of both the associations to carry the propaganda matter of
the great political parties,—they deny any intentional propaganda of
their own,—but one cannot help wondering whether this will always
be the case, and whether there is not danger that some day this
tremendous power may be used in the interest of some privileged
undertaking or some self-seeking politicians. At least, it would seem
as if our law-makers, already so critical of the press, might be
tempted to declare the Union a public-service corporation and,
therefore, bound to transmit all legitimate news offered to it.
In the strictly news-gathering field there is probably a decrease of
competition at hand. The Allied governments abroad and our courts
at home have struck a hard blow at the Hearst news-gathering
concern, the International News Association, which has been
excluded from England and her colonies, Italy, and France, and has
recently been convicted of news-stealing and falsification on the
complaint of the Associated Press. The case is now pending an appeal
in the Supreme Court, when the decision of the lower court may be
reversed. If, as a result of these proceedings, the association
eventually goes out of business, it will be to the public advantage,
that is, if honest, uncolored news is a desideratum. This will give to
the Associated Press—the only press association which is altogether
coöperative and makes no profit by the sale of its news—a monopoly
in the morning field. If this lack of organized competition—it is daily
competing with the special correspondents of all the great
newspapers—has its drawbacks, it is certainly reassuring that
throughout this unprecedented war the Associated Press has brought
over an enormous volume of news with a minimum of just
complaints as to the fidelity of that news—save that it is, of course,
rigidly censored in every country, and particularly in passing through
England. It has met vast problems with astounding success.
But it is in considerable degree dependent upon foreign news
agencies, like Reuter’s, the Havas Agency in France, the Wolf Agency
in Germany, and others, including the official Russian agency. Where
these are not frankly official agencies, they are the creatures of their
governments and have been either deliberately used by them to
mislead others, and particularly foreign nations, or to conceal the
truth from their own subjects. As Dean Walter Williams, of the
University of Missouri School of Journalism, has lately pointed out,
if there is one thing needed after this war, it is the abolition of these
official and semi-official agencies with their frequent stirring up of
racial and international hatreds. A free press after the war is as badly
needed as freedom of the seas and freedom from conscienceless
kaisers and autocrats.
At home, when the war is over, there is certain to be as relatively
striking a slant toward social reorganization, reform, and economic
revolution as had taken place in Russia, and is taking place in
England as related by the London Times. When that day comes here,
the deep smouldering distrust of our press will make itself felt. Our
Fourth Estate is to have its day of overhauling and of being
muckraked. The perfectly obvious hostility toward newspapers of the
present Congress, as illustrated by its attempt to impose a direct and
special tax upon them; its rigorous censorship in spite of the
profession’s protest of last spring; and the heavy additional postage
taxes levied upon some classes of newspapers and the magazines,
goes far to prove this. But even more convincing is the dissatisfaction
with the metropolitan press in every reform camp and among the
plain people. It has grown tremendously because the masses are,
rightly or wrongly, convinced that the newspapers with heavy capital
investments are a “capitalistic” press and, therefore, opposed to their
interests.
 This feeling has grown all the more because so many hundreds of
thousands who were opposed to our going to war and are opposed to
it now still feel that their views—as opposed to those of the
prosperous and intellectual classes—were not voiced in the press last
winter. They know that their position to-day is being misrepresented
as disloyal or pro-German by the bulk of the newspapers. In this
situation many are turning to the Socialistic press as their one
refuge. They, and multitudes who have gradually been losing faith in
the reliability of our journalism, for one reason or another, can still
be won back if we journalists will but slake their intense thirst for
reliable, trustworthy news, for opinions free from class bias and not
always set forth from the point of view of the well-to-do and the
privileged. How to respond to this need is the greatest problem
before the American press. Meanwhile, on the business side we drift
toward consolidation on a resistless economic current, which foams
past numberless rocks, and leads no man knows whither.
 THE WANING POWER OF THE PRESS

BY FRANCIS E. LEUPP

I
After the last ballot had been cast and counted in the recent
mayoralty contest in New York, the successful candidate paid his
respects to the newspapers which had opposed him. This is
equivalent to saying that he paid them to the whole metropolitan
press; for every great daily newspaper except one had done its best to
defeat him, and that one had given him only a left-handed support.[3]
The comments of the mayor-elect, although not ill-tempered, led up
to the conclusion that in our common-sense generation nobody cares
what the newspapers say.
3. The conditions here referred to in the election of Mayor Gaynor in 1909
were almost duplicated in 1917, when Mayor Mitchel was defeated for reëlection,
although all the New York newspapers, except the two Hearst papers and the
Socialist daily, supported him.—Ed.
Unflattering as such a verdict may be, probably a majority of the
community, if polled as a jury, would concur in it. The airy dismissal
of some proposition as “mere newspaper talk” is heard at every social
gathering, till one who was brought up to regard the press as a
mighty factor in modern civilization is tempted to wonder whether it
has actually lost the power it used to wield among us. The answer
seems to me to depend on whether we are considering direct or
indirect effects. A newspaper exerts its most direct influence through
its definite interpretation of current events. Its indirect influence
radiates from the amount and character of the news it prints, the
particular features it accentuates, and its method of presenting these.
Hence it is always possible that its direct influence may be trifling,
while its indirect influence is large; its direct influence harmless, but
its indirect influence pernicious; or vice versa.
A distinction ought to be made here like that which we make
between credulity and nerves. The fact that a dwelling in which a
mysterious murder has been committed may for years thereafter go
begging in vain for a tenant, does not mean that a whole cityful of
fairly intelligent people are victims of the ghost obsession; but it does
mean that no person enjoys being reminded of midnight
assassination every time he crosses his own threshold; for so
persistent a companionship with a discomforting thought is bound to
depress the best nervous system ever planted in a human being. So
the constant iteration of any idea in a daily newspaper will presently
capture public attention, whether the idea be good or bad, sensible or
foolish. Though the influence of the press, through its ability to keep
certain subjects always before its readers, has grown with its growth
in resources and patronage, its hold on popular confidence has
unquestionably been loosened during the last forty or fifty years. To
Mayor Gaynor’s inference, as to most generalizations of that sort, we
need not attach serious importance. The interplay of so many forces
in a political campaign makes it impracticable to separate the
influence of the newspapers from the rest, and either hold it solely
accountable for the result, or pass it over as negligible; for if we tried
to formulate any sweeping rules, we should find it hard to explain the
variegated records of success and defeat among newspaper favorites.
But it may be worth while to inquire why an institution so full of
potentialities as a free press does not produce more effect than it
does, and why so many of its leading writers to-day find reason to
deplore the altered attitude of the people toward it.
Not necessarily in their order of importance, but for convenience
of consideration, I should list the causes for this change about as
follows: the transfer of both properties and policies from personal to
impersonal control; the rise of the cheap magazine; the tendency to
specialization in all forms of public instruction; the fierceness of
competition in the newspaper business; the demand for larger
capital, unsettling the former equipoise between counting-room and
editorial room; the invasion of newspaper offices by the universal
mania of hurry; the development of the news-getting at the expense
of the news-interpreting function; the tendency to remould
narratives of fact so as to confirm office-made policies; the growing
disregard of decency in the choice of news to be specially exploited;
and the scant time now spared by men of the world for reading
journals of general intelligence.
In the old-style newspaper, in spite of the fact that the editorial
articles were usually anonymous, the editor’s name appeared among
the standing notices somewhere in every issue, or was so well known
to the public that we talked about “what Greeley thought” of this or
that, or wondered “whether Bryant was going to support” a certain
ticket, or shook our heads over the latest sensational screed in
“Bennett’s paper.” The identity of such men was clear in the minds of
a multitude of readers who might sometimes have been puzzled to
recall the title of the sheet edited by each. We knew their private
histories and their idiosyncrasies; they were to us no mere
abstractions on the one hand, or wire-worked puppets on the other,
but living, moving, sentient human beings; and our acquaintance
with them enabled us, as we believed, to locate fairly well their
springs of thought and action. Indeed, their very foibles sometimes
furnished our best exegetical key to their writings.
When a politician whom Bryant had criticised threatened to pull
his nose, and Bryant responded by stalking ostentatiously three
times around the bully at their next meeting in public, the readers of
the Evening Post did not lose faith in the editor because he was only
human, but guessed about how far to discount future utterances of
the paper with regard to his antagonist. When Bennett avowed his
intention of advertising the Herald without the expenditure of a
dollar, by attacking his enemies so savagely as to goad them into a
physical assault, everybody understood the motives behind the
warfare on both sides, and attached to it only the significance that
the facts warranted. Knowing Dana’s affiliations, no one mistook the
meaning of the Sun’s dismissal of General Hancock as “a good man,
weighing two hundred and fifty pounds, but ... not Samuel J. Tilden.”
And Greeley’s retort to Bryant, “You lie, villain! willfully, wickedly,
basely lie!” and his denunciation of Bennett as a “low-mouthed,
blatant, witless, brutal scoundrel,” though not preserved as models of
amenity for the emulation of budding editors, were felt to be
balanced by the delicious frankness of the Tribune’s announcement
of “the dissolution of the political firm of Seward, Weed & Greeley by
the withdrawal of the junior partner.”
With all its faults, that era of personal journalism had some rugged
virtues. In referring to it, I am reminded of a remark made to me,
years ago, by the oldest editor then living,—so old that he had
employed Weed as a journeyman, and refused to hire Greeley as a
tramp printer,—that “in the golden age of our craft, every editor wore
his conscience on his arm, and carried his dueling weapon in his
hand, walked always in the light where the whole world could see
him, and was prepared to defend his published opinions with his life
if need be.” Without going to that extreme, it is easy to sympathize
with the veteran’s view that a man of force, who writes nothing for
which he is not ready to be personally responsible, commands more
respect from the mass of his fellows than one who shields himself
behind a rampart of anonymity, and voices only the sentiments of a
profit-seeking corporation.
Of course, the transfer of our newspapers from personal to
corporate ownership and control was not a matter of preference, but
a practical necessity. The expense of modernizing the mechanical
equipment alone imposed a burden which few newspaper
proprietors were able to carry unaided. Add to that the cost of an
ever-expanding news-service, and the higher salaries demanded by
satisfactory employees in all departments, and it is hardly wonderful
that one private owner after another gave up his single-handed
struggle against hopeless financial odds, and sought aid from men of
larger means. Partnership relations involve so many risks, and are so
hard to shift in an emergency, that resort was had to the form of a
corporation, which afforded the advantage of a limited liability, and
enabled a shareholder to dispose of his interest if he tired of the
game. Since the dependence of a newspaper on the favor of an often
whimsical public placed it among the least attractive forms of
investment, even under these well-guarded conditions, the capitalists
who were willing to take large blocks of stock were usually men with
political or speculative ends to gain, to which they could make a
newspaper minister by way of compensating them for the hazards
they faced.
 These newcomers were not idealists, like the founders and
managers of most of the important journals of an earlier period.
They were men of keen commercial instincts, evidenced by the fact
that they had accumulated wealth. They naturally looked at
everything through the medium of the balance-sheet. Here was a
paper with a fine reputation, but uncertain or disappearing profits; it
must be strengthened, enlarged, and made to pay. Principles? Yes,
principles were good things, but we must not ride even good things
to death. The noblest cause in creation cannot be promoted by a
defunct newspaper, and to keep its champion alive there must be a
net cash income. The circulation must be pushed, and the advertising
patronage increased. More circulation can be secured only by
keeping the public stirred up. Employ private detectives to pursue
the runaway husband, and bring him back to his wife; organize a
marine expedition to find the missing ship; send a reporter into the
Soudan to interview the beleaguered general whose own government
is powerless to reach him with an army. Blow the trumpet, and make
ringing announcements every day. If nothing new is to be had,
refurbish something so old that people have forgotten it, and spread
it over lots of space. Who will know the difference?
What one newspaper did, that others were forced to do or be
distanced in the competition. It all had its effect. A craving for
excitement was first aroused in the public, and then satisfied by the
same hand that had aroused it. Nobody wished to be behind the
times, so circulations were swelled gradually to tenfold their old
dimensions. Rivalry was worked up among the advertisers in their
turn, till a half-page in a big newspaper commanded a price
undreamed of a few years before. Thus one interest was made to
foster another, each increase of income involving also an increase of
cost, and each additional outlay bringing fresh returns. In such a race
for business success, with such forces behind the runners, can we
marvel at the subsidence of ideals which in the days of individual
control and slower gait were uppermost? With the capitalists’ plans
to promote, and powerful advertisers to conciliate by emphasizing
this subject or discreetly ignoring that, is not the wonder rather that
the moral quality of our press has not fallen below its present
standard?
 Even in our day we occasionally find an editor who pays his
individual tribute to the old conception of personal responsibility by
giving his surname to his periodical or signing his leading articles
himself. In such newspaper ventures as Mr. Bryan and Mr. La
Follette have launched within a few years, albeit their motives are
known to be political and partisan, more attention is attracted by one
of their deliverances than by a score of impersonal preachments. Mr.
Hearst, the high priest of sensational journalism, though not
exploiting his own authority in the same way, has always taken pains
to advertise the individual work of such lieutenants as Bierce and
Brisbane; and he, like Colonel Taylor of Boston, early opened his
editorial pages to contributions from distinguished authors outside
of his staff, with their signatures attached. A few editors I have
known who, in whatever they wrote with their own hands, dropped
the diffusive “we” and adopted the more direct and intimate “I.”
These things go to show that even journalists who have received
most of their training in the modern school appreciate that trait in
our common human nature which prompts us to pay more heed to a
living voice than to a talking-machine.
 II
The importance of a responsible personality finds further
confirmation in the evolution of the modern magazine. From being
what its title indicates, a place of storage for articles believed to have
some permanent value, the magazine began to take on a new
character about twenty years ago. While preserving its distinct
identity and its originality, it leaped boldly into the newspaper arena,
and sought its topics in the happenings of the day, regardless of their
evanescence. It raised a corps of men and women who might
otherwise have toiled in obscurity all their lives, and gave them a
chance to become authorities on questions of immediate interest, till
they are now recognized as constituting a limited but highly
specialized profession. One group occupied itself with trusts and
trust magnates; another with politicians whose rise had been so
meteoric as to suggest a romance behind it; another with the inside
history of international episodes; another with new religious
movements and their leaders, and so on.
What was the result? The public following which the newspaper
editors used to command when they did business in the open, but
which was falling away from their anonymous successors, attached
itself promptly to the magazinists. The citizen interested in insurance
reform turned eagerly to all that emanated from the group in charge
of that topic; whoever aspired to take part in the social uplift bought
every number of every periodical in which the contributions of
another group appeared; the hater of monopoly paid a third group
the same compliment. What was more, the readers pinned their faith
to their favorite writers, and quoted Mr. Steffens and Miss Tarbell
and Mr. Baker on the specialty each had taken, with much the same
freedom with which they might have quoted Darwin on plant-life, or
Edison on electricity. If any anonymous editor ventured to question
the infallibility of one of these prophets of the magazine world, the
common multitude wasted no thought on the merits of the issue, but
sided at once with the teacher whom they knew at least by name,
against the critic whom they knew not at all. The uncomplimentary
assumption as to the latter always seemed to be that, as only a
subordinate part of a big organism, he was speaking, not from his
heart, but from his orders; and that he must have some sinister
design in trying to discredit an opponent who was not afraid to stand
out and face his fire.
Apropos, let us not fail to note the constant trend, of recent years,
toward specialization in every department of life and thought. There
was a time when a pronouncement from certain men on nearly any
theme would be accepted by the public, not only with the outward
respect commanded by persons of their social standing, but with a
large measure of positive credence. One who enjoyed a general
reputation for scholarship might set forth his views this week on a
question of archæology, next week on the significance of the latest
earthquake, and a week later on the new canals on the planet Mars,
with the certainty that each outgiving would affect public opinion to
a marked degree; whereas nowadays we demand that the most
distinguished members of our learned faculty stick each to his own
hobby; the antiquarian to the excavations, the seismologist to the
tremors of our planet, the astronomer to our remoter colleagues of
the solar system. It is the same with our writers on political, social,
and economic problems. Whereas the old-time editor was expected
to tell his constituency what to think on any subject called up by the
news overnight, it is now taken for granted that even news must be
classified and distributed between specialists for comment; and the
very sense that only one writer is trusted to handle any particular
class of topics inspires a desire in the public to know who that writer
is before paying much attention to his opinions.
The intense competition between newspapers covering the same
field sometimes leads to consequences which do not strengthen the
esteem of the people at large for the press at large. Witness the
controversy which arose over the conflicting claims of Commander
Peary and Dr. Cook as the original discoverer of the North Pole. One
newspaper syndicate having, at large expense, procured a narrative
directly from the pen of Cook, and another accomplished a like feat
with Peary, to which could “we, the people,” look for an unbiased
opinion on the matters in dispute? An admission by either that its
star contributor could trifle with the truth was equivalent to
throwing its own exploit into bankruptcy. So each was bound to
stand by the claimant with whom it had first identified itself, and
fight the battle out like an attorney under retainer; and what started
as a serious contest of priority in a scientific discovery threatened to
end as a wrangle over a newspaper “beat.”
Then, too, we must reckon with the progressive acceleration of the
pace of our twentieth-century life generally. Where we walked in the
old times, we run in these; where we ambled then, we gallop now. It
is the age of electric power, high explosives, articulated steel frames,
in the larger world; of the long-distance telephone, the taxicab, and
the card-index, in the narrower. The problem of existence is reduced
to terms of time-measurement, with the detached lever substituted
for the pendulum because it produces a faster tick.
What is the effect of all this on the modernized newspaper? It must
be first on the ground at every activity, foreseen or unforeseeable, as
a matter of course. Its reporter must get off his “story” in advance of
all his rivals. Never mind strict accuracy of detail—effect is the main
thing; he is writing, not for expert accountants, or professional
statisticians, or analytic philosophers, but for the public; and what
the public wants is, not dry particulars, but color, vitality, heat.
Pictures being a quicker medium of communication with the reader’s
mind than printed text, nine-tenths of our daily press is illustrated,
and the illustrations of distant events are usually turned out by
artists in the home office from verbal descriptions. What signifies it if
only three cars went off the broken bridge, and the imaginative
draftsman put five into his picture because he could not wait for the
dispatch of correction which almost always follows the lurid “scoop”?
Who is harmed if the telegram about the suicide reads “shots”
instead of “stabs,” and the artist depicts the self-destroyer clutching a
smoking pistol instead of a dripping dirk?
It is the province of the champion of the up-to-date cult to
minimize the importance of detail. The purpose of the picture, he
argues, is to stamp a broad impression instantaneously on the mind,
and thus spare it the more tedious process of reading. And if one
detail too many is put in, or one omitted which ought to have been
there, whoever is sufficiently interested to read the text will discover
the fault, and whoever is not will give it no further thought anyway.
As to the descriptive matter, suppose it does contain errors? The
busy man of our day does not read his newspaper with the same
solemn intent with which he reads history. What he asks of it is a
lightning-like glimpse of the world which will show him how far it
has moved in the last twelve hours; and he will not pause to
complain of a few deviations from the straight line of truth,
especially if it would have taken more than the twelve hours to rectify
them.
This would perhaps be good logic if the pure-food law were
broadened in scope so as to apply to mental pabulum, and every
concocter of newspaper stories and illustrations were compelled to
label his adulterated products. Then the consumer who does not
object to a diet of mixed fact and falsehood, accuracy and
carelessness, so long as the compound is so seasoned as to tickle his
palate, could have his desire, while his neighbor who wishes an
honest article or nothing at all could have his also. As it is, with no
distinguishing marks, we are liable to buy one thing and get another.
The new order of “speed before everything” has brought about its
changes at both ends of a newspaper staff. The editorial writer who
used to take a little time to look into the ramifications of a topic
before reducing his opinions to writing, feels humiliated if an event
occurs on which he cannot turn off a few comments at sight; but he
has still a refuge in such modifying clauses as “in the light of the
meagre details now before us,” or “as it appears at this writing,” or
“in spite of the absence of full particulars, which may later change
the whole aspect of affairs.”
No such covert offers itself to the news-getter in the open field.
What he says must be definite, outright, unqualified, or the blue
pencil slashes remorselessly through his “it is suspected,” or
“according to a rumor which cannot be traced to its original source.”
What business has he to “suspect”? He is hired to know. For what,
pray, is the newspaper paying him, if not for tracing rumors to their
original source; and further still, if so instructed? He is there to be,
not a thinker, but a worker; a human machine like a steam potato-
digger, which, supplied with the necessary energizing force from
behind, drives its prods under nature’s mantle, and grubs out the
succulent treasures she is trying to conceal.
 III
Nowhere is the change more patent than in the department of
special correspondence. At an important point like Washington, for
instance, the old corps of writers were men of mature years, most of
whom had passed an apprenticeship in the editorial chair, and still
held a semi-editorial relation to the newspapers they represented.
They had studied political history and economics, social philosophy,
and kindred subjects, as a preparation for their life-work, and were
full of a wholesome sense of responsibility to the public as well as to
their employers. Poore, Nelson, Boynton, and others of their class,
were known by name, and regarded as authorities, in the
communities to which they daily ministered. They were thoughtful
workers as well as enterprising. They went for their news to the
fountain-head, instead of dipping it out of any chance pool by the
wayside. When they sent in to their home offices either fact or
prophecy, they accompanied it with an interpretation which both
editors and public knew to be no mere feat in lightning guesswork;
and the fame which any of them prized more than a long calendar of
“beats” and “exclusives” was that which would occasionally move a
worsted competitor to confess, “I missed that news; but if —— sent it
out, it is true.”
When, in the later eighties, the new order came, it came with a
rush. The first inkling of it was a notice received, in the middle of one
busy night, by a correspondent who had been faithfully serving a
prominent Western newspaper for a dozen years, to turn over his
bureau to a young man who up to that time had been doing local
reporting on its home staff. Transfers of other bureaus followed fast.
A few were left, and still remain, undisturbed in personnel or
character of work. Here and there, too, an old-fashioned
correspondent was retained, but retired to an emeritus post, with the
privilege of writing a signed letter when the spirit moved him; while
a nimbler-footed successor assumed titular command and sent the
daily dispatches. The bald fact was that the newspaper managers had
bowed to the hustling humor of the age. They no longer cared to
serve journalistic viands, which required deliberate mastication, to
patrons who clamored for a quick lunch. So they passed on to their
representatives at a distance the same injunction they were
incessantly pressing upon their reporters at home: “Get the news,
and send it while it is hot. Don’t wait to tell us what it means or what
it points to; we can do our own ratiocinating.”
Is the public a loser by this obscuration of the correspondent’s
former function? I believe so. His appeal is no longer put to the
reader directly: he becomes the mere tool of the newspaper, which in
its turn furnishes to the reader such parts of his and other
communications as it chooses, and in such forms as best suit its
ulterior purposes. Doubtless this conduces to a more perfect
administrative coördination in the staff at large, but it greatly
weakens the correspondent’s sense of personal responsibility. Poore
had his constituency, Boynton had his, Nelson had his. None of these
men would, under any conceivable stress of competition, have
wittingly misled the group of readers he had attached to himself; nor
would one of them have tolerated any tampering in the home office
with essential matters in a contribution to which he had signed his
name. Indeed, so well was this understood that I never heard of
anybody’s trying to tamper with them. It occasionally happened that
the correspondent set forth a view somewhat at variance with that
expressed on the editorial page of the same paper; but each party to
this disagreement respected the other, and the public was assumed
to be capable of making its own choice between opposing opinions
clearly stated. A special virtue of the plan of independent
correspondence lay in the opportunity it often afforded the habitual
reader of a single newspaper to get at least a glance at more than one
side of a public question.
Among the conspicuous fruits of the new régime is the direction
sometimes sent to a correspondent to “write down” this man or
“write up” that project. He knows that it is a case of obey orders or
resign, and it brings to the surface all the Hessian he may have in his
blood. If he is enough of a casuist, he will try to reconcile good
conscience with worldly wisdom by picturing himself as a soldier
commanded to do something of which he does not approve.
Disobedience at the post of duty is treachery; resignation in the face
of an unwelcome billet is desertion. So he does what he is bidden,
though it may be at the cost of his self-respect and the esteem of
others whose kind opinion he values. I have had a young
correspondent come to me for information about something under
advisement at the White House, and apologize for not going there
himself by showing me a note from his editor telling him to “give the
President hell.” As he had always been treated with courtesy at the
White House, he had not the hardihood to go there while engaged in
his campaign of abuse.
Another, who had been intimate with a member of the
administration then in power, was suddenly summoned one day to a
conference with the publisher of his paper. He went in high spirits,
believing that the invitation must mean at least a promotion in rank
or an increase of salary. He returned crestfallen. Several days
afterward he revealed to me in confidence that the paper had been
unsuccessfully seeking some advertising controlled by his friend, and
that the publisher had offered him one thousand dollars for a series
of articles—anonymous, if he preferred—exposing the private
weaknesses of the eminent man, and giving full names, dates, and
other particulars as to a certain unsavory association in which he was
reported to find pleasure! Still another brought me a dispatch he had
prepared, requesting me to look it over and see whether it contained
anything strictly libelous. It proved to be a forecast of the course of
the Secretary of the Treasury in a financial crisis then impending.
“Technically speaking,” I said, after reading it, “there is plenty of
libelous material in this, for it represents the Secretary as about to do
something which, to my personal knowledge, he has never
contemplated, and which would stamp him as unfit for his position if
he should attempt it. But as a matter of fact he will ignore your story,
as he is putting into type to-day a circular which is to be made public
to-morrow, telling what his plan really is, and that will
authoritatively discredit you.”
“Thank you,” he answered, rather stiffly. “I have my orders to pitch
into the Secretary whenever I get a chance. I shall send this to-day,
and to-morrow I can send another saying that my exclusive
disclosures forced him to change his programme at the last
moment.”
These are sporadic cases, I admit, yet they indicate a mischievous
tendency; just as each railway accident is itself sporadic, but too
frequent fatalities from a like cause on the same line point to
something wrong in the management of the road. It is not necessary
to call names on the one hand, or indulge in wholesale denunciation
on the other, in order to indicate the extremes to which the current
pace in journalism must inevitably lead if kept up. The broadest-
minded and most honorable men in our calling realize the
disagreeable truth. A few of the great newspapers, too, have the
courage to cling still to the old ideals, both in their editorial attitude
and in their instructions to their news-gatherers. Possibly their
profits are smaller for their squeamishness; but that the better
quality of their patronage makes up in a measure for its lesser
quantity, is evident to any one familiar with the advertising business.
Moreover, in the character of its employees and in the zeal and
intelligence of their service, a newspaper conducted on the higher
plane possesses an asset which cannot be appraised in dollars and
cents. Of one such paper a famous man once said to me, “I disagree
with half its political views; I am regarded as a personal enemy by its
editor; but I read it religiously every day, and it is the only daily that
enters the front door of my home. It is a paper written by gentlemen
for gentlemen; and, though it exasperates me often, it never offends
my nostrils with the odors of the slums.”
This last remark leads to another consideration touching the
relaxed hold of the press on public confidence: I refer to the topics
treated in the news columns, and the manner of their presentation.
Its importance is attested by the sub-titles or mottoes adopted by
several prominent newspapers, emphasizing their appeal to the
family as a special constituency. In spite of the intense individualism,
the reciprocal independence of the sexes, and the freedom from the
trammels of feudal tradition of which we Americans boast, the social
unit in this country is the family. Toward it a thousand lines of
interest converge, from it a thousand lines of influence flow. Public
opinion is unconsciously moulded by it, for the atmosphere of the
home follows the father into his office, the son into his college, the
daughter into her intimate companionships. The newspaper,
therefore, which keeps the family in touch with the outside world,
though it may have to be managed with more discretion than one
whose circulation is chiefly in the streets, finds its compensation in
its increased radius of influence of the subtler sort. For such a field,
nothing is less fit than the noisome domestic scandals and the gory
horrors which fill so much of the space in newspapers of the lowest
rank, and which in these later years have made occasional inroads
into some of a higher grade. Unfortunately, these occasional inroads
do more to damage the general standing of the press than the
habitual revel in vulgarity. For a newspaper which frankly avows
itself unhampered by niceties of taste can be branded and set aside
as belonging in the impossible category; whereas, when one with a
clean exterior and a reputation for respectability proves unworthy,
its faithlessness arouses in the popular mind a distrust of all its class.
And yet, whatever we may say of the modern press on its less
commendable side, we are bound to admit that newspapers, like
governments, fairly reflect the people they serve. Charles Dudley
Warner once went so far as to say that no matter how objectionable
the character of a paper may be, it is always a trifle better than the
patrons on whom it relies for its support. I suspect that Mr. Warner’s
comparison rested on the greater frankness of the bad paper, which,
by very virtue of its mode of appeal, is bound to make a brave parade
of its worst qualities; whereas the reader who is loudest in
proclaiming in public his repugnance for horrors, and his detestation
of scandals, may in private be buying daily the sheet which peddles
both most shamelessly.
This sort of conventional hypocrisy among the common run of
people is easier to forgive than the same thing among the cultivated
few whom we accept as mentors. I stumbled upon an illuminating
incident about five years ago which I cannot forbear recalling here. A
young man just graduated from college, where he had attracted some
attention by the cleverness of his pen, was invited to a position on
the staff of the New York Journal. Visiting a leading member of the
college faculty to say farewell, he mentioned this compliment with
not a little pride. In an instant the professor was up in arms, with an
earnest protest against his handicapping his whole career by having
anything to do with so monstrous an exponent of yellow journalism.
The lad was deeply moved by the good man’s outburst, and went
home sorrowful. After a night’s sleep on it, he resolved to profit by
the admonition, and accordingly called upon the editor, and asked
permission to withdraw his tentative acceptance. In the explanation
which followed he inadvertently let slip the name of his adviser. He
saw a cynical smile cross the face of Mr. Hearst, who summoned a
stenographer, and in his presence dictated a letter to the professor,
requesting a five-hundred-word signed article for the next Sunday’s
issue and inclosing a check for two hundred and fifty dollars. On
Sunday the ingenuous youth beheld the article in a conspicuous
place on the Journal’s editorial page, with the professor’s full name
appended in large capitals.

We have already noted some of the effects produced on the press

by the hurry-skurry of our modern life. Quite as significant are
sundry phenomena recorded by Dr. Walter Dill Scott as the result of
an inquiry into the reading habits of two thousand representative
business and professional men in a typical American city. Among
other things, he discovered that most of them spent not to exceed
fifteen minutes a day on their newspapers. As some spent less, and
some divided the time between two or three papers, the average
period devoted to any one paper could safely be placed at from five to
ten minutes. The admitted practice of most of the group was to look
at the headlines, the table of contents, and the weather reports, and
then apparently at some specialty in which they were individually
interested. The editorial articles seem to have offered them few
attractions, but news items of one sort or another engaged seventy-
five per cent of their attention.
In an age as skeptical as ours, there is nothing astonishing in the
low valuation given, by men of a class competent to do their own
thinking, to anonymous opinion; but it will strike many as strange
that this class takes no deeper interest in the news of the day. The
trained psychologist may find it worth while to study out here the
relation of cause and effect. Does the ordinary man of affairs show so
scant regard for his newspaper because he no longer believes half it
tells him, or only because his mind is so absorbed in matters closer at
hand, and directly affecting his livelihood? Have the newspapers
perverted the public taste with sensational surprises till it can no
longer appreciate normal information normally conveyed?
Professor Münsterberg would doubtless have told us that the
foregoing statistics simply justify his charge against Americans as a
people; that we have gone leaping and gasping through life till we
have lost the faculty of mental concentration, and hence that few of
us can read any more. Whatever the explanation, the central fact has
been duly recognized by all the yellow journals, and by some also
which have not yet passed beyond the cream-colored stage. The
“scare heads” and exaggerated type which, as a lure for purchasers,
filled all their needs a few years ago, are no longer regarded as
sufficient, but have given way to startling bill-board effects, with
huge headlines, in block-letter and vermilion ink, spread across an
entire front page.
The worst phase of this whole business, however, is one which
does not appear on the surface, but which certainly offers food for
serious reflection. The point of view from which all my criticisms
have been made is that of the citizen of fair intelligence and
education. It is he who has been weaned from his faith in the organ
of opinion which satisfied his father, till he habitually sneers at
“mere newspaper talk”; it is he who has descended from reading to
simply skimming the news, and who consciously suffers from the
errors which adulterate, and the vulgarity which taints, that product.
But there is another element in the community which has not his
well-sharpened instinct for discrimination; which can afford to buy
only the cheapest, and is drawn toward the lowest, daily prints;
which, during the noon hour and at night, finds time to devour all
the tenement tragedies, all the palace scandals, and all the incendiary
appeals designed to make the poor man think that thrift is robbery.
Over that element we find the vicious newspaper still exercising an
enormous sway; and, admitting that so large a proportion of the
outwardly reputable press has lost its hold upon the better class of
readers, what must we look for as the resultant of two such
unbalanced forces?
Not a line of these few pages has been written in a carping, much
less in a pessimistic spirit. I love the profession in whose practice I
passed the largest and happiest part of my life; but the very pride I
feel in its worthy achievements makes me, perhaps, the more
sensitive to its shortcomings as these reveal themselves to an
unprejudiced scrutiny. The limits of this article as to both space and
scope forbid my following its subject into some inviting by-paths: as,
for instance, the distinction to be observed between initiative and
support in comparing the influence of the modern newspaper with
that of its ancestor of a half-century ago. I am sorry, also, to put forth
so many strictures without furnishing a constructive sequel. It would
be interesting, for example, to weigh such possibilities as an
endowed newspaper which should do for the press, as a protest
against its offenses of deliberation and its faults of haste and
carelessness, what an endowed theatre might do for the rescue of the
stage from a condition of chronic inanity. But it must remain for a
more profound philosopher, whose function is to specialize in
opinion rather than to generalize in comment, to show what
remedies are practicable for the disorders which beset the body of
our modern journalism.
 NEWSPAPER MORALS

BY H. L. MENCKEN

I
Aspiring, toward the end of my nonage, to the black robes of a
dramatic critic, I took counsel with an ancient whose service went
back to the days of Our American Cousin, asking him what qualities
were chiefly demanded by the craft.
“The main idea,” he told me frankly, “is to be interesting, to write a
good story. All else is dross. Of course, I am not against accuracy,
fairness, information, learning. If you want to read Lessing and
Freytag, Hazlitt and Brunetière, go read them: they will do you no
harm. It is also useful to know something about Shakespeare. But
unless you can make people read your criticisms, you may as well
shut up your shop. And the only way to make them read you is to
give them something exciting.”
“You suggest, then,” I ventured, “a certain—ferocity?”
“I do,” replied my venerable friend. “Read George Henry Lewes,
and see how he did it—sometimes with a bladder on a string, usually
with a meat-axe. Knock somebody on the head every day—if not an
actor, then the author, and if not the author, then the manager. And
if the play and the performance are perfect, then excoriate someone
who doesn’t think so—a fellow critic, a rival manager, the
unappreciative public. But make it hearty; make it hot! The public
would rather be the butt itself than have no butt in the ring. That is
Rule Number 1 of American psychology—and of English, too, but
more especially of American. You must give a good show to get a
crowd, and a good show means one with slaughter in it.”
Destiny soon robbed me of my critical shroud, and I fell into a long
succession of less æsthetic newspaper berths, from that of police
reporter to that of managing editor, but always the advice of my
ancient counselor kept turning over and over in my memory, and as
chance offered I began to act upon it, and whenever I acted upon it I
found that it worked. What is more, I found that other newspaper
men acted upon it too, some of them quite consciously and frankly,
and others through a veil of self-deception, more or less diaphanous.
The primary aim of all of them, no less when they played the secular
Iokanaan than when they played the mere newsmonger, was to
please the crowd, to give a good show; and the way they set about
giving that good show was by first selecting a deserving victim, and
then putting him magnificently to the torture.
This was their method when they were performing for their own
profit only, when their one motive was to make the public read their
paper; but it was still their method when they were battling bravely
and unselfishly for the public good, and so discharging the highest
duty of their profession. They lightened the dull days of midsummer
by pursuing recreant aldermen with bloodhounds and artillery, by
muckraking unsanitary milk-dealers, or by denouncing Sunday
liquor-selling in suburban parks—and they fought constructive
campaigns for good government in exactly the same gothic,
melodramatic way. Always their first aim was to find a concrete
target, to visualize their cause in some definite and defiant opponent.
And always their second aim was to shell that opponent until he
dropped his arms and took to ignominious flight. It was not enough
to maintain and to prove: it was necessary also to pursue and
overcome, to lay a specific somebody low, to give the good show
aforesaid.
Does this confession of newspaper practice involve a libel upon the
American people? Perhaps it does—on the theory, let us say, that the
greater the truth, the greater the libel. But I doubt if any reflective
newspaper man, however lofty his professional ideals, will ever deny
any essential part of that truth. He knows very well that a definite
limit is set, not only upon the people’s capacity for grasping
intellectual concepts, but also upon their capacity for grasping moral
concepts. He knows that it is necessary, if he would catch and
inflame them, to state his ethical syllogism in the homely terms of
their habitual ethical thinking. And he knows that this is best done
by dramatizing and vulgarizing it, by filling it with dynamic and
emotional significance, by translating all argument for a principle
into rage against a man.
In brief, he knows that it is hard for the plain people to think about
a thing, but easy for them to feel. Error, to hold their attention, must
be visualized as a villain, and the villain must proceed swiftly to his
inevitable retribution. They can understand that process; it is simple,
usual, satisfying; it squares with their primitive conception of justice
as a form of revenge. The hero fires them too, but less certainly, less
violently than the villain. His defect is that he offers thrills at second-
hand. It is the merit of the villain, pursued publicly by a posse
comitatus, that he makes the public breast the primary seat of
heroism, that he makes every citizen a personal participant in a
glorious act of justice. Wherefore it is ever the aim of the sagacious
journalist to foster that sense of personal participation. The wars that
he wages are always described as the people’s wars, and he himself
affects to be no more than their strategist and claque. When the
victory has once been gained, true enough, he may take all the credit
without a blush; but while the fight is going on he always pretends
that every honest yeoman is enlisted, and he is even eager to make it
appear that the yeomanry began it on their own motion, and out of
the excess of their natural virtue.
I assume here, as an axiom too obvious to be argued, that the chief
appeal of a newspaper, in all such holy causes, is not at all to the
educated and reflective minority of citizens, but frankly to the
ignorant and unreflective majority. The truth is that it would usually
get a newspaper nowhere to address its exhortations to the former;
for, in the first place, they are too few in number to make their
support of much value in general engagements, and, in the second
place, it is almost always impossible to convert them into disciplined
and useful soldiers. They are too cantankerous for that, too ready
with embarrassing strategy of their own. One of the principal marks
of an educated man, indeed, is the fact that he does not take his
opinions from newspapers—not, at any rate, from the militant,
crusading newspapers. On the contrary, his attitude toward them is
almost always one of frank cynicism, with indifference as its mildest
form and contempt as its commonest. He knows that they are
constantly falling into false reasoning about the things within his
personal knowledge,—that is, within the narrow circle of his special
education,—and so he assumes that they make the same, or even
worse, errors about other things, whether intellectual or moral. This
assumption, it may be said at once, is quite justified by the facts.
I know of no subject, in truth, save perhaps baseball, on which the
average American newspaper, even in the larger cities, discourses
with unfailing sense and understanding. Whenever the public
journals presume to illuminate such a matter as municipal taxation,
for example, or the extension of local transportation facilities, or the
punishment of public or private criminals, or the control of public-
service corporations, or the revision of city charters, the chief effect
of their effort is to introduce into it a host of extraneous issues, most
of them wholly emotional, and so they contrive to make it
unintelligible to all earnest seekers after the truth.
But it does not follow thereby that they also make it unintelligible
to their special client, the man in the street. Far from it. What they
actually accomplish is the exact opposite. That is to say, it is precisely
by this process of transmutation and emotionalization that they
bring a given problem down to the level of that man’s
comprehension, and, what is more important, within the range of his
active sympathies. He is not interested in anything that does not stir
him, and he is not stirred by anything that fails to impinge upon his
small stock of customary appetites and attitudes. His daily acts are
ordered, not by any complex process of reasoning, but by a
continuous process of very elemental feeling. He is not at all
responsive to purely intellectual argument, even when its theme is
his own ultimate benefit, for such argument quickly gets beyond his
immediate interest and experience. But he is very responsive to
emotional suggestion, particularly when it is crudely and violently
made; and it is to this weakness that the newspapers must ever
address their endeavors. In brief, they must try to arouse his horror,
or indignation, or pity, or simply his lust for slaughter. Once they
have done that, they have him safely by the nose. He will follow
blindly until his emotion wears out. He will be ready to believe
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