THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER

By Charles Dudley Warner

Our theme for the hour is the American Newspaper. It is a subject in
which everybody is interested, and about which it is not polite to say
that anybody is not well informed; for, although there are scattered
through the land many persons, I am sorry to say, unable to pay for a
newspaper, I have never yet heard of anybody unable to edit one.

The topic has many points of view, and invites various study and comment.
In our limited time we must select one only. We have heard a great deal
about the power, the opportunity, the duty, the "mission," of the press.
The time has come for a more philosophical treatment of it, for an
inquiry into its relations to our complex civilization, for some ethical
account of it as one of the developments of our day, and for some
discussion of the effect it is producing, and likely to produce, on the
education of the people. Has the time come, or is it near at hand, when
we can point to a person who is alert, superficial, ready and shallow,
self-confident and half-informed, and say, "There is a product of the
American newspaper"? The newspaper is not a willful creation, nor an
isolated phenomenon, but the legitimate outcome of our age, as much as
our system of popular education. And I trust that some competent observer
will make, perhaps for this association, a philosophical study of it. My
task here is a much humbler one. I have thought that it may not be
unprofitable to treat the newspaper from a practical and even somewhat
mechanical point of view.

The newspaper is a private enterprise. Its object is to make money for
its owner. Whatever motive may be given out for starting a newspaper,