The publication of the news is the most important function of the paper.
How is it gathered? We must confess that it is gathered very much by
chance. A drag-net is thrown out, and whatever comes is taken. An
examination into the process of collecting shows what sort of news we are
likely to get, and that nine-tenths of that printed is collected without
much intelligence exercised in selection. The alliance of the associated
press with the telegraph company is a fruitful source of news of an
inferior quality. Of course, it is for the interest of the telegraph
company to swell the volume to be transmitted. It is impossible for the
associated press to have an agent in every place to which the telegraph
penetrates: therefore the telegraphic operators often act as its
purveyors. It is for their interest to send something; and their judgment
of what is important is not only biased, but is formed by purely local
standards. Our news, therefore, is largely set in motion by telegraphic
operators, by agents trained to regard only the accidental, the
startling, the abnormal, as news; it is picked up by sharp prowlers about
town, whose pay depends upon finding something, who are looking for
something spicy and sensational, or which may be dressed up and
exaggerated to satisfy an appetite for novelty and high flavor, and who
regard casualties as the chief news. Our newspapers every day are loaded
with accidents, casualties, and crimes concerning people of whom we never
heard before and never shall hear again, the reading of which is of no
earthly use to any human being.

What is news? What is it that an intelligent public should care to hear
of and talk about? Run your eye down the columns of your journal. There
was a drunken squabble last night in a New York groggery; there is a
petty but carefully elaborated village scandal about a foolish girl; a
woman accidentally dropped her baby out of a fourth-story window in