Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/63

 PUBLIC OPINION 49

maker was a large advertiser.^* Other things being equal, how- ever, advertisers prefer a paper with a large circulation, and to secure this, editors must give their readers what they want; and since people always want to hear their own opinions, this tends to make the newspaper on the whole an excellent reflector of public opinion.

News, and not comment or instruction, is what newspaper readers primarily demand. No matter how ably edited a paper may be, unless it has facilities for collecting the news from all over the world at the earliest possible date it cannot succeed. This is the most expensive item in journalism. The reading public demands telegraphic reports upon every matter of possible inter- est from ministerial crises and quotations of the stock exchanges to details of football games and the trousseaus of fine ladies at Newport. This demand for news is not the product of modern civilization. Ever since the days of ancient Greece men have spent much of their time in either telling or hearing some new thing. News is the raw material out of which public opinion is made. Its quantity must be proportionate to the number of sub- jects upon which publics form opinions today. The telegraph has been responsible for the vast increase of the volume of news and so of the number of public opinions. News enables the newspaper reader to watch the progress of any series of events with the utmost actuality- Like spectators at the theater, they await the development of the plot with the keenest interest. The love of a good story or play is one of the deepest-seated passions of the human heart, and this is successfully appealed to by the newspaper. We watch the swordplay between the Vatican and the French government and speculate upon the attitude of the French bishops; we await with eagerness for the rising of the curtain to the second act in the tragedy of Russia and wonder whether the villain or the hero will get the better of it.^"^ It is because the multitude is so interested that the editors, who play the part of the antique chorus, gain the attention of the audience for their comments on the drama which is being presented. The

" Gunton's Magazine, Vol XIX, p. 420. "Nation, Vol XXXIX, p. 8.