Page:EB1922 - Volume 31.djvu/1167

Rh

lishers of the Chicago Tribune started a daily illustrated paper in New York, the News, which in 1920 attained a circulation of more than 300,000. In Chicago the movement toward consolida- tion had begun earlier. The Chicago Inter-Ocean, which lost public support through its espousal of the Lorimer cause (see ILLINOIS), was purchased (1913) by the Chicago Record-Herald, and the two papers were consolidated under the name of the Chicago Herald. Later the Herald encountered financial diffi- culties and was purchased by William Randolph Hearst, who merged it with his morning newspaper under the name Herald and Examiner. For a time this left Chicago with only two morn- ing newspapers, Mr. Hearst's organ and the Tribune. In 1920 a morning business daily, the Journal of Commerce, was started.

The changes occurring during the latter part of the decade might have been expected to foster a tendency toward grouping large numbers of newspapers under one ownership. Broadly speaking, no such development took place, and there was in 1921 no newspaper owner in America except William Randolph Hearst whose journalistic ventures were comparable in extent with those of (for example) Lord Northcliffe in England. Mr. Hearst established his group of newspapers largely between 1895 and 1910, and did not materially add to the number in succeeding years, although in 1913 he purchased the Atlanta Georgian and in 1917 the Boston Advertiser. Within the decade 1910-20 Mr. Hearst also entered the field of periodical journalism; by 1920 he had become proprietor of the Cosmopolitan Magazine, Hearst's Magazine, Good Housekeeping, House Beautiful, Motor Magazine and Motor Boating, as well as the ten newspapers which consti- tuted the Hearst group. The Scripps-McRae League, compris- ing about 22 newspapers in the middle west, was not increased between 1911 and 1920.

On the other hand, there was a marked tendency to form associations of newspapers for sharing the expense of gathering news and procuring pictures, " features," and similar material. The possibilities in this direction were illustrated somewhat earlier by the development of an enterprise known as the news- paper syndicate, which first acquires the material, usually fiction, special articles and comic pictures, and then sells publication rights to newspapers all over the country. S. S. McClure, who subsequently established McClure's Magazine, is said to have started the first newspaper syndicate about 1885. Besides these private enterprises many were undertaken by individual news- papers, while still others were controlled cooperatively.

Mechanical improvements in the production of American news- papers were largely in the direction of greater refinements of those inventions, such as the linotype composing machine and the rotary press, which had made the modern newspaper possible. One process, the rotogravure, introduced from Germany in 1912, afforded the means whereby the larger newspapers could produce supplements containing pictorial reproductions of excellent quality. It is a photomechanical process by which the illustrations are etched on a copper cylinder; impressions resembling photogravure can then be run off at the rate of 3,000 or more an hour. There were approxi- mately 50 newspapers in 1920 which published rotogravure supple- ments, usually as part of their Sunday editions. With the multipli- cation of supplements of various kinds it became customary to print and distribute to dealers practically all of the Sunday edition except the distinctively news sections before the date of publication. After receiving the news sections the dealers would assemble them with the supplements which had been distributed in advance. In obtain- ing news great use was made of the wireless, especially as a substitute for the cable in transmitting messages from Europe.

The mechanical difficulty of making a rapid distribution over very large areas has been the chief factor in America in preventing the development of newspapers having a wide national circulation. It takes at least 20 hours for a New York newspaper to reach Chicago by railway, and to reach the Pacific coast requires several days. There have been, in addition, certain transportation difficulties imposed by the railways themselves; special newspaper trains are much less common than in England. The result has been the de- velopment of a strong newspaper press in practically all large cities, and this press naturally places more emphasis on local or sectional news than it would if its circulation were less restricted in area. A few journals are, of course, read beyond the local limits of quick distribution; some of them, indeed, enjoy a prestige that is nation- wide. Yet even the New York Times had in 1921 a circulation throughout the country at large of only 73,600 (less than one-quarter of its total circulation). The percentage of outside circulation in the case of the Chicago Tribune was somewhat higher, but it was largely

confined to the states immediately surrounding Chicago. If, how- ever, papers of this character could be placed on sale in smaller cities everywhere at approximately the same time as the local news- papers, it is clear that they could enormously increase their circula- tion in all parts of the country. A national rather than a sectional circulation would ultimately have the effect of broadening the newspaper's scope and strengthening its editorial independence. The establishment of the Government airplane mail service after the close of the World War gave promise that this method of distribution might enable certain newspapers to achieve a truly national circula- tion. Such a development might conceivably be regarded at some future time as the greatest single advance in American journalism.

Periodicals. The magazines and periodicals in the United States do not suffer from the handicap which has limited the circulation of even the great newspapers. A magazine can be printed several days and even longer before the date of publica- tion; it can therefore be placed on sale all over the country at the same time. As a consequence American periodicals have taken the whole nation for their field, and a single magazine will have nearly as large a circulation in the west as in the east. In this development the magazines were favoured greatly by an ex- tremely low second-class mailing rate, which up to 1917 was a cent a Ib. though the expense in carrying this matter was rarely less than eight cents a Ib., at which rate books were carried. The result was a loss to the Government amounting to many millions annually on magazines alone, a loss which was defended on the score of fostering education and national unity. The War Rev- enue Act of 1917, however, largely increased the rates applicable to periodicals, in spite of considerable protest. The new rates were graded according to the proportion of space devoted to advertising, and annual increases were provided for each year up to 1921, when a maximum was reached. This maximum involved a general rate of one and a half cents a Ib. for reading matter, and special rates for that part of the magazine devoted to advertisements ranging from two cents for the" first and second zones to 10 cents for the eighth zone, these zones being fixed according to the distance from the post-office at which the maga- zine was mailed. Even these rates had not, in 1920 at least, materially affected the prosperity of the magazines, though efforts were still made to change them. In the meantime the conditions favourable to the establishment of national maga- zines likewise tended to discourage local efforts, with the result that at the close of the decade 191020 nearly all the more impor- tant magazines were published in New York. The most notable exceptions were the Atlantic Monthly, published in Boston, and the Curtis publications, Ladies' Home Journal, Saturday Evening Post and Country Gentleman, in Philadelphia.

The development of the popular magazine in the United States was almost coincident with the development of the sensational newspaper. In both instances cheap paper, machine production and an ever-increasing number of readers were determining factors. The cheaper magazines benefited particularly by the invention of the process of photo-engraving which came into general use between 1890 and 1895; illustrations that had previously cost $100 and required a month's time could now be had for $10 and in one day. That period saw the beginning of a large number of magazine ventures, many of which, after various turns of fortune, still survived in 1920.

Had it not been for the national audience which the magazine could command it is quite probable that the popular monthly of the type of Everybody's (established 1899), McClure's (1893), and Mun- sey's (first issued as a monthly in 1891), would have seriously en- dangered the existence of the older and more distinctive literary magazines such as the Atlantic, Harper's, Scribner's and the Century. Yet of these periodicals the Atlantic was the only one to show a marked growth in circulation between 1900 and 1920. Harper's, for example, had less circulation in 1920 than in the latter part of the igth century, although the quality and attractiveness of its contents showed no diminution. But magazines as a whole suffered no such neglect, for in the United States no home in which there is any pre- text of intellectual interest is without magazines.

During 1910-20 a five-cent illustrated weekly, the Saturday Evening Post, began to surpass all others both in circulation and advertising returns. (In 1920 the Post had more than 2,000,000 circulation.) It was therefore widely imitated in the hope of dupli- cating its success. That success was apparently founded chiefly on a special variety of popular fiction, of which it publishes large quantities. In no previous period was so much space given to fiction by American magazines, and in no previous period were American magazines so thoroughly given over to mere entertainment. The editors seemed to have concluded with one accord that the public