Page:Herr Glessner Creel - Tricks of the Press (1911).djvu/31

 it's in type! It's all ready to go into the columns at a moment's notice.

This is done by what we call the "release" system. That is, these highly important people obligingly write up their speeches several weeks or months in advance. They are then sent to the newspapers—by mail, not by telegraph—with the understanding that the papers will not publish them until a message is sent saying the speech has been delivered—until it has been "released." And that's the source of lots of your "telegraphic news."

That wouldn't be so had if it applied to speeches only. But it's true of presidential messages as well. What a president says in a message to congress affects trade conditions to some extent. When it is known that the chief executive will send a message to the House on a given day, thousands of business men get up at 4 o'clock the following morning. They want the "news" in a hurry. They want to know if it's necessary for them to make a quick turn to keep even with the market.

Save your time! The newspaper publisher has had that message for days. If your local editor or his friends are playing the market they'll be on the right side forty-eight hours before you can possibly start. Sleep late that morning! Don't worry. You're in the hands of your friends, the interests which own and control the press which you support.

This release system works another way. too. Twenty-four hours after the San Francisco fire, the Chicago newspapers had stories in type telling how the unions were retarding the rebuilding of San Francisco. At that time the full extent of the damage was not known. It was supposed that rebuilding could be begun in a few days, or a week at latest. So this story was prepared, put in type and held ready to go into the papers at a moment's notice. Later events proved that while their homes were tumbling in upon them and their families, the newspapers were putting in type stories of how these same union men were rioting and killing other men who wanted to work.