Page:History of American Journalism.djvu/462

420 in their deduction. While advertising rates were computed on the basis of circulation, no newspaper could advance its charge for advertisements on short notice, as contracts, often covering a term of months and in some cases years, prevented a sudden increase in rates. Advertisers, not the newspapers, profited by the increased circulation.

The most immediate effect of the war was noticed in the rapid advance in cable tolls, which, not only the news-gathering organization, but also the newspapers themselves, were forced to pay for the special war dispatches. So high were these tolls that newspapers pooled their interests. In New York City, for example, The World, The Times, and The Tribune used a joint cable service which reduced the tolls to one third for each newspaper. As the London newspapers sold their news service to anybody, the three papers just mentioned had been getting practically the same special war dispatches at three times the cost they later had to pay. In the beginning the British censors, however, were a source of much annoyance to American newspapers, for every one seemed a law unto himself. The proof-sheets of The London Daily Mail, for example, filed for transmission to American newspapers, would be blue-penciled one way by one censor and another by a second. Such irregularities in censorship did much to promote the newspaper combination just mentioned.

In spite of such combinations to improve the service and to reduce the cost in cabling, the newspapers found it impossible to print both the war news and the other routine news without increasing the size of the regular issues to such an extent that financial returns would not pay for the cost of production. Both local and national news was therefore reduced in quantity. Such reductions in the amount of local news printed released newspaper workers from many offices. The condition at Chicago, typical of that in metropolitan cities, was thus set forth in The Scoop, the official publication of the Chicago Press Club:—

The European War has created a condition in Chicago which has seriously affected the working newspapermen of the city. The great expense to which the newspapers are being subjected in heavy cable tolls, and the largely increased circulation without an adequate enlarged advertising revenue, have forced the newspapers to curtail costs,