Page:The Brass Check (Sinclair 1919).djvu/444

 criticizing the publication and holding it rigidly to its declared policy, "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." It should be provided that each director has the right to a column twice a year in the publication, in which to state any criticism of its policy which he may have; also that any five directors have the right once a month to insert a column pointing out what they consider failure of the paper to live up to its professed standards. There should be a directors' meeting in New York City once every month, and all these meetings should be open to representatives of the press; the editorial staff should be present, and answer all criticisms and explain their policy. Unless I am mistaken, this would result in making "National News" in another sense; the capitalist press would be forced to discuss the paper, and to advertise it.

I picture a publication of sixty-four pages, size nine inches by twelve, with three columns of ordinary newspaper type. The paper will have special correspondents in several of the big cities, and in the principal capitals of Europe, and will publish telegraphic news from these correspondents. It will obtain the names of reliable men in cities and towns throughout America, and in case of emergency it can telegraph, say to Denver, ordering five hundred words about the Ludlow massacre, or to Spokane, ordering the truth about the Centralia fight. The editor of the "National News" will sit in a watch-tower with the world spread before him; thousands of volunteers will act as his eyes, they will send him letters or telegrams with news. He and his staff will consider it all according to one criterion: Is the truth being hidden here? Is this something the American people ought to know? If so, the editor will send a trusted man to get the story, and when he has made certain of the facts he will publish them, regardless of what is injured, the Steel Trust or the I. W. W., the Standard Oil Company or the Socialist Party—even the "National News" itself.

Our editor will not give much space to the news that all other papers publish. The big story for him will be what the other papers let alone. He will employ trained investigators, and set them to work for a week, or maybe for several months, getting the facts about the lobby of the Beef Trust in Washington, the control of our public schools in the interest of militarism, the problem of who is paying the expenses of