Page:The Newspaper and the Historian.djvu/110



be so exchanged as to place the account of a dignified Friends' meeting under a “ scare” movie headline, while a flippant movie story appears under the headline of a religious service; the head line may commit unnumbered sins of inaccuracy, but it is, after

all, its sins against good taste, correct spelling, grammar, and syntax, and its general cruelty to language that make the head

line so important an index of the personality of the newspaper. The chief virtue of theheadline from the point of view of the press itself is not, indeed, accuracy, but ability to catch the attention of the reader; it is affected by the conditions under which it is read, and it is in part explained by the physical conditions of its readers ; it is read in the subway or on the elevated road, proba bly by readers standing in an uncomfortable position after a wearying day ; the evening edition has headlines in larger type

and in blacker ink than those of the morning edition of the same paper.10 This must explain, although not excuse , the flauntingly bad taste of the headline, and it indicates that the headline, like

every other part of the newspaper, has its own history.11 But the headline, whatever apologies may be made for its bad manners

and its offences against good taste, remains one of the clearest illustrations of the temper of a newspaper, - of its sensational character or of a restrained desire to indicate the nature of the

newsbeneath it but without exploiting it. The price of a newspaper is something of an index to its per- ' sonality. The paper may be aristocratic in its tendencies and like

the London Times in its earlier days seek its clientele only among those influential through birth, wealth , or intellect. Its price may correspond to its social ideals, — the London Times was at first

5d ; the abolition of the newspaper stamp duty in 1855 caused

the price to be lowered to 4d ; later it was reduced to 3d ; in 1914 to id; but it has returned to 3d. G. A. Sala reports that objec 10 Suggested by E. M. Rushmore.

G. K. Chesterton says that editors print everything possible in large capital letters, not because it is startling, but because it is soothing, - as children are taught to read through the use of large letters. — “ The Mild

ness of the Yellow Press," Heretics, pp. 113– 117 . Burges Johnson has a good word for the headline in “ Impression and

Expression,” The Well of English, and the Bucket, pp. 53-82. in Morris Van Vliet, " Fifty Years of War Headlines," New York Evening Post, August 8, 1914.