Pulitzer said:
"The man who wrote those verses had his prejudices, but he was clever.
I'm glad you read them to me; always read me anything of that kind,
anything that is bright and satirical. Now, I'm going to give you a
lecture about newspapers, because I want you to understand my point of
view. It does not matter whether you agree with it or not, but you have
got to understand it if you are going to be of any use to me. But before
I begin, you tell me what YOUR ideas are about running a newspaper for
American readers."
I pleaded that I had never given the matter much thought, and that I had
little to guide me, except my own preferences and the memory of an
occasional discussion here and there at a club or in the smoking room of
a Pullman. He insisted, however, and so I launched forth upon a
discourse in regard to the functions, duties and responsibilities of an
American newspaper, as I imagined they would appear to the average
American reader.
The chief duty of a managing editor, I said, was to give his readers an
interesting paper, and as an angler baits his hook, not with what HE
likes, but with what the fish like, so the style of the newspaper should
be adjusted to what the managing editor judged to be the public
appetite.
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