A sub-stratum of truth should run through the news columns; but since a
million-dollar fire is more exciting than a half-million-dollar fire,
since a thousand deaths in an earthquake are more exciting than a
hundred, no nice scrupulosity need be observed in checking the insurance
inspector's figures or in counting the dead. What the public wanted was
a good "story," and provided it got that there would be little
disposition in any quarter to censure an arithmetical generosity which
had been invoked in the service of the public's well-known demands.
So far as politics were concerned, it seemed to me that any newspaper
could afford the strongest support to its views while printing the truth
and nothing but the truth, if it exercised some discretion as to
printing the WHOLE truth. The editorial, I added, might be regarded as a
habit rather than as a guiding force. People no longer looked to the
editorial columns for the formation of their opinions. They formed their
judgment from a large stock of facts, near-facts and nowhere near-facts,
and then bought a paper for the purpose of comfortable reassurance. I
had no doubt that a newspaper run to suit my own taste--a combination of
The World's editorial page with The Evening Post's news and make-up--
would lack the influence with which circulation alone can endow a paper,
and would end in a bankruptcy highly creditable to its stockholders.
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