Is There Room For A New Daily Paper In New York?

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IS THERE ROOM FOR A NEW DAILY PAPER IN NEW YORK?

The N.Y. Christian Intelligencer¹ in its last issue contends that the principal New York dailies exert a most injurious influence on the public mind through the prominence given to the most infamous details of crime, in such cases as the Cunningham “Bogus Baby” matter and cases of a similar nature. This spreading before the public column after column of filthy gossip, indecent testimony and the like, is represented as having a tendency to familiarize all classes, but especially the young and rising generation, with crime, and as being most dangerous and demoralising in its effects. Says our cotemporary—

“The most prominent cases reported in the local columns of the Herald,² Tribune,³ and Times⁴—those which most space is given, and on which the knowing reporter “spreads himself” most—are precisely those which ought to be dismissed in a paragraph. But the publishers know better. The majority of people who have been pampered and poisoned by this sort of nutriment are like the traditional old lady who “relished her murders with her tea.” And just so long as there is a call for such trash the publishers will pocket their consciences, and ram them down with bank bills.”

And proceeds thus:

“When shall we have a daily newspaper, in this great city of New York, worthy of the respect and high regards of a Christian community; which shall yet be, in all proper respects, popular, enterprising, lively, yielding nothing to its compeers in giving the fullest record of passing events; the organ of no clique or class, having something to say on all topics of universal interest, but exercising a rigid censorship over the vile balderdash that now stares at us from our breakfast-tables, and calls blushes to the cheeks of our wives and daughters? When indeed? Until such a time those journals now most widely circulated will remain a “crying evil,” and the evil will still cry out for remedy.

It is very well for the religious press to moralise in this way—in fact it is as much their calling to do so, as it is that of the secular press to print extended reports of great criminal cases. The Herald, Tribune and Times are not the only daily papers in New York; there are several other dailies, as correct and moral in their tone, and as scrupulous about the character of their contents, as the Intelligencer itself. We refer to the Courier and Enquirer, the Mirror, the Day-Book and others, three papers which display at least as high, if not higher literary abilities than the first mentioned trio. But these papers pay for their tender consciences by the loss of circulation. The general public will not—we admit the fact to be lamentable, but it is unquestionable—they will not take any paper which does not “spread itself” on horrible tragedies, great crimes, and the grosser offences against society and decorum. It is all nonsense to blame the editors for inserting long accounts of this class of events—they must either cater to the general taste, or forfeit an extended circulation, or retire from competition with others less scrupulous. It is quite a mistake to charge the press with having “poisoned” the public taste. Such reports would never have been written in the first place if there had not been a demand for them. The journalist does not and cannot create or form the public taste; all he can do is to cater for it and comply with it; and if he fails (whether from conscientious motives or any other cause) to do this, he is quickly supplanted by some less scrupulous journal, and can never retain a first class position for his paper. The Herald, Tribune, and Times, would cease to be the “leading papers,” if they ceased to give the class of reports to which the Intelligencer refers. It is to this very feature that they owe their success, and no paper without this feature can ever be extensively “popular” in such a city as New York.

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