Announcer A:
Today and every day the American people must make decisions on which their whole survival may depend. To make sound decisions the people must be informed. For this they depend on the nation's free press. How well is the nation's press doing its essential job? The people have a right to know the truth. They have a responsibility to ask. The right to question. The Press and the People.
As Moderator, from Harvard University, the winner of the Peabody Award for television and radio journalism and the Lauterbach Award for outstanding contributions in the field of civil liberties, Mr. Louis Lyons.
Lyons:
What is the job of the newspaper? Is it to give the public what it wants? Or should the newspaper give the public what it needs to be informed? We have two guests who are well qualified to discuss these questions.
Announcer A:
One of our guests is the founder and head of one of the nation's outstanding public opinion and marketing research organizations. He is the author of many articles on politics and business, he is an editor of the
Saturday Review, and is chairman of the board of the Fund for the Republic: Mr. Elmo Roper.
Announcer B:
Mr. Roper says, and I quote: "When we criticize our press we ought to remember one important fact. To most Americans, reading is a difficult experience. It is plain hard work. This has had an important bearing on the character of our daily newspapers."
Announcer A:
Our other guest has been a newspaperman for thirty-six years. He began as a reporter on the Portland Oregonian and ended as its publisher less than ten years later. Since 1946 he has been editor and publisher of the Denver Post: Mr. Palmer Hoyt.
Announcer B:
Mr. Hoyt says, and I quote: "The modem American newspaper has two major responsibilities: one, to inform the public; and, two, to stay in business. The paper that fails to inform is the paper most likely to fail financially."
Lyons:
One of the oldest notions we hear about the newspaper business is that the newspapers give the public what it wants. But on this program last week Adlai Stevenson said perhaps the newspapers should sometimes give the public what it doesn't want, but needs.
Now we have leading newspapers that see their job as informing the public. Their business is news. "All the news that's fit to print," says The New York Times. Other newspapers seem to see their role largely as entertainment. Sometimes they offer almost as much of a variety show as the corner drug store, where drugs have receded to a small counter in the back.
What's happening to our newspapers? Are they going the way of television, largely an entertainment medium? Must they to survive, as we often hear? And how do the publisher and editor know what the public wants? Well, Mr. Elmo Roper, you have made detailed studies of the public attitudes. What do you find the public wants in its newspapers?
Roper:
Well, Mr. Lyons, when one considers the two statements – the statement I made that reading is hard work for all but a very small minority of people, and then couple that with the statement Mr. Hoyt made that one of the functions of the newspaper is to stay in business – I think one has a very considerable sense of respect for the problem, the size of the problem that the average newspaper editor faces.
Because we talk glibly about the public, but actually the public is a lot of publics, and they want different things in a newspaper. Men want somewhat different things than women, for example. The young want somewhat different things from the old. Let's just take, for example, the results of one survey and consider three different educational levels, starting with the lowest. What do they want of their newspapers?
Well the first thing they said they wanted was that it should be easy to read. The second thing was that it should have a good sports page, and the third thing was that it should be lively and interesting. They almost never mentioned that it should have good editorials or good columnists. Now, going up the educational ladder a little bit, what did these people want? Well, they wanted, first, the paper to keep them well informed; second, a good family paper; and, third, they also wanted a good sports page.
Going on up to the better educated people. They wanted the paper to keep them well informed, they wanted a good sports page also, and they wanted good editorials. That's the first time editorials have appeared. They mentioned least having good comics. But, you see, there are differences. The paper has to be geared for all these publics, all of whom want different things.
Interestingly enough, during a newspaper strike, when we asked people what they missed the most, other than the news, women said they missed the advertising. Men said they missed the financial and sports page. Also, interestingly enough, when you asked people what they want in a newspaper, it is very rare that they will tell you that they want it to be fair and impartial.
Lyons:
Well, Mr. Hoyt, this suggests quite a complicated problem for the publisher. As a publisher, what do you think the reader wants? How does a publisher figure this out? Is there any formula for a successful newspaper?
Hoyt:
First, I would like to agree with my distinguished friend, Mr. Roper, that there are many publics and that it's very difficult to determine what any one segment or all segments do want. At the Denver Post, we like to think of our paper as a mirror of contemporary life the world around.
We like to think that we make a sound attempt to show contemporary life in perspective. In other words, we print foreign as well as local news, because we think that there is tremendous local interest today in Russia, China, and the Near East, for example. In this mirror of life, seems to me, well that can be, of course, taken in many ways. We do try to show our reader, in the business of informing him, what kind of world he lives in and the dangers and the opportunities that exist. And, we try, in printing all the news that we can get in our paper, we try to do what Adlai Stevenson suggested also – we don't take cognizance of whether people are going to want to read a given story, if we think it's news.
Lyons:
And you don't think that threatens your chance to survive, which you put as one of your responsibilities?
Hoyt:
No. To answer that, Mr. Lyons, we think we have to have a vital interest for all people, whether it be comics or as entertainment or financial news as information. I would agree generally with everything Mr. Roper said, I think it's a very fine statement, except that in my experience I have found a definite interest in impartiality and fairness.
Lyons:
That's a cardinal principle of the newspaper, it's profession, Mr. Hoyt?
Hoyt:
Well, we have a little rule in the Denver Post which we try to abide by. We, our rule is, print the news as honestly, fairly, and completely as we can, comment on it by experienced and educated writers as adequately as we can, and, three, and most important, to not allow those two to meet, another words, to mingle. And in other words, we don't want ever to run editorials in our news columns or headlines.
Lyons:
But Mr. Roper's findings seem to suggest that the reader doesn't pay too much attention to this. Is that right?
Roper:
Let's explore that for a minute. It's true that when you ask people what they want in a newspaper, they don't tell you they want it to be fair and impartial. I don't think that means at all that they don't expect it to be fair and impartial or don't want it. But I think there are two possible explanations for their failure to mention it. In the first place, a lot of people are going to pick the newspaper that has the same bias they have, and if it has the same bias they have, obviously it's fair and impartial.
Roper:
It's only when you have a different bias from mine that I regard you as unfair and partial. So that's going to account for a lot of people. It isn't biased because it agrees with me. I think a lot of other people like to pride themselves on being rugged individualists. They like to take the position that it doesn't matter what they read. They can read a newspaper with a biased point of view, but they are so wise that they see through it and, therefore, it doesn't bother them. They read it for the columnists, or they read it for the advertising, or something, and they kid themselves, I think, in many instances.
Hoyt:
Let's, Mr. Roper, I would like to confine that for a moment to the political field. Years ago, when I was managing editor of the Oregonian and had nothing to do with the policies at that time.
It was 1932 and we ran, Mr. Roosevelt ran against Mr. Hoover. And Oregon, a Republican state, gave Mr. Roosevelt a very handsome vote.
During the election period we lost about 10,000 circulation a month – and we only had about 100,000 anyway or less – and, because we printed only one side. And we got calls after Roosevelt was elected, the switchboard was white for two or three days – I helped answer the calls. These people just called up to give us the bird; and just hang up and say, "How do you like that?"
In 1936 when Mr. Landon supported Mr. Roosevelt, we supported Mr. Landon editorially very strongly. But we printed, as nearly as we could measure it, exactly the same number of speeches, covered the news of both campaigns.
We not only didn't get those calls, but we had the greatest single gain period in our history as a newspaper up to that time. I think all of this indicates that there is appreciation – or at least there was in that state at that time – of giving impartial political news.
Roper:
I think there is. Interestingly enough, in a nation-wide study we did once, 68 percent of the people who read newspapers said that the newspaper they read was generally fair and impartial, but almost everybody said that some newspapers somewhere were unfair and partial. It is somewhere else though; it isn't my newspaper.
Lyons:
Well, Mr. Roper, how would you rate the appeal of news, real hard information, as against the entertainment features of a newspaper in what readers pick the newspapers for?
Roper:
Well, again it depends a little bit on the educational level you are talking about. I think that the news column is the No. 1 thing people buy a newspaper for. And then I think the No. 2 thing varies. With some it is financial news, others it is editorials, others it is comics. It depends. But news is the main reason for buying a newspaper.
Lyons:
Well Mr. Hoyt, my impression is that the number of comics keeps increasing in most newspapers. Do comics sell papers? Will two pages of comics sell more than one page?
Hoyt:
I don't know, Mr. Lyons, you get an awful lot of arguments about that.
Lyons:
I once heard a publisher, a very good publisher, say that there was more circulation in it for him to add four pages of colored comics in the Sunday paper than to hire an extra good staff reporter.
Hoyt:
Well that may have been true on a temporary basis in a certain circulation area. We run a lot of comics in the Denver Post, but we still try to remember that we are a newspaper. And the worst trouble I have with comics, incidentally, is that our managing editors buy new ones, but they forget to throw the old ones out.
Lyons:
Let me ask you about something else that you buy, I mean publishers do buy: syndicated columnists. Some very distinguished columnists, circulated throughout the country. Does the columnist steal the show from the editorial writer?
Hoyt:
I don't think so. We try to run columnists who present both sides. Columnists are apt to be pretty well opinionated, as you gentlemen know. We don't want to turn over our editorial page to columnists. We try to balance them.
Lyons:
What columnists, for instance, does the Denver Post use?
Hoyt:
We run Drew Pearson, Doris Fleeson, Mark Childs, and we always print Jimmy Reston when he writes a piece (we take The New York Times service). There are several others. We don't however we have a strong editorial page, and we present these columnists. We don't feel any obligation to run everything they write.
Lyons:
Does the colunnist sell papers?
Hoyt:
Well, I don't know. Mr. Lyons, there are so many things...
Lyons:
You don't pick them for their box-office value?
Hoyt:
No, we definitely don't bear that in mind.
Lyons:
Well let me ask both of you a point that was raised on this program by James Reston of The New York Times, who you just mentioned, Mr. Hoyt. We asked him, you know, as to how much information the people are getting on their government out of
Washington, where he is reporting. Well, he said there is a great deal more hard information going out than the public seems to have any stomach for. Well, as one who examines what the public can take, Mr. Roper, what do you say to that?
Roper:
I think there is more information in many newspapers than the bulk of the public has stomach for, yes. But there again, in a sense, the newspaper has to print that if it wants its better informed and better educated people to feel that it is performing a real service for them.
Lyons:
Let me ask Mr. Hoyt, as a publisher, how much any feeling about that would limit what he would want to carry of hard news?
Hoyt:
Well, I don't think it would limit it, Mr. Lyons. Let me put that answer another way. When Scotty Reston comes out with a very good piece about the overlay, for example, on the space authorities in government, I think maybe part of it is that the public is not prepared for that type of news, because they have thought things were all right, or that this or that or the other obtained. And they get, by the very nature of the news from
Washington, the newspaper that prints all of the news is put in the extraordinary position of printing contradictory stories, as a matter of fact.
Lyons:
Well, now the Denver Post says the Rocky Mountain region, do Rocky Mountain readers want good reports on world news, and how do you undertake to get to them as much as you feel that they want from outside?
Hoyt:
In the first place, we know that the Rocky Mountain empire, as we call it, those mountain states, are very internationally-minded. How do we know that? We know that because they like the Denver Post, which prints a lot of foreign news, and because Gallup, Roper, and other surveys show that. And so it isn't a case of printing what they want or don't want really, but it's supplying information on which they base their international-mindedness, we think.
Lyons:
If you have The New York Times service, that includes their foreign news service?
Lyons:
Then you don't depend wholly on the wire services, as so many papers have to do?
Hoyt:
We have two major wire services, but we don't depend on them, no. As a matter of fact, we quite often send reporters out, although we are not a big paper in that sense.
Roper:
Well wouldn't it operate in your case not that you would decide the public wasn't interested in a story if you, as an editor, thought the story was important. But you might give it two or three paragraphs instead of the ten or twelve that you would give it if your paper were read only by college graduates?
Hoyt:
Well, Mr. Roper, that's a very penetrating question. We edit our paper on the basis of informing the public. For example, we have a Nisei, Japanese editor, an assistant managing editor. We just sent him over to
Formosa, to
Japan, to
Korea, and to then occupied areas of China. And we printed about twenty-five stories. We think they were widely read. And we wanted to find out, our editors wanted to find out what was going on, and we thought the public wanted to find out too.
Lyons:
Mr. Roper, let me ask you, from your surveys of readers, what kind of doubts and criticisms they are most apt to have about their newspapers.
Roper:
Well, one of the most frequently raised is that there is too much scandal, too much crime news. Another criticism is that papers are biased politically. This comes about more often in a political year than any other time, in a presidential election year. There is some feeling on the part of a substantial minority that the labor news does not get reported fairly, that the newspapers have a strong anti-labor union bias.
Lyons:
Let's ask Mr. Hoyt about that. On our last program, I think, Mr. Hoyt, a labor union man, Mr. Cole, of the Machinists, suggested that publishers in general have an anti-labor bias. What, what do you think?
Hoyt:
Well I, I can't answer that. Certainly this publisher doesn't, and the Denver Post doesn't. But we are often accused of it and I think it's like any particularized group of interests; when we print favorable or constructive labor news, it doesn't seem like labor reads it much, but when we print the stories of the
McClellan hearings, we often get quite a little mail. But we've really tried to give the whole labor picture. We support union labor generally.
Lyons:
Well gentlemen, let me take up another side of this subject. That is, what's happening to newspapers. Now, Mr. Hoyt, in Denver you still have competitive newspapers.
Lyons:
But a great many cities bigger than Denver are, have only one newspaper ownership, and we read of new mergers every little while. Just the other day the Chicago Daily News was sold to the Chicago Sun-Times. Well, is this the inevitable result of the economics of the press? Must we look forward to the time when it will be the rule; only one newspaper ownership in a big city?
Hoyt:
Well, not necessarily. I think the monopoly press is a very dangerous thing for democracy. And you've got to take out first these, I think splendid jobs are being done, for example, in Louisville, Minneapolis,
Des Moines. But who will come after? I mean it isn't all necessarily bad.
Lyons:
Let me take off a second, that point. Mr. Hoyt has just mentioned three cities - Louisville,
Des Moines, and Minneapolis - where there is only one newspaper ownership, and he makes the point that these are among our best newspapers. That could be said of a number of other newspapers in monopoly cities.
But we now have only a single newspaper ownership in Cincinnati, Kansas City, Memphis, New Orleans, Birmingham, Providence, Toledo, as well as the three that Mr. Hoyt has mentioned.
And in St. Louis as in Nashville, both surviving newspapers are using the same presses. In
Atlanta both surviving newspapers are combining in the same Sunday edition, and the great city of
Chicago is now down to two ownerships. Well Mr. Hoyt, about this, will newspaper enterprise slow down when competition stops?
Hoyt:
No one can say. I don't think so necessarily, but I do feel this, that in the remaining competitive towns, it's an obligation, it is part of the responsibility of the press for newspapers to stay in business. I firmly believe that.
Lyons:
Mr. Roper, does the public show a concern about, about mergers, about the tendency toward monopoly?
Roper:
The public is of two minds on that, Mr. Lyons. In the first place, let's get it straight, the public is not opposed to bigness. The public rather likes bigness. We've done surveys – not necessarily in the newspaper field – but studies on big business, and we find that overwhelming majorities of the public expect that large corporations, rather than small, will make the best inventions and will give you the best merchandise for the money, will give you the best values, will pay labor the best wages, will give a man greater job security if he works for them.
The public is not opposed to bigness. The public is opposed to the misuse of bigness. Now, I would suspect in a merged newspaper town that probably they would have better facilities for doing more things that a good newspaperman has always wanted to do, now that he has stopped this dual expense.
Lyons:
He doesn't have to worry about that rag across the street, which he could always use as an alibi for sensationalism, for instance. Mr. Hoyt, will sensationalism end? Does it tend to diminish in these good newspapers you've mentioned, when there's no longer any competition?
Hoyt:
In the good newspapers I definitely think that sensationalism is played down. I think more and more, I want to delete
New York. I think more and more, and perhaps
San Francisco and
Los Angeles. But as I see newspapers around the country, there is less attention paid to the sensational headline than there used to be.
We definitely on the Post do not write our banner lines for street sales any more. And, of course, as you all know, the extra is gone as an economic factor. We use banner lines because they are a part of our afternoon make-up, but our editors don't write headlines to sell papers on the streets.
Lyons:
Well Mr. Hoyt, as you know, there has been a great tradition in the newspaper business of enterprise: scoops. I have often wondered how much the reader is impressed by the scoop, a paper having something all alone or ahead of the competition. Maybe Mr. Roper has a judgment, what would you say first, Mr. Roper?
Hoyt:
I'd like to hear Mr. Roper too.
Roper:
I'm inclined to think that the public is less impressed with that than is the newspaperman who made the scoop.
Hoyt:
I couldn't agree more.
Lyons:
Well, Mr. Hoyt, take the other side of this business.
Hoyt:
Well I don't want to, Mr. Lyons, I don't want to infer in any way shape or form that our boys are not given to writing good, snappy headlines, but street circulation is not a great factor. Two...
Lyons:
It isn't in Denver; it is in some other cities.
Hoyt:
Yes, I am talking about Denver. Two, I don't want to imply any lack of enterprise. Our boys are continually trying to get stories first, but in the sense of a scoop's bringing a big street sale, no. The other thing is, the public doesn't know or care, in my judgment, and the newspaper that ignores the story because another paper broke it first is apt to get itself into serious trouble if they keep on doing that sort of thing.
Lyons:
Well now ake a city where there isn't any other paper to worry about. Is the lack of that competition apt to mean a lack of digging into the things the public ought to know about?
Hoyt:
Well not necessarily, and if the monopoly consists of two papers...
Lyons:
Morning and afternoon, with the same ownership.
Hoyt:
Right. Even though it may be a shallow subterfuge to fool the public, there still is a competitive element there. But even if there weren't, I think newspapermen who are dedicated or stay in the business any length of time want to get the news out and get a tremendous surge out of a exclusive story, because they still have competition from radio and television, etc.
Lyons:
I was going to ask you about that. How much does a publisher feel that radio, television, news magazines are competition in his field?
Hoyt:
I don't think they are competition in the sense that...
Lyons:
They can't cover your city hall.
Hoyt:
No, no, no. And, furthermore, I think radio did a great job for newspapers. They made, the newspapers had to get better. I think that television did another great job, because again competition for advertising and entertainment forced the newspapers to be better. And I submit that they are better newspapers today than they were ten years ago.
Roper:
Well, isn't that, I agree that they are better newspapers today, and I think that the competition furnished by radio and TV is to a considerable extent responsible for that.
Roper:
You can't hold that a one-newspaper town that has a radio station and television station doesn't have competition. It has very real competition, and particularly in the minds of the editor it has real competition – and that's the only place where it really counts.
Lyons:
When I said they couldn't cover city hail, I meant the great networks or the news magazines. Of course your local television or radio station may, if it develops the resources.
Hoyt:
Yes, but it's very difficult because of the time involved. I mean, for, your radio could blast solid news for twenty-four hours and still not repeat everything that's in the Denver Post.
Lyons:
Well, if we're talking about television and radio as competition with the newspaper, Mr. Hoyt, what do you say as to whether a newspaper, especially if it's the only newspaper, should also own the television station...as a matter of public policy?
Hoyt:
Well, there you get into monopoly again and it depends who owns it. But as a monopoly on the news field, especially if there are other radio and television stations, I don't think it's important.
Lyons:
Well gentlemen, for a last question, before time runs out on us. Much news, Mr. Roper, traditionally has been statements of public officials or important people, but you in your polling have reached the ordinary, the little fellow, and got his views on things. How much do you feel newspapers could do of that to mirror their community more? Is that something we might get into?
Roper:
I think they could do more than they do. I think there is a tendency in the part of the average reporter, if he goes into a town, for example, that he isn't familiar with, to find two or three people who are supposed to have their fingers on the pulse and ask them, and then come back and report that he has found out what they think in Toledo, or wherever.
I don't think he has found out what they think in Toledo. We find that really an awfully small number of people actually have their fingers on the pulse. We are constantly amazed at the things we find out, and we are asking questions all the time.
Lyons:
Well let me just briefly ask Mr. Hoyt as a publisher whether he thinks there's, there's something in it to try to report more of the views of the little man. I think of what Sam Lubell, for instance, on politics...
Hoyt:
Yes. I'm familiar with that and I, I'm impressed with what Mr. Roper said. I think if the newspaper's going to do a good job on the grass roots survey of the so-called little man, he's got to use a little survey technique. He's got to ask a big enough sample to find somebody who knows what he's asking about. Otherwise...
Lyons:
And it's possible you might get into that.
Hoyt:
I think so. We're doing more of that than we used to.
Lyons:
Thank you very much, gentlemen. What is happening to our newspapers? Almost every month, as we have seen, we read of the sale of a great city newspaper to its competitor. Every such merger reduces the reader's choice in a paper. It contracts our channels of public opinion and our sources of information.
Many of our great cities already have only a single newspaper ownership. In thirty years the number of our daily newspapers has been reduced by almost a third, and mergers continue to shrink the number of papers and, of course, to concentrate ownership of the press. Some of these monopolies or near-monopoly newspapers are among our best newspapers.
Often their publishers regret the absence of competition. But the condition that leaves them without competition has eliminated that diversity which has been a key to our American system, competition in enterprise, competition in ideas. And one wonders what is going to take its place. What chance, for example, does it leave for public debate of our great issues?
It makes us terribly dependent on the surviving publisher. As Mr. Hoyt has said, it depends on what kind of publisher he is. For he can not only determine the information we get, the opinion we read, but his product mirrors the community itself; it largely influences its tone, whether it's urged to progressive, civic-minded tackling of public needs or pushed to a narrow negative attitude.
In our system, as a public, we can build our own schools and parks and auditoriums and art museums and civic orchestras and libraries, but for the character of our newspapers, as of our baseball team, we must take pot luck. It may be good luck or it may be a liability we have to live with. So we'll do well to pay attention to what is happening to our newspapers, for it is happening to us. Well until next week at this time on the Press and the People, this is Louis Lyons.