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US in dealing with it. The situation would be infinitely healthier if readers had been "brought up" on the right principle of paying for value received, as they do in the case of other comforts and luxuries. That men otherwise liberal and extravagant should insist on getting a 3-cent paper for i cent, or a 5-cent paper for 2 cents is a phenomenon that would puzzle a visitor from Mars, where, we must hope, newspapers command a "living price." Meantime it is clear that the emancipation of the editorial page would be powerfully furthered by the above-suggested de- editorializing of the news columns. Give everyone a hearing; set forth the facts as they are, and few will be audacious enough to complain of an honest and judicial expression of opinion in the editorial section.
Still another newspaper vice which disgusts readers of sense and right feeling is noisy self -laudation and self-advertisement. A self-respecting newspaper is entitled to credit for real leader- ship, for help in good causes, for honest service, and there is nothing wrong in an occasional and relevant reminder of past service or in an expression of legitimate satisfaction with one's record. But there are newspapers — happily this number is di- minishing — which wildly magnify small or even imaginary achievements, which increasingly boast of their power and great- ness, which initiate nine-day "crusades" in order to create talk about themselves among the superficial, which misrepresent situa- tions for the sake of cheap originality. Such newspapers do not in the least care which side they fight on ; all they seek is noto- riety and revenue. They may at times appear to be working for righteousness, but their influence is pernicious on the whole. They delight in confusion and would create Bedlam all around them. Real progress is the result of honest and efficient service, and crazy sensationalism only hinders and demoralizes.
A few words now as to sanity and efficiency in the handling of matter generally. The yellow newspapers have had a terribly demoralizing effect on the presentation of news and its display. Editors have a horror of "dryness," or the appearance of it, and everything — style, grammar, - sobriety, economy — is sacri- ficed to liveliness. Can it be supposed that readers are attracted
