one, and at the same time to reduce the price generally from three or five cents to one or two cents a copy. The reduction in price, in turn, has resulted in remarkable gains in circulation. Whereas a generation ago 50,000 copies daily was considered a very large circulation, we now have newspapers printing daily editions of from 150,000 to 900,000 copies. Thus, although the cost of producing the newspaper has constantly increased, the price to the reader has been reduced.
The result of these readjustments has been that from two thirds to three quarters of the cost of maintaining a newspaper comes from the advertising, and only from one quarter to one third from subscriptions and sales. This means that when a man buys a penny paper, he is buying for one cent what it costs three or four cents to produce, and that the difference between the cost and the price he pays is paid for by the advertisers.
Decline of Personal Journalism. Coincident with the change in the financial organization of newspapers, significant changes have taken place in the editing of them. Two generations ago the owner-editor who established a newspaper with a limited amount of capital, as Greeley did the Tribune, was the real head of his paper, who expressed vigorously his own opinions in its editorial columns. Personal journalism, as the expression of the political, social, and economic beliefs of great editors, like Greeley, Bennett, Bowles, Raymond, Dana, and Godkin, was an important influence in American life. These men were recognized as leaders. The opinions set forth in their editorials were accepted by readers as significant contributions to the solution of current problems. In short, it was a period of great editorial leadership.
With the development of the telegraph, the telephone, and the railroad mail service, and with the expansion
