appeal to this interest. So does the fight to secure control or monopoly in any part of the commercial field. The enthusiasm manifested over baseball, football, boxing, racing, and other sports grows out of the love of contest for supremacy. In political warfare the interest of many is largely in the struggle for victory, with the power that victory brings, rather than any results that will affect the individual directly. Accounts of all these forms of fighting to win make good news stories.
"Human Interest." The fellow feeling that makes all the world akin, the sympathy that binds together men who have little in common, is the basis of interest which we have in the actions, thoughts, and feelings of others. The "human interest" which newspaper and magazine editors demand, involves emphasis on the personal element in the affairs of life. The characters that appear in news stories, fiction, or special articles must be made to appeal to the readers as real flesh and blood men and women. The human side of events is what the average reader wants. How one man is saved by a new serum is read with more attention than is a discussion of the therapeutic value of the serum. The privations of an arctic explorer in reaching the pole have almost as much interest for most readers as the discovery of the pole itself. The experiences of strikers and their families are read by many who know little and care less about the economic conditions that produce the strike. So vitally do we feel ourselves concerned with the fate of our fellow men, even when we do not know them personally, that accounts of human life lost or endangered are read with great eagerness. "Many lives lost!" is the cry that the newsboy knows will sell the most papers. From the point of view of the newspaper the greater the number of lives thus involved in the event, the better is the news.
