Churchman (Episcopal); the Christian Advocate (Methodist); the Examiner (Baptist); the Independent and the Outlook (liberal); the Catholic Review; the Catholic American; and many Hebrew weeklies. Sport, art, science, the drama, fashion and society—each has its own periodicals. Public Opinion presents a résumé of current thought. New York still leads the American press. But what has been said of her journals is largely true of Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Chicago, Saint Louis, and San Francisco. And from certain other cities, sometimes small, are issued newspapers which have gained a national reputation. Such are the Springfield Republican, the Detroit Free Press, the Louisville Courier-Journal, and the New Orleans Picayune. The last years of the nineteenth century witnessed the rise of the Sunday issue of the great dailies. These immense Sunday magazines, sometimes running above a hundred pages, with colored illustrations, are now published in all the larger cities.
The Making of the Newspaper. For a conception of the wonderful progress of the press, one must leave mere annals and enter the workshop. The newspaper such as Defoe edited was nothing more than a brief chronicle of news gathered haphazard, concluding with the advertisement of a quack doctor. Next came the reporter. The special correspondent here and there appeared in the seventeenth century, but he did not gain his place till the Crimean War, and in the United States not till the Civil War. Now every great daily has its hundred correspondents scattered about the globe. This has been rendered practicable by the cable. For saving expense, news agencies have been formed in Europe and America. Reuter's (1858) was the first for England. The Associated Press of the United States dates from 1849. Though these serve for the smaller papers, they are to the larger papers only hints to be followed up by their own agents. The telegraph, indispensable for gathering news, has been reënforced by the telephone, which is now finding its way into every village. These new sources for obtaining news have revolutionized the office. The editor who personally superintended the issue of his paper is of the past. There can never be another Greeley or Dana. The editor-in-chief of certain papers finds no time even to write a leader. The work of making the paper must be divided and subdivided. A ‘city editor’ directs the reporters in gathering news. A ‘news editor’ keeps in touch with outside correspondents through the telegraph and the telephone. What pours in from the press associations and a paper's own avenues must be thoroughly sifted by ‘copy editors,’ who now throw out far more than they put in. For important news articles there are usually special writers. ‘Exchange editors’ read other periodicals with scissors in hand, clipping what they think will interest the public. Comment on the news of the day is in the hands of a trained corps of editorial writers. All these and other departments receive their general instructions from the editor-in-chief, whose place has shifted from the old editorial desk to the telephone. There are, moreover, editors for finance, commerce, and sport, and critics for music, the theatre, and literature. Many papers also now employ a woman, with a corps of assistants, to gather the news especially interesting to women. Finally, there is the ‘night editor,’ who makes up the paper, arranging all the articles and the headlines. The Sunday issue is under the direction of a special editor, who has his own staff of correspondents. For providing the Sunday newspapers with stories by popular novelists, syndicates were formed just after 1890. The syndicate purchases the manuscript from the author and sells the right of simultaneous publication to one newspaper in each of the great cities, thus making a handsome profit. The proceeds from the transaction have tempted Stevenson, Kipling, and many other well-known novelists. Much miscellaneous manuscript now passes through syndicates. The counting room of the newspaper we can enter only to remark that an expert is required to look after the advertisements. The income from advertisements, once insignificant, is now so great that even the wealthiest daily could not long survive a serious quarrel with its patrons.
Great as all these developments are, the marvelous changes await one who enters the mechanical department. Down to 1814 all papers were printed on hand-presses. Then the cylinder press of Koening, run by steam and printing about a thousand copies an hour, was introduced by the London Times. In the hands of Sir Rowland Hill, Richard M. Hoe, and other later inventors, the so-called ‘web-perfecting press’ has reached a stage in its development where it will print, fold, paste, and count more than 100,000 copies of eight-page papers an hour. The most recent presses will also print a sheet in six distinct colors. These improvements have been accompanied by quicker means of stereotyping. Plates may be made and clamped on the press within twelve minutes. In the last decade of the nineteenth century hand typesetting gave way to the linotype machine, which, besides reducing the expense of composition by one-half in New York and by one-third in certain other cities, brought the interval between the reception of the latest news and its publication down to less than half an hour. Between 1875 and 1900 paper suitable for print decreased in cost from 12 to 2 cents a pound. New processes in photography have also made easy the rapid reproduction of pictures. The interval between a snapshot and the printed picture is less than two hours. Electricity is displacing steam. The automobile has been pressed into service for getting newspapers on the street; and for wider circulation special trains are employed.
No observer can fail to notice that under the new régime, where the editor-in-chief counts for less, the press of the United States is becoming less personal and more and more independent. True, nearly all American papers are the voice of some party, but they are not its slaves. Certainly public questions are now discussed with a sanity and calmness rare in earlier years.
Statistics. According to estimates at the close of the year 1900, the total number of newspapers published in the world was about 50,000 (an increase of 10,000 during the previous ten years), distributed as follows: United States and Canada, 21,789; Germany, 7000; Great Britain, 9000; France, 4300; Japan, 2000; Italy, 1500; Austria-Hungary. 1200; Asia, exclusive of Japan, 1000; Spain, 850; Russia, 800; Australia, 800; Greece, 600; Switzerland, 450; Holland, 300; Belgium, 300; all others, 1000. Of
