result in this field than in the school system, where these principles come in incidentally.
The current periodical press, whether ephemeral or other, is a vehicle for advertisements. This is its raison d'être, as a business proposition, and this decides the lines of its management without material qualification. Exceptions to the rule are official and minor propagandist periodicals, and, in an uncertain measure, scientific journals. The profits of publication come from the sale of advertising space. The direct returns from sales and subscriptions are now a matter of wholly secondary consequence. Publishers of periodicals, of all grades of transiency, aim to make their product as salable as may he, in order to pass their advertising pages under the eyes of as many readers as may be. The larger the circulation the greater, other things equal, the market value of the advertising space. The highest product of this development is the class of American newspapers called "independent." These in particular—and they are followed at no great interval by the rest —edit all items of news, comment, or gossip with a view to what the news ought to be and what opinions ought to be expressed on passing events.[1]
The first duty of an editor is to gauge the senti-
- ↑ "Ought", is of course here used to denote business expediency, not moral restraint.
