The Press: Who Wants What?

A past master of the seven lively journalistic arts, Captain Joseph Patterson, publisher of the New York Daily News, last week gave a beautiful performance of buck-passing, ducking, bobbing and weaving.The cartoonist’s pen was held by Clarence Daniel Batchelor, but the hand that guides the pen is Publisher Patterson’s. On the day Batchelor drew the cartoon the Daily News: 1) covered the world’s battlefronts in 90¾ column inches of type; 2) devoted 184¼ in. to six crime and sex stories. To the Daily News (circ. 2,000,000), Russia was worth 34¾ in., the Lonergan trial 55 in. The entire Pacific war theater rated 3 in., the Major Horace E. Dodge divorce case, 21. The Battle of Italy was less than half as news-valuable as the Chaplin trial (24 in. to 51½). More striking still was the “news” ratio in William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal-American. On the same day it gave Russia 18 in.; Italy, 5½; Chaplin, 40½; Lonergan, 111½.

In the cartoon’s 22 sq. in., Publisher Patterson satisfactorily absolved himself and his fellows from the charge of pandering, and put their millions of readers in the delightfully ticklish spot of appearing to demand what a reluctant press was forced to give them.