Oregon Exchanges
For the Newspaper Men of the State of Oregon
JOURNALISM VS. PUBLICITY-PROBLEM OF PRESS AGENT DISCUSSED
By MARSHALL N. DANA, Associate Editor Oregon Journal
[Delivered before Sixth Annual Newspaper Conference at University of Oregon, February 15.]
PART
five, point 24, of the Oregon
Journalistic Code of Ethics affirms:
“We will not permit, unless in excep
tional cases, the publishing of news and
editorial matter not prepared by our
selves or our staff, believing that orig
inal matter is the best answer to the peril
of propaganda.”
This declaration was adopted in the let
ter but never in the spirit. It is honored
not in observance but in breach. Jour
nalism is honey-combed
with press
agentism.
The name of the press-agent
is legion.
His activities are multitudin
ous. He is an institution in the general
scheme of publicity. As a type and as
an average he does not lack respect
ability.
The newspapers
accept the press
agent. They, with miscellaneous med
iums of publicity, are responsible for
him. He could not exist without the ac
ceptance and tacit approval of the news
papers.
The ranks of press-agentism are re
cruited largely from among active news
paper men and women who assume out
side publicity work in order to supple
ment their incomes.
If newspapers made a rigid rule that
they would use only original matter, if
they followed this rule to its logical cli
max and printed nothing they had not
dug up for themselves, the news gather
ing staffs of the newspapers would need
be increased from two to three times the
present number.
If newspaper writers were refused the
privilege of acting as press agents in
their own time, it would be necessary for
their pay to be double if they were not
to live below the level of day laborers
or country preachers.
Two illustrations will suffice. For
preparation of copy in a special edition
of a newspaper, a writer received twenty
cents a column inch. The advertising
solicitor who secured the advertisements
of advertisers who insisted their copy
would have little value unless “next to
reading matter” received $1.25 a column
inch commission for his work. Between
the news writer and the advertising
solicitor as to mental training and genu
ine resourcefulness there could be little
comparison.
But, nevertheless, the writer
whose work gave the edition its value
and its justification got less than one
sixth as much per inch as the advertising
solicitor who was not even burdened with
the preparation of copy, but who in
