Nearly seventy-one percent based their conscious preference on local news (17.8%), or political (15.8%) or financial (11.3%), or foreign (9.5%), or general (7.2%), or editorials (9%). The other thirty percent decided on grounds not connected with public affairs. They ranged from not quite seven who decided for ethical tone, down to one twentieth of one percent who cared most about humor.
How do these preferences correspond with the space given by newspapers to various subjects.? Unfortunately there are no data collected on this point for the newspapers read by the Chicago and New York groups at the time the questionnaires were made. But there is an interesting analysis made over twenty years ago by Wilcox. He studied one hundred and ten newspapers in fourteen large cities, and classified the subject matter of over nine thousand columns.
Averaged for the whole country the various newspaper matter was found to fill:
| I. | News | 55.3 |  |
(a) War News | 17.9 |
 |
(b) General News" | 21.8 | |
Foreign | 1.2 |
|
 |
Politics | 6.4 | ||
|
 |
Crime | 3.1 | ||
|
 |
Misc. | 11.1 | ||
|
c) Special News" | 15.6 | |
Business | 8.2 |
|
 |
Sport | 5.1 | ||
|
Society | 2.3 | |||
| II. | Illustrations | 3.1 | |||
| III. | Literature | 2.4 | |||
| IV. | Opinion | 7.1 |  |
(a) Editorials | 3.9 |
 |
(b) Letters & Exchange | 3.2 | |||
| V. | Advertisements | 32.1 |
In order to bring this table into a fair comparison, it is necessary to exclude the space given to advertise-
