since they were supplied by the pulpit, and editors, “ cribbed, cabined , and confined ,” wrote essays on English models, Addison , Pope, and Dryden . It wasmuch of an innovation when “ Benjamin Franklin deliberately entertained his readers with his own literary efforts, in preference to stale news from Hungary
or Poland." 46 The change in the choice of literary subjects in the newspaper press has since then been rapid and it has re corded the changing interests of society. Classical models long prevailed , literary interests gave way to " human interest ” subjects, as these have been supplanted by the commercial
type, and these in turn were temporarily superseded by military influences.
The change in literary style has been equally pronounced . R . G . White once complained , and with reason, of “ this silly bombast, this stilted nonsense” that infests journalism .47 To day the wide-spread use of the word " story " by journalists and reporters records the present influence of short story writing on
the press,48 _ even in the ostensible news column, news proper is subordinated to the “ story,” or it acquires a factitious im portance because it appears in this guise. It is more nearly true
to say that mutually repellent influences have long prevailed
in the connection between literature and the press . One tendency has been towards the use of “ newspaper English,” — not a mere pleasantry of speech , but one that often connotes slovenliness,
over-emphasis, crudeness of expression together with thephonetic spelling of language imperfectly acquired by foreigners. This crudeness is in part due to the haste with which all newspaper material is necessarily prepared ; in part to the college graduate who in increasing numbers has gone into journalism and has
taken into the profession the college slang he has affected , W . T. Arnold once complained , “ it really seems as if every Greats man needed a year in a newspaper office to unlearn his 46 E . C . Cook , Literary Influence in Colonial Newspapers, chap. I. The book is an excellent exposition of the subject.
47 “ Newspaper English . Big Words for Small Thoughts," Words and Their Uses, pp. 28 -43. 48 “ The journalistic use of the word ' story ' indicates the case of a transi
tion which is not a wandering from fact to falsity, but an upward shift from the plane of simple registry to the plane of interpretation .” - H . W . Boynton , Journalism and Literat
