is still authoritative that the largest newspaper audience in the world is not destitute of common sense. This is the amazing
discovery which has recently been dawning upon the world ; and it emanated , not from ‘respectable' England,which had discarded the idea, but from the Press which had once been called the " Yellow Press”.” 90 The desire for news has been universal and it has been min istered to in multiform ways. The newspaper of to -day has been the most recent result of this desire and it has come to be both a
purveyor of news and an accumulator of a thousand and one activities that have reached out far beyond its original circum ference. Combinations and recombinations, progress and reac tion , dangerous tendencies and constructive policies, vision and
creative imagination , sordid aims and crass ignorance, have at all times been characteristic features of the newspaper in the abstract, although never all found in concrete form in any single paper or group of papers. It must suffice to note here a few other
tendencies, not necessarily the most important or the most conspicuous, but tendencies somewhat general in scope that have characterized a changing press . The relative importance of the editorial has undergone a change. When it was the rule that a newspaper was edited by
its owner, it was the excellence of the newspaper , and especially of its editorial, that determined the success of the paper. With
the transference of the ownership from an individual to that of a stock company the relative importance of the editor and of the editorial has apparently declined while that of the business manager is in the ascendant. Individual newspapers often change 90 R . A . Scott- James, The Influence of the Press, p . 201. The pros and consof the yellow press may be found in L . K . Commander ,
" The Significance of Yellow Journalism ,” Arena, August, 1905, 34 : 150 155; C . Whibley, " The Yellow Press,” Blackwood , April, 1907, 181: 531 538; A . Brisbane, “ Yellow Journalism ," Bookman, June, 1904, 19 : 400 -404 ; S . Brooks, “ The Significance of Mr. Hearst,” Fortnightly Review , December,
1907, n . s. 82: 919 - 931, and “ The American Yellow Press," Fortnightly Review , December, 1911, n . s. 90 : 1126 - 1137; E . L . Banks, " American ' Yellow Journalism ',” Nineteenth Century, August, 1898, 44 : 328 – 340 ; A . Brisbane, “ William Randolph Hearst," North American Review , September
21, 1906, 183: 519 –526 ; G . Harvey , “ Mr. Brisbane's Eulogy of Mr. Hearst," ibid ., pp. 569-572; A . M . Low , " The Yellow Press in Japan," North Am erican Review , August 16, 1907, 185: 837-847; S . W . Pennypacker, “ Sen sational Journalism and the Remedy," North American Review , November, 1909, 190 : 587- 593 .
