Americans -- Europe -- Fiction; Europe -- Fiction; Humorous stories; Walking -- Fiction
If you ask a citizen of Munich which is the best Munich daily journal,
he will always tell you that there is only one good Munich daily, and
that it is published in Augsburg, forty or fifty miles away. It is like
saying that the best daily paper in New York is published out in New
Jersey somewhere. Yes, the Augsburg ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG is "the best
Munich paper," and it is the one I had in my mind when I was describing
a "first-class German daily" above. The entire paper, opened out, is not
quite as large as a single page of the New York HERALD. It is printed on
both sides, of course; but in such large type that its entire contents
could be put, in HERALD type, upon a single page of the HERALD--and
there would still be room enough on the page for the ZEITUNG's
"supplement" and some portion of the ZEITUNG's next day's contents.
Such is the first-class daily. The dailies actually printed in Munich
are all called second-class by the public. If you ask which is the best
of these second-class papers they say there is no difference; one is as
good as another. I have preserved a copy of one of them; it is
called the MÜNCHENER TAGES-ANZEIGER, and bears date January 25, 1879.
Comparisons are odious, but they need not be malicious; and without any
malice I wish to compare this journal, published in a German city of
170,000 inhabitants, with journals of other countries. I know of no
other way to enable the reader to "size" the thing.
A column of an average daily paper in America contains from 1,800 to
2,500 words; the reading-matter in a single issue consists of from
25,000 to 50,000 words. The reading-matter in my copy of the Munich
journal consists of a total of 1,654 words --for I counted them. That
would be nearly a column of one of our dailies. A single issue of the
bulkiest daily newspaper in the world--the London TIMES--often contains
100,000 words of reading-matter. Considering that the DAILY ANZEIGER
issues the usual twenty-six numbers per month, the reading matter in a
single number of the London TIMES would keep it in "copy" two months and
a half.
The ANZEIGER is an eight-page paper; its page is one inch wider and one
inch longer than a foolscap page; that is to say, the dimensions of its
page are somewhere between those of a schoolboy's slate and a lady's
pocket handkerchief. One-fourth of the first page is taken up with the
heading of the journal; this gives it a rather top-heavy appearance;
the rest of the first page is reading-matter; all of the second page is
reading-matter; the other six pages are devoted to advertisements.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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