As for that large majority of prosperous newspaper-concerns which are stigmatized in socialist literature as the “kept press,” they have been so over-eager in the partisanship of their editorial writing and in the colouring of their news or its manufacture out of whole cloth, that there is discernible a decided change in the popular attitude towards them. The power of the printed word is still great out of all proportion to its weight; but editorial pronouncements, if they are read at all, are by no means swallowed as the undiluted milk of the word, as they were in the day when Horace Greeley used daily in the _Tribune_ to dictate opinion to a large section of the American public. It is significant that since the advertising department has come to take precedence over the editorial department, there has been a decided falling-off in respect for journalism and a marked decrease in the number of honest and able people who take up journalistic work. This was to be expected. The modern newspaper is essentially an advertising medium, and its editorial writing and presentation of news must conform to its general character. Under these circumstances men of intellectual ability and integrity are no longer attracted by such work, as they are no longer, for an analogous reason, attracted to governmental office or to the pulpit. The consequent deterioration in journalistic personnel contributes further to the newspaper’s loss of prestige--again as in the case of the personnel of government and of the churches. As all those institutions lose the power to command respect and allegiance, they progressively lose power to attract able and honest minds to their service; and as they lose this power of attraction, their power to command respect progressively dwindles; and thus by alternate reactions they tend to disintegration. To return to the press, it is symptomatic of the loss of popular faith in its moral and intellectual character that people buy this newspaper or that so largely because of special features--local news, sporting news, this person’s column or that person’s cartoons. It is no exaggeration to say that the overwhelming majority of Americans look to their newspapers not for information but for entertainment or excitement; a fact which is amply attested by the amount of space devoted to special features, comic strips and cheap stories, and above all by the extraordinary success of a new tabloid type of newspaper devoted almost exclusively to pictures, accompanied by the most sensational kind of backstairs gossip. In the parlance of the street, the modern newspaper is “giving ’em what they want”; and while the preference is a sad reflection on public taste, its gratification is an equally sad reflection on the quality and standing of American journalism. The newspaper, in short, as I have said, no longer informs or guides opinion; it purveys amusement.