Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850.Various
General
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850.
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Civilization -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals
Passing still further up the narrow and dim passage, one sees a
pigeon-hole, over which is written the word "Advertisements." This
superscription is now supererogatory, for there no advertisements are
received; that branch of the journal having been farmed out to a company
at 350,000 fr. a year. This is a system which evidently saves a vast
deal of trouble. The Advertising Company of Paris has secured almost a
monopoly of announcements and puffs. It has bought up the last page of
nearly every Paris journal which owns the patronage and confidence of
the advertising public of the French capital. At the end of the same
dark passages are the rooms specially used for the editors and writers.
In France, journals are bought for their polemics, and not for their
news: many of them have fallen considerably, however, from the high
estate which they held in public opinion previous to the last
revolution. There are men who wrote in them to advocate and enforce
principles, but in the chopping and changing times that France lives in,
it is not unusual to find the same men with different principles,
interest, or gain, being the object of each change. This result of
revolution might have been expected; and though it would be unfair to
involve the whole press in a sweeping accusation, cases in point have
been sufficiently numerous to cause a want of confidence in many
quarters against the entire press.
The doings of newspaper editors are not catalogued in print at Paris, as
in America; but their influence being more occult, is not the less
powerful, and it is this feeling that leads people to pay more attention
to this or that leading article than to mere news. The announcement of a
treaty having been concluded between certain powers of Europe, may not
lower the funds; but if an influential journal expresses an opinion that
certain dangers are to be apprehended from the treaty in question, the
exchanges will be instantly affected. This is an instance among many
that the French people are to be led in masses. Singly they have
generally no ideas, either politically or commercially.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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