The Brass Check: A Study of American JournalismSinclair, Upton
General
The Brass Check: A Study of American Journalism
Sinclair, Upton
Associated Press; Journalism -- United States; Press -- United States
“Success” refused to “be good”; it persisted in exposing Cannonism, and
maintaining a “People’s Lobby” in Washington; so “Success” was put out
of business. The “National Post” adopted a radical policy, and it was
put out of business; likewise “Human Life,” edited by Alfred Henry
Lewis; likewise the “Twentieth Century Magazine,” edited by B. O.
Flower; likewise the “Times Magazine”—a monthly having nothing to do
with the “New York Times,” but edited by a young man of means who
naïvely supposed that he would be allowed to tell the truth to the
people of New York. “Pearson’s” of the old régime was brought to ruin,
and it survives in its new form by the defiant genius of one man, Frank
Harris. “Harper’s Weekly” started out bravely, with Norman Hapgood as
editor, and Charles R. Crane as “angel”; for two or three years it
fought the advertising boycott, and then it died.
In the “Profits of Religion” I told in detail the story of how
“Hampton’s Magazine” was put out of business. I did not intend to repeat
this story, but it happens that I have just met my old friend Ben
Hampton again, and have gathered fresh details. I will let him tell his
own story:
Never in the history of magazine-publishing was there such a great
success in such a short time as that of “Hampton’s.” This is not my
conversation. It is simply the records of the American News Company.
We had, I think, 425,000 circulation, and we broke all records for the
same length of time. No other magazine ever succeeded with an
investment as small as ours. When they took the magazine away from me
I think we had nearly thirty thousand dollars a month advertising.
But it is a peculiarity of magazines that when they grow too fast they
lose money for a time. You have contracted for a year to publish
advertisements, based on a circulation of a hundred thousand copies. If,
three months later you have four hundred thousand circulation, you are
giving four times as much as you were paid for; also, you have to have
four times as much paper and press-work, for which you do not get
returns until three months later. Hampton put in all his fortune and his
wife’s, and then he started selling stock to his readers. He had just
got by the difficult place; his printing-company and the bank which
owned the printing-company had audited his books, and the bank-auditor
had certified that in the first four months of 1911 the magazine “had
earned a profit of not less than three thousand and not more than seven
thousand dollars per month.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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