The Brass Check: A Study of American Journalism — John Shaqi
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
The question had been raised as to how the story should be
authenticated. The “Times” met the problem by putting the story under a
Washington “date-line”—that is, they told their readers that one of
their clever correspondents in the capital had achieved this “scoop.”
Being new to the newspaper game, I was surprised at this, but I have
since observed that it is a regular trick of newspapers. When the
Socialist revolution took place in Germany, I happened to be in
Pasadena, and the “Los Angeles Examiner” called me up to ask what I knew
about the personalities in the new government. So next morning the
“Examiner” had a full description of Ebert and a detailed dispatch from
Copenhagen!
The “New York Times,” having put its hand to the plough, went a long way
down the furrow. For several days they published my material. I gave
them the address of the Bloors, and they sent a reporter to Delaware to
interview them, and get the inside story of the commission’s experiences
in Chicago; this also went on the front page. All these stories the
“Times” sold to scores of newspapers all over the country—newspapers
which should have received them through the Associated Press, had the
Associated Press been a news channel instead of a concrete wall. The
“Times,” of course, made a fortune out of these sales; yet it never paid
me a dollar for what I gave it, nor did it occur to me to expect a
dollar. I only mention this element to show how under the profit-system
even the work of reform, the service of humanity, is exploited. I have
done things like this, not once but hundreds of times in my life; yet I
read continually in the newspapers the charge that I am in the business
of muck-raking for money. I have read such insinuations even in the “New
York Times”!
Also I had another experience which threw light on the attitude of the
great metropolitan newspapers to the subject of money. It is the custom
of publishers to sell to newspaper syndicates what are called the
“post-publication serial rights” of a book. “The Jungle” having become
an international sensation, there was keen bidding for these serial
rights, and they were finally sold to the “New York American” for two
thousand dollars, of which the author received half. Forthwith the
editorial writers of both the Hearst papers in New York, the “American”
and the “Evening Journal,” began to sing the praises of “The Jungle.”
You will recall the patronizing tone in which Arthur Brisbane had spoken
of my charges against the Chicago packers. But now suddenly Brisbane
lost all his distrust of my competence as an authority on stockyards. In
the “Evening Journal” for May 29, 1906, there appeared a double-column
editorial, running over into another double column, celebrating “The
Jungle” and myself in emphatic capitals, and urging the American people
to read my all-important revelations of the infamies of the Beef Trust:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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