SOURCE: Hughes, Helen MacGill. Review of The Disappearing Daily, by Oswald Garrison Villard. American Journal of Sociology 51, no. 1 (July 1945): 79.

In the following review, Hughes finds The Disappearing Daily to be an interesting and readable account of the demise of the daily newspaper in America.

Because of his long and honorable newspaper career, Mr. Villard should be given a respectful hearing whenever he feels moved to speak of the press. He could write the history of half-a-century of American journalism in terms of personal memoirs. This [The Disappearing Daily] volume continues the study begun with the publication of Some Newspapers and Newspapermen in 1923.

The daily is disappearing by way of extinction and amalgamation; its mortality rate is rising. In Villard's opinion it is also disappearing as a democratic force because the publishers are very rich men, committed to the defense of capitalism and conservatism. It is disappearing as a...