SELLING ARTICLES TO SYNDICATES.  The syndicates that supply newspapers with various kinds of material, including special feature stories, are operated on the same principle that governs the syndicating of articles by the writer himself.  That is, they furnish their features to a number of different papers for simultaneous publication.  Since, however, they sell the same material to many papers, they can afford to do so at a comparatively low price and still make a fair profit.  To protect their literary property, they often copyright their features, and a line of print announcing this fact is often the only indication in a newspaper that the matter was furnished by a syndicate.  Among the best-known newspaper syndicates are the Newspaper Enterprise Association, Cleveland, Ohio; the McClure Newspaper Syndicate, New York; and the Newspaper Feature Service, New York.  A number of large newspapers, like the New York Evening Post, the Philadelphia Ledger, and the New York Tribune, syndicate their popular features to papers in other cities.

A writer may submit his special feature stories to one of the newspaper syndicates just as he would send it to a newspaper or magazine.  These organizations usually pay well for acceptable manuscripts.  It is not as easy, however, to discover the needs and general policy of each syndicate as it is those of papers and magazines, because frequently there is no means of identifying their articles when they are printed in newspapers.

CHAPTER XI

PHOTOGRAPHS AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS

VALUE OF ILLUSTRATIONS.  The perfecting of photo-engraving processes for making illustrations has been one of the most important factors in the development of popular magazines and of magazine sections of newspapers, for good pictures have contributed largely to their success.  With the advent of the half-tone process a generation ago, and with the more recent application of the rotogravure process to periodical publications, comparatively cheap and rapid methods of illustration were provided.  Newspapers and magazines have made extensive use of both these processes.

The chief value of illustrations for special articles lies in the fact that they present graphically what would require hundreds of words to describe.  Ideas expressed in pictures can be grasped much more readily than ideas expressed in words.  As an aid to rapid reading illustrations are unexcelled.  In fact, so effective are pictures as a means of conveying facts that whole sections of magazines and Sunday newspapers are given over to them exclusively.