(5) The notorious emphasis upon crime and summary of journalistic evils.  Every unpleasant fact that ought, from kindness to those concerned and from regard to the morals of the readers, to be ignored or passed lightly over, is instead dragged out into the light.  The delight in besmirching supposedly respectable citizens, the brutal intrusion into private unhappiness, the detailed description of domestic tragedy, is nothing short of outrageous.  Pictures of adulterers and murderers, of the instruments and scenes of crimes, precise instructions to the uninitiated for their commission, explanations of the success of burglary or train-wreckers, help marvelously to sell a paper, but do not help the morals of the younger generation.  No one can estimate the amount of sexual stimulation, of suggestion to sin and vice, for which our newspapers are responsible.

(6) In conclusion, we may mention a trivial matter which, however, brings our newspapers into deserved disrepute-their self-laudation ad boasting.  How many “greatest American newspapers” are there?  There are even, in this country alone, more than one “World’s greatest newspaper!” From this principle of conceit there are all gradations down to the humblest village paper that lies about its circulation and extols itself as the necessary adjunct of every home.  These overstatements are pernicious in their influence upon public standards of accuracy and honesty.

The newspaper is potentially an instrument of incalculable good.  No other influence upon the minds and morals of the people is so continuous and universal.  Through the newspapers knowledge is disseminated, judgment and outlook upon life are crystallized, political and social beliefs are shaped.  They might be the means of great social and moral reforms.  But so long as they are subject to the struggle for existence which, necessitates their truckling to parties, to advertisers, and to public prejudices and passions, so long their influence will be largely unwholesome.  If public opinion cannot force them to a higher moral level in their present status as sources of private profit, they must be published by the State or by trustees of an endowment fund.  Municipally owned papers are liable to partisanship and corruption, in their way, and endowed papers to an undue regard for the interests of the class to which the majority of the trustees may belong.  But the dangers would probably be far less than are inherent in our present system, where morals have to defer to pocketbooks; and when municipal government in this country is finally ordered in a sensible way, so that corruption is much more difficult and easily detected, the municipal newspaper, run after the “city manager” plan, will probably become universal.