AMERICAN PUBLISHER

Greymouth Evening Star, 31 May 1935, Page 12

AMERICAN PUBLISHER

GENIUS OF ADOLPH OCHS Adolph Ochs, of the ‘New York Times,’ was buried yesterday (writes the correspondent of the London ‘Observer’). This entire city went into' mourning, while the rest of the country, which has been reviewing his career with admiration, looked on. Yet the man himself was little, known. In this i-espect he was the antithesis of William Randolph Hearst a newspaper owner, who is powerful in his own right, or of Frank A. Munsey, who tried to be. Ochs did not grudge his paper the greater fame. It was his own doing. He lost himself in it, for he regarded himself as only one of the architects in that great edifice, with men like the late Louis Wiley, the business, manager, and Carr Van Anda, the retired managereditor, who is regarded here as the greatest news editor who ever lived. Thus he remained,, as Carrie Chapman Catt once called him, “the mysterious personage who broods over the columns of the ‘Times.’ ”

Ochs has been described as the creator of a national' institution. This means much more to America than in Europe. In this continent of a country the loftiest purpose that an American can serve is.national unity. Centrifugal forces are always at work. Physically the railroad promoted oneness. Other means of communication from the telegraph to the aeroplane have helped. But it was from men like Ochs that the steady impulse came to think nationally—an impulse that m his case made him a r p al nexus of American society. i Other journals before his had sought to become national institutions. But they relied upon the editorial pen. Ochs brought to the problem a business genius sallied to a new concept—that the Amercian people required news more than editorial opinion.

First, as to his business genius. He started his romantic careeb as a publisher with £8 as working capital. On the twenty-first anniversary of his ownership of the ‘Times,’ in 1921, he announced that the receipts since he had been publisher reached £20,000,000, but almost all this vast fund was ploughed back into the newspaper with his personality. Less than 4,000,000d01. (£800,000) was withdrawn as dividends to shareholders. The rest was returned to one newspaper instead of being diffused among fresh enterprises, as often occurs in this country of chain newspapers.

With the resources the ‘Times’ built its reputation as a newsgatherer par excellence. The news is distinguished alike in quality and quantity. “All the news that’s fit to print” is its watchword. Ochs separated news, from editorials, gave the superior status to news, and devoted his life to the insistence that the sources of news should be undefiled. His attitude toward the editorial was probably the most unique thing about him. He had' a theory that a newspaper loses its influence by trying to wield it.

FOREIGN NEWS The news organisation of the Times’ under Ochs has made it of world significance since the United otates became a '‘dominant world power. Before the war foreign news received relatively little space. This was owing to lack of public interest. For 50 years all America had been engulfed in intensive national development. The was the occasion fo.r opening a window to the outer world. Under Ochs the ‘Times’ helped to open it. Editorially the paper espoused American entry into the' League of Nations. Just as Ochs’s countrywide news service aimed at persuading the American to think nationally, his new world organisation was destined to persuade him to think internationally. In the ‘Times’ some 15 columns of foreign news appear daily. It is all written as expertly as the domestic news, and the writers go to great trouble to fill in the background of the news so that foreign problems may be made comprehensible to the average American reader.

American journalism in the past quarter of a centui’y has passed through a trying period. Every morning there used to be published in New York City the ‘World,’ the ‘Sun,’ the ‘Tribune,’ the ‘Press,’ the ‘Herald,’ the ‘Times,’ and the ‘American,’ all serious newspapers. Now there are only the ‘Times,’ the ‘Herald Tribune,’ and the ‘American.’ In place of the dead papers two tabloids have appeared —shrunken picture newspapers which find their sources of revenue in gratifying public appetite for the more intimate news of private lives. One of the tabloids has more readers than the four deceased papers combined. Ochs resisted sensationalism, raciness, and features like the comic strip like the plague. Under his successors the paper will undoubtedly continue to maintain its high standards.

Can the ‘Times,’ however, resist the more recent tendency of newspapers to advance the importance of the editorial? The economic crisis confused tho American people; they are demanding to know what it all means. The editorial, indeed, may be said to bo in process of re-birth. Of course, tho chief newspapers maintain a high standard of editorial comment. And the chains, such as the ultra-patriotic Hearst organisation, and the Liberal Scripps-Howard organisation, certainly put their editorial crusading at least abreast of news. But such was Ochs’s influence that most of tire newspapers in the interior emphasise news more- than views—a remarkable change from conditions in Ochs’s early days, when journalism in the United States represented a clash of vibrant personalities and tho price of survival for a vigorous pen was often the writer’s quickness on the trigger.