CAPITALISING SENSATIONS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 183, 4 July 1936, Page 8

CAPITALISING SENSATIONS.

One must look to the United States of America for the mass producer of sensations, and he is William Randolph Hearst, of “popular” newspaper fame. He is described in an American magazine as a “multitude of newspapers, magazines, movie newsreels and radio, and an international wire and feature service.” He was born in 1863, and grew up in the Golden Age—the age of industrial revolution, when cities sprang up overnight, and mass production and mads consumption divided American life between them. The times called for a dispenser of cheap reading matter for the masses of new literates. The pioneer was Joseph Pulitzer who became a national figure when he bought the New York World. Hearst learned from the World the recipe for the new journalism. This was, above all, emotional appeal, which meant chiefly sex, but also crime, wealth, the unusual, and conflict in all its forms. While a young man of 23 he persuaded his father to buy the dullest paper in San Francisco, the Examiner. Hearst immediately galvanised it into life. He launched crusades against political intrigue, corporate privilege, municipal neglect, and in five years the Examiner was the best paying paper in the West. After eight years Hearst invaded New York and bought the Morning Journal. Pulitzer and Hearst soon locked horns, and sensationalism became more screaming. Every appeal was exploited. The most popular writers were hired. Miracles were done with type; coloured comic sections appeared in many forms; public subscriptions were started for orphans, for dogs, for anything with a sob aiid a tear in it. Hearst has been described as an enigma, and he is an enigma, because order and consistency are expected of big men. Hearst’s only consistent stand is on Hearst. The man he backed yesterday lie opposes to-day. While his papers campaign “Huy American” he buys newsprint in Canada and ['inland, magazines and writers in England, and castles in Wales and Spain. He and his papers are a chaos of contradictions which would mean ruin in almost any field except that of a journalism which speaks to the lower instincts. We are assured that the editorial influence of Hearst is nil on the very people who cannot do without his papers. It is notorious that his campaigns fall short of achievement. It was inevitable that this will-to-power should spill over into the field of politics. But here he was thwarted. He acquired the loyalty of political adherents, and constructed out of his employees a political organisation but he did not succeed in securing a governorship, or even a mayorship. Hearst has earned credits as well as debts. He brought enterprise into the field of journalism, extended the meaning of “news,” and despite the means employed, re-dedicated the newspaper to the service of the public. He embarked on many wholesome crusades, and cleaned up many plague spots in American public life. On the debit side the list is formidable. Hearstian journalism never hesitated to try an accused man in the first available edition, and never hesitated to invade the privacy of the individual. Hearst has had a major role in destroying journalism as a profession. If he has brought first-rate writers to the masses he has also brought new depths of sentimentalism, nonsense and worked-up triviality. Hearst is the mass producer of sensations, just as other men have been mass producers of motor-cars, chewinggum and cigarettes.