The chief duty of a managing editor, I said, was to give his readers an interesting paper, and as an angler baits his hook, not with what he likes, but with what the fish like, so the style of the newspaper should be adjusted to what the managing editor judged to be the public appetite.

A sub-stratum of truth should run through the news columns; but since a million-dollar fire is more exciting than a half-million-dollar fire, since a thousand deaths in an earthquake are more exciting than a hundred, no nice scrupulosity need be observed in checking the insurance inspector’s figures or in counting the dead.  What the public wanted was a good “story,” and provided it got that there would be little disposition in any quarter to censure an arithmetical generosity which had been invoked in the service of the public’s well-known demands.

So far as politics were concerned, it seemed to me that any newspaper could afford the strongest support to its views while printing the truth and nothing but the truth, if it exercised some discretion as to printing the whole truth.  The editorial, I added, might be regarded as a habit rather than as a guiding force.  People no longer looked to the editorial columns for the formation of their opinions.  They formed their judgment from a large stock of facts, near-facts and nowhere near-facts, and then bought a paper for the purpose of comfortable reassurance.  I had no doubt that a newspaper run to suit my own taste—­a combination of The World’s editorial page with The Evening Post’s news and make-up—­ would lack the influence with which circulation alone can endow a paper, and would end in a bankruptcy highly creditable to its stockholders.

This somewhat cynical outburst brought down upon me an overwhelming torrent of protest from Mr. Pulitzer.

“My God!” he cried, “I would not have believed it possible that any one could show such a complete ignorance of American character, of the high sense of duty which in the main animates American journalism, of the foundations of integrity on which almost every successful paper in the United States has been founded.  You do not know what it costs me to try and keep The World up to a high standard of accuracy—­the money, the time, the thought, the praise, the blame, the constant watchfulness.

“I do not say that The World never makes a mistake in its news column; I wish I could say it.  What I say is that there are not half a dozen papers in the United States which tamper with the news, which publish what they know to be false.  But if I thought that I had done no better than that I would be ashamed to own a paper.  It is not enough to refrain from publishing fake news, it is not enough to take ordinary care to avoid the mistakes which arise from the ignorance, the carelessness, the stupidity of one or more of the many men who handle the news before it gets into print; you have got to do much more than that; you have got to make every one connected with the paper—­your editors, your reporters, your correspondents, your rewrite men, your proof-readers—­believe that accuracy is to a newspaper what virtue is to a woman.