News
Amid Boston Overdose Crisis, a Pair of Harvard Students Are Bringing Narcan to the Red Line
News
At First Cambridge City Council Election Forum, Candidates Clash Over Building Emissions
News
Harvard’s Updated Sustainability Plan Garners Optimistic Responses from Student Climate Activists
News
‘Sunroof’ Singer Nicky Youre Lights Up Harvard Yard at Crimson Jam
News
‘The Architect of the Whole Plan’: Harvard Law Graduate Ken Chesebro’s Path to Jan. 6
"The newspapers are the universities of the people" is a truism to which Horace Greeley gave wide currency, and since his time at has been repeated often, but with lessening conviction. Journals have, it appears, largely ceased to be organs of opinion, they have become organs of selling. The superiority of asbestos over concrete shingles must be impressed upon buyers because the high geared industrial mechanism produces a surplus of goods which must be sold by brute advertising. When advertising is relaxed, is during the printers' strike in New York last year, buying falls off immediately, and the slackening of demand is effected throughout industry to the very sources of production.
Politics reflect this change. Campaigns have become, not a season for serious discussion of issues, but a time when candidates are "sold" to the electorate by the best of advertising methods, News columns reflect as much as advertising pages the desire of vote seekers to hold the public attention by a massive emphasis on slogans and names. Issues fade, personalities are focussed. The same blaring methods that drag money from the pocket of the reader of advertisements tend to be equally successful in drawing his votes. Reiteration, not seasoning, wins.
Want to keep up with breaking news? Subscribe to our email newsletter.