“Madame Caillaux was on trial in Paris for killing Gaston Calmette. “In Long Island a woman was mysteriously shot in a doctor’s office while on a night visit. “Forty-five stage coaches were held up in Yellowstone Park by two masked bandits who took all the cash of 165 tourists. “Romantic crime, mystery crime, adventurous crime, a public eagerly interested—and they suddenly dropped from the newspapers. The public forgot them. As news, these events became as if they had never happened. Something else had happened. “The day of Madame Caillaux’s acquittal Austria declared war on Serbia. Russia mobilized fourteen army corps on the German border and the price of wheat in this country soared. “All the news that a newspaper prints is affected by what else happened that day. If an earthquake occurs the day you announce your daughter’s engagement her picture may be left out of the newspaper. “The man who made a golf hole in one the day of the Dempsey-Carpentiér fight was out of luck so far as an item on the sporting page was concerned. “When real news breaks, semi-news must go. When real news is scarce, semi-news returns to the front page. A very great man picked out Sunday night to dine at a Bowery mission. Monday is usually a dull day for news, although some big events, notably the sinking of the *Titanic*, came over the wires Sunday night. “All papers feature big news. When there is no big news, real editing is needed to select the real news from the semi-news. “What you read on dull news days is what fixes your opinions of your country and of your compatriots. It is from the non-sensational news that you see the world and assess, rightly or wrongly, the true value of persons and events. “The relative importance your newspaper gives to an occurrence affects your thought, your character, and your children’s thought and character. For few daily habits are as firmly established as the habit of reading the newspaper.”
Table of Contents
CHAPTER VI THE GROUP AND HERD ARE THE BASIC MECHANISMS OF PUBLIC CHANGE
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