Newspaper types share the same dream

By Carl Heintze

I have this dream. (I know, that's a great line for a speech, but that's not what this is about.) I have this dream that one day a very rich angel is going to come to me and he (or she, because angels are, after all, of either sex) will say: "I have all this money I don't know what to do with. I've been admiring your work and I'd like to bankroll you when you start a newspaper.

"It can be any kind of a newspaper you want to start. You have a free hand to design and staff it and find people who want to read it. I'll be here if you need me, but I won't be looking over your shoulder."

And then I'll get to work. I'll plan my paper and I'll go looking for people to put it together. They'll be the best writers around--and the best editors.

My paper will take no advertising because I don't want advertisers to have any say in how the paper is written. It also won't have many pictures or photographs because most pictures in newspapers only duplicate what's on television anyway.

Its headlines will be modest, not used to fill half a page. It will cover the community in which it is circulated with proper reference to its diverse groups, covering them fairly and honestly.

It won't ignore crime, but it won't emphasize it. It will deal in matters literary, making note of local and national authors. It will have on its staff a couple of good critics who will be able to handle books, art, music and the other arts without prejudice.

When it's published, it won't look like other newspapers, all of which seem to be more and more like USA Today, designed to please everyone and no one.

It will have a couple of fascinating columnists, but not a plethora as now seems the case with most newspapers, intent on entertaining more than informing.

And while it won't ignore television, it won't be driven by it, by every TV event that comes along from March Madness to the Academy Awards.

It will deal with civic corruption, if necessary, but "investigative" reporters won't challenge every public official as if he or she were Richard Nixon.

It won't have a crossword puzzle, a horoscope, a bridge column, a "help" service or, for that matter, any special sections designed to generate advertising income. It will be a paper that the public will be eager to read every day for what it says and the way it's written: clear, clever and literate. And finally because it will be well managed, it won't cost much to buy, not as much as its competitors.

A pretty wild dream, eh?

Don't laugh, it could happen. In fact, it did.

After World War II Marshall Field, whose father had made a bundle in merchandising had the idea he'd like to start a newspaper. He ran into Ralph Ingersoll, who was a writer for Time magazine. He anointed Ingersoll with deep pockets, told him to find a staff and put out another New York newspaper.

In those days New York was awash in daily papers. There were almost a dozen of all kinds, but there were none like the one that Ingersoll put together.

It was called PM (because it came out in the afternoon), and it was a tabloid because its primary targets were New York subway riders. It had a great staff, most of them, like a lot of newsmen in those days, liberal in outlook, and it didn't take advertising--at least not when it first started.

It was a great dream and it cost Marshall Field a lot of money. He also spent a lot of money on Chicago newspapers, but that's another story.

What Mr. Field and Ralph Ingersoll discovered was that it's not possible to publish a newspaper without advertising. Too late, they agreed to accept it, but by that time PM had been done in by other factors, not the least of them the coming prevalence of television and its effect on afternoon newspapers. (Do you know of many afternoon newspapers these days? They were all killed off by TV. The San Francisco Examiner is an exception. It staggers on.)

And so the dream died. PM staffers either got other jobs or got out of the newspaper business. Indeed, PM was one the last major dailies to be started in the United States. Since then there have been a handful, chief among them the Washington Times, supposedly supported by the Unification Church.

So the dream languishes. But I still hold it. So do a few other newspaper types. Now and then they talk about it when they get together. Now if only that angel would appear... .

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Columnist Carl Heintze dreams of the perfect newspaper

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