PUBLIC OPINION by WALTER LIPPMANN TO FAYE LIPPMANN ...

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1916 (?) W. D. Scott, _The Psychology of Advertising_, pp. 226-248. See also Henry Foster Adams, _Advertising and its Mental Laws_, Ch. IV. 1920 _Newspaper Reading Habits of College Students_, by Prof. George Burton Hotchkiss and Richard B. Franken, published by the Association of National Advertisers, Inc., 15 East 26th Street, New York City.] A questionnaire was sent by Hotchkiss and Franken to 1761 men and women college students in New York City, and answers came from all but a few. Scott used a questionnaire on four thousand prominent business and professional men in Chicago and received replies from twenty-three hundred. Between seventy and seventy-five percent of all those who replied to either inquiry thought they spent a quarter of an hour a day reading newspapers. Only four percent of the Chicago group guessed at less than this and twenty-five percent guessed at more. Among the New Yorkers a little over eight percent figured their newspaper reading at less than fifteen minutes, and seventeen and a half at more. Very few people have an accurate idea of fifteen minutes, so the figures are not to be taken literally. Moreover, business men, professional people, and college students are most of them liable to a curious little bias against appearing to spend too much time over the newspapers, and perhaps also to a faint suspicion of a desire to be known as rapid readers. All that the figures can justly be taken to mean is that over three quarters of those in the selected groups rate rather low the attention they give to printed news of the outer world. These time estimates are fairly well confirmed by a test which is less subjective. Scott asked his Chicagoans how many papers they read each day, and was told that 14 percent read but one paper 46 " " two papers 21 " " three papers 10 " " four papers 3 " " five papers 2 " " six papers 3 " " all the papers (eight at the time of this inquiry). The two- and three-paper readers are sixty-seven percent, which comes fairly close to the seventy-one percent in Scott's group who rate themselves at fifteen minutes a day. The omnivorous readers of from four to eight papers coincide roughly with the twenty-five percent who
ated themselves at more than fifteen minutes. 2 It is still more difficult to guess how the time is distributed. The college students were asked to name "the five features which interest you most." Just under twenty percent voted for "general news," just under fifteen for editorials, just under twelve for "politics," a little over eight for finance, not two years after the armistice a little over six for foreign news, three and a half for local, nearly three for business, and a quarter of one percent for news about "labor." A scattering said they were most interested in sports, special articles, the theatre, advertisements, cartoons, book reviews, "accuracy," music, "ethical tone," society, brevity, art, stories, shipping, school news, "current news," print. Disregarding these, about sixty-seven and a half percent picked as the most interesting features news and opinion that dealt with public affairs. This was a mixed college group. The girls professed greater interest than the boys in general news, foreign news, local news, politics, editorials, the theatre, music, art, stories, cartoons, advertisements, and "ethical tone." The boys on the other hand were more absorbed in finance, sports, business page, "accuracy" and "brevity." These discriminations correspond a little too closely with the ideals of what is cultured and moral, manly and decisive, not to make one suspect the utter objectivity of the replies. Yet they agree fairly well with the replies of Scott's Chicago business and professional men. They were asked, not what features interested them most, but why they preferred one newspaper to another. Nearly seventy-one percent based their conscious preference on local news (17.8%), or political (15.8%) or financial (11.3%), or foreign (9.5%), or general (7.2%), or editorials (9%). The other thirty percent decided on grounds not connected with public affairs. They ranged from not quite seven who decided for ethical tone, down to one twentieth of one percent who cared most about humor. How do these preferences correspond with the space given by newspapers to various subjects? Unfortunately there are no data collected on this point for the newspapers read by the Chicago and New York groups at the time the questionnaires were made. But there is an interesting analysis made over twenty years ago by Wilcox. He studied one hundred and ten newspapers in fourteen large cities, and classified the subject matter of over nine thousand columns. Averaged for the whole country the various newspaper matter was found to fill:
Page 1 and 2: TO FAYE LIPPMANN Wading River, Long
Page 3 and 4: CHAPTER I - INTRODUCTION THE WORLD
Page 5 and 6: Far less should he go to the Antipo
Page 7 and 8: darkened brains toward him as towar
Page 9 and 10: Pennsylvania mining town, plunged s
Page 11 and 12: of American marines on the Dalmatia
Page 13 and 14: describe. Yet these fictions determ
Page 15 and 16: [Footnote: _Cf_. Wallas, _Our Socia
Page 17 and 18: p. 151.] What for a sociologist is
Page 19 and 20: task of a political science that ha
Page 21 and 22: eal one was. But a few days later a
Page 23 and 24: already at the front. There will re
Page 25 and 26: treaties, or when Mr. Hughes invest
Page 27 and 28: that a change in the art of shipbui
Page 29 and 30: iological clan. Membership is intim
Page 31: It is no part of our inquiry to att
Page 35 and 36: Chicago business men in 1916 for pr
Page 37 and 38: It is doubtful whether a supreme ma
Page 39 and 40: "A native of an unfriendly country.
Page 41 and 42: 9% increase of clang in the second
Page 43 and 44: difference between Frege and Peano,
Page 45 and 46: otherwise vague and wavering." But
Page 47 and 48: _Cf._ also his comment on _Dante's
Page 49 and 50: painter, for example, or a cultivat
Page 51 and 52: world, however, during the last few
Page 53 and 54: have arranged their lives as if the
Page 55 and 56: happens. If the man is no longer pl
Page 57 and 58: an ecclesiastical bearing and "conf
Page 59 and 60: once more the purely technical conc
Page 61 and 62: overcrowding; they pointed with pri
Page 63 and 64: will be known by the governors. In
Page 65 and 66: uildings which rose, and the bank a
Page 67 and 68: misjudged the facts, imagined the a
Page 69 and 70: professing the same stock of religi
Page 71 and 72: of thing is, I believe, less preval
Page 73 and 74: that it seems less dangerous to fig
Page 75 and 76: tells me it is three miles and thin
Page 77 and 78: seasons. If born in winter, we shou
Page 79 and 80: the main highway for ninety-nine ye
Page 81 and 82: and assistance "until such time as
Page 83 and 84:
the most troublesome employee or th
Page 85 and 86:
time, and sampling. We must note no
Page 87 and 88:
Morgan or the King become ideas and
Page 89 and 90:
to be easily popular where the mark
Page 91 and 92:
they find, or pay the price of frus
Page 93 and 94:
lives that seem at first glance dul
Page 95 and 96:
sharply separated. He would say tha
Page 97 and 98:
are never exercised again in the wh
Page 99 and 100:
Thus it may be true enough, as Jame
Page 101 and 102:
described in economic materialism w
Page 103 and 104:
_Op. cit._, Vol. II, p. 390.] "ever
Page 105 and 106:
what proportion, by the motives of
Page 107 and 108:
that wizardry which popular leaders
Page 109 and 110:
stability and prosperity. We should
Page 111 and 112:
People differ widely in their susce
Page 113 and 114:
pervaded the whole of western Europ
Page 115 and 116:
All these considerations entered in
Page 117 and 118:
every corner of the earth. No docum
Page 119 and 120:
end of symbols which once provoked
Page 121 and 122:
likely as not, too busy to be consu
Page 123 and 124:
services in a feudal system, to job
Page 125 and 126:
same reaction takes place in many p
Page 127 and 128:
CHAPTER XV LEADERS AND THE RANK AND
Page 129 and 130:
most practiced, and reaches to high
Page 131 and 132:
impinge upon the private habits of
Page 133 and 134:
e indicated by them. Where the inci
Page 135 and 136:
persuasion has become a self-consci
Page 137 and 138:
infallible origin for the new socia
Page 139 and 140:
dignity of all men, were immediatel
Page 141 and 142:
2 To circumvent this conclusion one
Page 143 and 144:
They looked about them. In the city
Page 145 and 146:
consent or community beyond the fro
Page 147 and 148:
without the labor of earning new tr
Page 149 and 150:
They could not consider in their ca
Page 151 and 152:
Jefferson who first taught the Amer
Page 153 and 154:
sense of common interest, have torn
Page 155 and 156:
document has to thank the enterpris
Page 157 and 158:
impose law and order on the localit
Page 159 and 160:
141.] Everyone who shares that hope
Page 161 and 162:
constitute the internal affairs of
Page 163 and 164:
about other people's views of that
Page 165 and 166:
gather together its strength, and f
Page 167 and 168:
absorbed by one interest: self-gove
Page 169 and 170:
was to come from on which the will
Page 171 and 172:
difficult and often dangerous servi
Page 173 and 174:
undertakes to discuss the press. Mr
Page 175 and 176:
a number of obscure elements that i
Page 177 and 178:
imaginary people, with whose gorgeo
Page 179 and 180:
set of well founded hopes, which ar
Page 181 and 182:
in a crudely overt act. Smith's fri
Page 183 and 184:
tradition of privacy, they may not
Page 185 and 186:
worker in the Pittsburgh district,
Page 187 and 188:
phase of a situation. It comes from
Page 189 and 190:
headline of the second is "Mrs. Sti
Page 191 and 192:
eport that he is dead from a source
Page 193 and 194:
encouraged a democracy, still bound
Page 195 and 196:
system of truth than that which ari
Page 197 and 198:
conclusions of a sort that could no
Page 199 and 200:
shaking the foundations of society.
Page 201 and 202:
2 It is no accident that the best d
Page 203 and 204:
in order to effect a truly logical
Page 205 and 206:
lumber, hire carpenters, or constru
Page 207 and 208:
the national university and teacher
Page 209 and 210:
isolated community of people whose
Page 211 and 212:
some study of this material by news
Page 213 and 214:
the intelligence men for wage table
Page 215 and 216:
fate, but with the fate of the oute
Page 217 and 218:
When Plato came to the point where
Page 219 and 220:
slower than the rate at which actio
Page 221:
quality which a human being has exh
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PUBLIC OPINION by WALTER LIPPMANN TO FAYE LIPPMANN ...

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