The next article may be a continuation of comment on a subject written about two days before. It becomes a bit more familiar. He half recognizes the argument. He half accepts it now as his own, has “thought of that before,” so he approves. Reiteration has influenced him; a third presentation clinches him. Reiteration is a most subtle means of influencing public opinion. The man who reads the same thought a few times in different diction comes to accept it as his own thought. It is an unconscious influence.
It is little consolation to the editor that his articles are hastily read; so much the more reason, on the contrary, for making them striking and for making their meaning the more easily understood.
People like to see their own beliefs reflected in their newspaper; regard the editorial utterance as a confirmation of it; welcome a new argument in its favor; like to read it to a neighbor; come to look on the sheet as a personal champion.
All newspapers have great influence one way or another. They reach the people to an extent not reached by any other influence, for everybody of any account reads them. Consider for a moment. Rarely does a clergyman find himself addressing a congregation of more than five hundred persons; rarely, indeed, does the public lecturer speak to a thousand persons; and seldom, in the heat of a campaign, does the political orator find five thousand persons within the reach of his voice. Yet a little editorial paragraph, placed conspicuously on the editorial page of the New York _Times_, will be read by more than six hundred thousand persons. A million and a half newspapers are printed in New York city every morning, and nearly two millions every afternoon, not counting those printed in other languages than the English language of which there are nearly a million more. About the same proportion of newspapers to population prevails throughout the chief cities of the United States.
“I never read the editorials” we all have heard many a newspaper reader say. “I simply scan the editorials,” we hear others remark. Almost all editorial articles are hastily read, and so is the entire sheet for that matter. You have only to watch the process to be convinced. The busy man opens his newspaper to the editorial page as he would open a book, holds it open and high, one page grasped by the left hand and the other by the right. He scans the leading article, reads the first two or three sentences and if attention is not instantly attracted flashes his eye down to the beginning of the next paragraph, and so on. The greater the number of paragraphs in the article the more quick attention it gets. The sensational sheet editors know this and they make many paragraphs in every article.