NEWSPAPER WORTH | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 6, 1879

NEWSPAPER WORTH.

To estimate the worth of a man by his bodily size would be looked upon as an absurdity. Ten acres of land with a rich soil are worth more for agricultural purposes than a hundred composed of marshes or barren sands. A sermon of forty-five minutes may have more matter and argument than another which occupies an hour and a half or more in delivery. And this is equally true of newspapers; the size of the sheet is no indication of the worth of the paper. Three things are always to be taken into account in determining the value of a newspaper: 1. A sheet by the use of a great deal of small type may contain much more than one that is a great deal larger; 2. The amount of fresh news and living thoughts compressed into the columns is a still stronger test of the real value of a journal; and 3. The moral and religious force carried by the journal is the crowning evidence of superiority or inferiority. If any paper can show that it has more brains, that it employs them more effectively, and that it carries more moral force than any of its contemporaries, then its pre-eminence over them will be admitted; but not till then. Superiority in journalism depends on something more than a few inches of white paper dotted with ink.—Presbyterian Banner.