"Playing Down" the News.
By Editor
The editor of a San Francisco paper, in speaking of strikes and riots that are occurring in the East, says "journalists on this side of the continent 'play down' the news because occurrences of that kind are so common that they seem not unusual." In making this statement the San Francisco editor tells the truth in regard to the custom of this coast; and the custom here is not materially different from the rest of the country. You will see an obscure paragraph in an inconspicuous place now and then in regard to the strikes that are in progress in several of the Eastern cities. So little is being made of some of those occurrences that it is only by chance if you see anything in the papers about them. These disturbances have become so commonly numerous that the papers do not have space in which to give them all a "write-up." Only some great outbreak that amounts to a local civil war can get the attention of the populace thru the press. This fact should open the eyes of those who think that "conditions are no worse than they always were, the only difference being that we have so much better facilities for gathering and spreading the news that we hear of more of it." When disturbances have reached the point that the editors of the big papers admit that they can not give space to it all, it is time for people to think what it means. There is a deep meaning to it. Do you know what it is?