ECONOMIC JOURNALISM

The possibilities of effecting social reform through newspaper editorial policy have led many enthusiastic and idealistic journalists to urge the recognition of journalism as a profession of great social value. But Dean Ackerman of the Columbia School of Journalism in characterizing journalism as an occupation of great reformist potentialities presents an entirely new view of the problem. A principal service of a journal in an economic world, the Dean declares, is in facilitating the economic processes of that world. The newspaper performs this service by bringing together buyer and seller through the advertisements in its columns.

Advertising has in the past been regarded as a necessary evil of journalism. It is doubtless true that a great part of newspaper advertising is an economic waste, raising the price of the product without improving, the quality. But, as Dean Ackerman states, "journalism as a business is a public service unique in American economics," and with the problem exception of radio broadcasting, no business has the possibility of such direct and powerful control over the standards of modern advertising. Too often newspapers have though it possible to maintain a "courageous" editorial policy while at the same time maintaining an advertising and business policy that would stand little scrutiny; too few of the larger journals of the country have recognized the paradox of arguing vigorously in one column for industrial and political idealism and in the adjacent column ballyhooing an article by false advertisement or falsifying news to suit the caprice of an advertiser.

It is, of course, futile to hope that journalists will exorcise their financial advantage to the distant ideal of economic welfare and political honesty. It is not futile, however, to hope that the education of the reading public to the essential function of a newspaper in an economic world may make it financially more profitable to newspapers-owners to exert themselves to fill properly their important place in the economic organization.