Hardly less important is the fact that in every city, town, and village in the country, the Associated Press has its agent--the local editor or the telegraph operator, or some one else--who is commissioned to report to it every news happening that may arise within his bailiwick. Often these reports are interesting; sometimes they are of importance, and in either case the newspaper not allied with a press association must miss them.
At the time of which I am writing, the Associated Press was the only organization in the country that could render such service, and every newspaper venture lacking its franchise was foredoomed to failure.
But a newspaper revolution was impending and presently it broke upon us.
In 1883 Mr. Joseph Pulitzer bought the _World_ and instituted a totally new system of newspaper conduct.
His advent into New York journalism was called an "irruption," and it was resented not only by the other newspapers, but even more by a large proportion of the conservative public.
In its fundamental principle, Mr. Pulitzer's revolutionary method was based upon an idea identical with that suggested by Mr. John Bigelow when he told me there were too many newspapers for the educated class. Mr. Pulitzer undertook to make a newspaper, not for the educated class, but for all sorts and conditions of men. He did not intend to overlook the educated class, but he saw clearly how small a part of the community it was, and he refused to make his appeal to it exclusively or even chiefly.
The results were instantaneous and startling. The _World_, which had never been able to achieve a paying circulation or a paying constituency of advertisers, suddenly began selling in phenomenal numbers, while its advertising business became what Mr. Pulitzer once called a "bewildering chaos of success, yielding a revenue that the business office was imperfectly equipped to handle."
It is an interesting fact, that the _World's_ gain in circulation was not made at the expense of any other newspaper. The books of account show clearly that while the _World_ was gaining circulation by scores and hundreds of thousands, no other morning newspaper was losing. The simple fact was that by appealing to a larger class, the _World_ had created a great company of newspaper readers who had not before been newspaper readers at all. Reluctantly, and only by degrees, the other morning newspapers adopted the _World's_ methods, and won to themselves a larger constituency than they had ever enjoyed before.