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Newspapers

scheduled publication containing news of events, articles, features, editorials, and advertising
(Redirected from The Wall Street Journal)

Newspapers are periodical publications containing news regarding current events, informative articles, diverse features, editorials, comics, and advertising.

Francis Luis Mora: Subway riders in NYC (1914)
On countless occasions during my spell as an assistant in Naples I heard people say about some newspaper or other: è pagato, it’s paid for, it lies for its client, and then on the following day these very same people who had cried pagato were absolutely convinced by some obviously bogus piece of news in the same paper. Because it was printed in such bold type, and because the other people believed it. ~ Victor Klemperer
If one were searching for the best means to efface and kill in a whole nation the discipline of self-respect, the feeling for what is elevated, he could do no better than take the American newspapers. ~ Matthew Arnold
I am astonished to observe how willing men are to lumber their minds with such rubbish,—to permit idle rumors and incidents of the most insignificant kind to intrude on ground which should be sacred to thought. ~ Henry David Thoreau
For a good ten minutes I read a newspaper. I allowed the spirit of an irresponsible man who chews and munches another’s words in his mouth, and gives them out again undigested, to enter into me through my eyes. ~ Herman Hesse

Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
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A

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  • Live your life, and bear fruits.- DIKIRR.
    • Jean Anouilh, as cited in: Stuart Allan (2010) News Culture. p. 1.
  • If one were searching for the best means to efface and kill in a whole nation the discipline of self-respect, the feeling for what is elevated, he could do no better than take the American newspapers.
  • A thousand newspapers vulgarise knowledge, debase aesthetical appreciation, democratise success and make impossible all that was once unusual and noble. The man of letters has become a panderer to the intellectual appetites of a mob or stands aloof in the narrowness of a coterie. There is plenty of brilliance everywhere, but one searches in vain for a firm foundation, the power or the solidity of knowledge. The select seek paradox in order to distinguish themselves from the herd; a perpetual reiteration of some startling novelty can alone please the crowd.
    • Sri Aurobindo, March 26, 1910, quoted from Sri Aurobindo, ., Nahar, S., Aurobindo, ., & Institut de recherches évolutives (Paris). India's rebirth: A selection from Sri Aurobindo's writing, talks and speeches. Paris: Institut de Recherches Evolutives. 3rd Edition (2000). [1]

B

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  • I read the newspapers avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.
  • Nietzsche said the newspaper had replaced the prayer in the life of the modern bourgeois, meaning that the busy, the cheap, the ephemeral, had usurped all that remained of the eternal in his daily life.
    • Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: 1988), p. 59.
  • Newspapers are being read all around. The point is not, of course, to glean new information, but rather to coax the mind out of its sleep-induced introspective temper.
  • To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one’s ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humanity.

C

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E

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  • The content of newspapers … is not the product of chance. … It is the result of precise psychological … techniques. These techniques have as their goal the bringing to the individual of that which is indispensable for his satisfaction in the conditions in which the machine has placed him … Journalistic content is a technical complex expressly intended to adapt man to the machine.

H

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  • They wanted a publication impervious alike to truth and candour; that, hood-winked itself, should lead public opinion blindfold; that should stick at nothing to serve the turn of a party; that should be the exclusive organ of prejudice, the sordid tool of power; that should go the whole length of want of principle in palliating every dishonest measure, of want of decency in defaming every honest man; that should prejudge every question, traduce every opponent; that should give no quarter to fair inquiry or liberal sentiment; that should be "ugly all over with hypocrisy", and present one foul blotch of servility, intolerance, falsehood, spite, and ill-manners. The Quarterly Review was accordingly set up.
  • It is remarkable, all that men can swallow. For a good ten minutes I read a newspaper. I allowed the spirit of an irresponsible man who chews and munches another’s words in his mouth, and gives them out again undigested, to enter into me through my eyes.
    • Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf, B. Creighton, trans., (New York: 1990), p. 34.
  • Editor: a person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.
  • Newspapers are daily read by millions at their breakfast tables, in the railway cars, at the counting-room, and thrown aside as soon as read, without apparent thought of the medium through which the affairs of the world, the events of the day, the gossip of the hour are conveyed to their minds, forming their opinions, leading them to fame and fortune, saving them from disaster, and governing their actions. But as the polyp of the sea industriously and unceasingly works in building up the coral reefs and beds into islands and peninsulas, so does the journalist slowly and surely work on the minds of the world, producing heroes and statesmen, navigators and merchants, mechanics and philosophers.

J

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  • The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.
    • Thomas Jefferson, letter to Edward Carrington (January 16, 1787); in Julian P. Boyd, ed., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (1955), vol. 11, p. 49.
  • To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, "by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only." Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of its benefits, than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. [...] I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.
  • But let me beseech you, Sir, not to let this letter get into a newspaper. Tranquillity, at my age, is the supreme good of life. I think it a duty, and it is my earnest wish, to take no further part in public affairs. …. The abuse of confidence by publishing my letters has cost me more than all other pains.
    • Thomas Jefferson, letter to Charles Hammond, August 18, 1821.—The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Andrew A. Lipscomb, vol. 15, p. 331 (1903).
  • Many people there are in this kingdom who never see a Gazette to the day of their deaths, and very mischievous would be the consequences if they were bound by a notice inserted in it.
    • Lord Kenyon, Graham v. Hope (1794), 1 Peake, N. P. Ca. 155; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 99.

K

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  • On countless occasions during my spell as an assistant in Naples I heard people say about some newspaper or other: è pagato, it’s paid for, it lies for its client, and then on the following day these very same people who had cried pagato were absolutely convinced by some obviously bogus piece of news in the same paper. Because it was printed in such bold type, and because the other people believed it. … I also know that a part of every intellectual’s soul belongs to the people, that all my awareness of being lied to, and my critical attentiveness, are of no avail when it comes to it: at some point the printed lie will get the better of me when it attacks from all sides and is queried by fewer and fewer around me and finally by no one at all.

L

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  • Newspapers—and nearly every western town had at least one—are valuable sources. Often the reporting was good, and just as often the writing was opinionated, a fact one should easily detect, for people of the time—and that included newspaper reporters—made no secret of their opinions. Many a western editor set his type with a six-shooter on the table beside him, ready to back up his opinions, if need be.
  • Okno na świat można zasłonić gazetą.
    • The window on the world can be covered by a newspaper.
    • Stanisław Jerzy Lec, Myśli nieuczesane, as translated in James Geary, The World in a Phrase (2011), p. 190.
  • For the newspaper is in all literalness the bible of democracy, the book out of which a people determines its conduct. It is the only serious book most people read. It is the only book they read every day.
  • I generalized rashly: That is what kills political writing, this absurd pretence that you are delivering a great utterance. You never do. You are just a puzzled man making notes about what you think. You are not building the Pantheon, then why act like a graven image? You are drawing sketches in the sand which the sea will wash away.
    • Walter Lippmann, "Books and Things," The New Republic (August 7, 1915), p. 24.

M

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  • If we are to express the love in our own hearts, we must also understand what love meant to Socrates and Saint Francis, to Dante and Shakespeare, to Emily Dickinson and Christina Rossetti, to the explorer Shackleton and to the intrepid physicians who deliberately exposed themselves to yellow fever. These historic manifestations of love are not recorded in the day's newspaper or the current radio program: they are hidden to people who possess only fashionable minds.
  • On one side is the gigantic printing press, a miracle of fine articulation, which turns out the tabloid newspaper: on the other side are the contents of the tabloid itself, symbolically recording the most crude and elementary states of emotion.
    • Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (1934), Chapter 6, § 9, p. 301.

N

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  • Sie erbrechen ihre Galle und nennen es Zeitung.

P

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  • I know that my retirement will make no difference in its cardinal principles, that it will always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.

R

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S

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Those fools, who will think they are repeating the opinion of a newspaper of their own camp, will be repeating our opinion or any opinion that seems desirable for us.
  • When a pulse quickens these hands will lead opinion in the direction of our aims, for an excited patient loses all power of judgment and easily yields to suggestion. Those fools, who will think they are repeating the opinion of a newspaper of their own camp, will be repeating our opinion or any opinion that seems desirable for us. In the vain belief that they are following the organ of their party they will in fact follow the flag which we hang out for them.

T

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  • Not without a slight shudder at the danger, I often perceive how near I had come to admitting into my mind the details of some trivial affair,—the news of the street; and I am astonished to observe how willing men are to lumber their minds with such rubbish,—to permit idle rumors and incidents of the most insignificant kind to intrude on ground which should be sacred to thought. Shall the mind be a public arena, where the affairs of the street and the gossip of the tea-table chiefly are discussed? Or shall it be a quarter of heaven itself,—an hypæthral temple, consecrated to the service of the gods? I find it so difficult to dispose of the few facts which to me are significant, that I hesitate to burden my attention with those which are insignificant, which only a divine mind could illustrate. Such is, for the most part, the news in newspapers and conversation. It is important to preserve the mind’s chastity in this respect. Think of admitting the details of a single case of the criminal court into our thoughts, to stalk profanely through their very sanctum sanctorum for an hour, ay, for many hours! to make a very bar-room of the mind’s inmost apartment, as if for so long the dust of the street had occupied us,—the very street itself, with all its travel, its bustle, and filth, had passed through our thoughts’ shrine! Would it not be an intellectual and moral suicide?
  • So I became a newspaperman. I hated to do it but I couldn't find honest employment.
    • Attributed to Mark Twain. Reported as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989). Never found by Twain authorities or the Twain Papers staff.

W

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  • Modern man … when he looks at his daily newspaper … sees the events of the day refracted through a medium which colors them as effectively as the cosmology of the medieval scientist determined his view of the starry heavens. The newspaper is a man-made cosmos of the world of events around us at the time. For the average reader it is a construct with a set of significances which he no more thinks of examining than did his pious forbear of the thirteenth century—whom he pities for sitting in medieval darkness—think of questioning the cosmology. This modern man, too, lives under a dome, whose theoretical aspect has been made to harmonize with a materialistic conception of the world. And he employs its conjunctions and oppositions to explain the occurrences of his time with all the confidence of the now supplanted discipline of astrology.
  • In short, if newspapers were written by people whose sole object in writing was to tell the truth about politics and the truth about art we should not believe in war, and we should believe in art.
  • Newspapers ... give us the bald, sordid, disgusting facts of life. They chronicle, with degrading avidity, the sins of the second-rate, and with the conscientiousness of the illiterate give us accurate and prosaic details of the doings of people of absolutely no interest whatsoever.
    • Oscar Wilde, Gilbert in The Critic as Artist, pt. 2 (1891).

X

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  • If you aren't careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.
    • Malcolm X, Speech at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem (13 December 1964), in Malcolm X Speaks (1965), p. 93

See also

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