Wednesday, October 8, 2014

The wisdom of Ben Hecht


“Trying to determine what is going on in the world
      by reading newspapers
           is like trying to tell the time
                by watching the second hand of a clock.”

Ben Hecht (1894-1964)
American author, screenwriter and dramatist

I worked for a big city newspaper for 41 years, so I’m willing to jump right in and agree with Mr. Hecht.

I’d love to know when he said it. I’d say he was prescient, except that would imply that at some point prior to 1964 what he said about newspapers wasn’t really true.

I doubt that.

American newspapers have been profitable for more than 200 years, and the little known truth is that they didn’t get profitable by selling news.

Newspapers have always made lots of money by selling ads. Historically, the subscription price didn’t even come close to paying for the cost of writing and printing the news. It’s not a stretch to say that American newspaper readers have never been willing to actually pay the economic cost of getting news.

In part, that’s because most of the time, most newspapers haven’t really printed the full scope of the news that was true and meaningful. For much of their history, many newspapers were transparent organs of political parties or political ideologies.

OK, I guess the obits are an exception….nearly always they’re true and it’s useful to know who died.







You're cooking the planet when you eat meat


Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2014

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