You overheard our discussion," said Banneker bluntly.
Marrineal assented. "It did not seem
cheap bay packer jerseys private. Katie's is a sort of free forum. That is why I come. I like to listen. Besides, it touched me pretty closely at one or two points."
The two others turned toward him, waiting. He nodded, and took upon himself an air of well-pondered frankness. "I expect to take a more active part in journalism from now on."
Edmonds followed up the significant phrase. "_More_ active? You have newspaper interests?"
"Practically speaking, I own The Patriot. What do you gentlemen think of it?"
"Who reads The Patriot?" inquired Banneker. He was unprepared for the swift and surprised flash from Marrineal's fine eyes, as if some profoundly analytical or revealing suggestion had been made.
"Forty thousand men, women, and
cheap bills jerseyschildren. Not half enough, of course."
"Not a tenth enough, I would say, if I owned the paper. Nor are they the right kind of readers."
"How would you define them, then?" asked Marrineal, still in that smooth voice.
"Small clerks. Race-track followers. People living in that class of tenements which call themselves flats. The more intelligent servants. Totally unimportant people."
"Therefore a totally unimportant paper?"
"A paper can be important only through what it makes people believe and think. What possible difference can it make what The Patriot's readers think?"
"If there were enough of them?" suggested Marrineal.
"No. Besides, you'll never get enough of them, in the way you're running the paper now."
"Don't say 'you,' please," besought
cheap saints jerseys Marrineal. "I've been keeping my hands off. Watching."
"And now you're going to take hold?" queried Edmonds. "Personally?"
"As soon as I can find my formula--and the men to help me work it out," he added, after a pause so nicely emphasized that both his hearers had a simultaneous inkling of the reason for his being at their table.
"I've seen newspapers run on formula before," muttered Edmonds.
"Onto the rocks?"
"Invariably."
"That's because the formulas were amateur formulas, isn't it?"
The veteran of a quarter-century
Womens nike shoxturned a mildly quizzical smile upon the adventurer into risky waters. "Well?" he jerked out.
Marrineal's face was quite serious as he took up the obvious implication. "Where is the dividing line between professional and amateur in the newspaper business? You gentlemen will bear with me if I go into personal details a little. I suppose I've always had the newspaper idea. When I was a youngster of twenty, I tried myself out. Got a job as a reporter in St. Louis. It was just a callow escapade. And of course it couldn't last. I was an undisciplined sort of cub. They fired me; quite right, too. But I did learn a little. And at least it educated me
darren sharper jerseyin one thing; how to read newspapers." He laughed lightly. "Perhaps that is as nearly thorough an education as I've ever had in anything."
"It's rather an art, newspaper reading," observed Banneker.
"You've tried it, I gather. So have I, rather exhaustively in the last year. I've been reading every paper in New York every day and all through."
"That's a job for an able-minded man," commented Edmonds, looking at him with a new respect.
"It put eye-glasses on me. But if it dimmed my eyes, it enlightened my mind. The combined newspapers of New York do not cover the available field. They do not begin to cover it.... Did you say
mark ingram jersey something, Mr. Banneker?"
"Did I? I didn't mean to," said Banneker hastily. "I'm a good deal interested."
"I'm glad to hear that," returned Marrineal with gravity. "After I'd made my estimate of what the newspapers publish and fail to publish, I canvassed the circulation lists and news-stands and made another discovery. There is a large potential reading public not yet tied up to any newspaper. It's waiting for the right paper."
"The imputation of
drew brees jersey amateurishness is retracted, with apologies," announced Russell Edmonds."Accepted. Though there are amateur areas yet in my mind. I bought The Patriot."
"Does that represent one of the areas?"
"It represents nothing, thus far, except what it has always represented, a hand-to-mouth policy and a financial deficit. But what's wrong with it from your point of view?"
"Cheap and nasty," was the veteran's succinct criticism.
"Any more so than The Sphere? The
Nike Shox OZSphere's successful."
"Because it plays fair with the main facts. It may gloss 'em up with a touch of sensationalism, like the oil on a barkeep's hair. But it does go after the facts, and pretty generally it presents 'em as found. The Patriot is fakey; clumsy at it, too. Any man arrested with more than five dollars in his pocket is a millionaire clubman. If Bridget O'Flaherty jumps off
Nike Shox R4Brooklyn Bridge, she becomes a prominent society woman with picture (hers or somebody else's) in The Patriot. And the cheapest little chorus-girl tart, who blackmails a broker's clerk with a breach of promise, gets herself called a 'distinguished actress' and him a 'well-known financier.' Why steal the Police Gazette's rouge and lip-stick?"
"Because it's what the readers want.