< Page:The Brass Check (Sinclair 1919).djvu
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CHAPTER XLIV

THE ADVERTISING BOYCOTT


If the newspaper fails to protect its big advertisers, the big advertisers will get busy and protect themselves. This happens every now and then, and every newspaper editor has seen it happen. Sometimes an editor gets sick of the game and quits, and then we have a story. For example, William L. Chenery, who was editor of the "Rocky Mountain News" during the Colorado coal-strike, tells me that "the business men of Denver attempted both an advertising and a social boycott in order to prevent the publication of strike news. . . . I was told that the owner of the paper would not be admitted to the Denver Country Club so long as our editorials seemed to support the cause of the strikers."

Or take the case of Boston. George French, managing editor of a Boston paper, told how his paper lost four hundred dollars on account of one item which the "interests" had forbidden. Says Mr. French, "That led to a little personal conversation, and to my retiring from the paper." He goes on to state:


You cannot get anything into the newspapers that in any way rubs up against the business policy of the banks and department stores, or of the public service corporations. Those three great departments of business are welded together with bands ever so much stronger than steel, and you cannot make any impression on them. News of department stores that is discreditable, or in any way attracts unfavorable attention, is all squelched, all kept out of the papers.


I have told how Otis of Los Angeles ran the "Times" as a Republican paper and an "open-shop" paper, and at the same time ran secretly the "Herald," a Democratic paper and a "closed-shop" paper. Here is a glimpse of the "Herald" office, as narrated by Frank E. Wolfe, former managing editor of the paper.


The Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association took up the proposition of an aviation meet at Domingues Field. This was managed by the walking delegate of the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association. The manager gave out the concessions. I went to Domingues Field

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