ne, do you?"

"How else can I make a career of it?"

"Right you are, Boyee. But it takes something behind money to build up a
newspaper. And the 'Clarion' 'll take some building up."

"Well, I've got aspiration enough, if it comes to that," smiled Hal.

"Aspiration's a good starter: but it's perspiration that makes a
business go. Are you ready to take off your coat and work?"

"I certainly am. There's a lot for me to learn."

"There is. Everything. Want some advice from the Old Man?"

"I most surely do, Dad."

"Listen here, then. A newspaper is a business proposition. Never forget
that. All these hifalutin' notions about its being a palladium and the
voice of the people and the guardian of public interests are good enough
to talk about on the editorial page. Gives a paper a following, that
kind of guff does. But the duty of a newspaper is the duty of any other
business, to make money. There's the principle, the policy, the
politics, ethics, and religion of the newspaper in a nutshell. Now, how
are you going to make money with the 'Clarion'?"

"By making it a better paper than the others."

"Hm! Better. Yes: that's all right, so long as you mean the right thing
by 'better.' Better for the people that want to use it and can pay for
using it."

"The readers, you mean?"

"The advertisers. It's the advertisers that pay for the paper, not the
readers. You've got to have circulation, of course, to get the
advertising. But remember this, always: circulation is only a means to
an end. It never yet paid the cost of getting out a daily, and it never
will."

"I know enough of the business to understand that."

"Good! Look at the 'Clarion,' as it is. It's got a good circulation. And
that lets it out. It can't get the advertising. So it's losing money,
hand over fist."

"Why can't it?"

"It's yellow. It doesn't treat the business interests right."

"Sterne says they always look after their own advertisers."

"Oh, that! Naturally they have to. Any newspaper will do that. But they
print a lot of stuff about strikes and they're always playing up to the
laboring man and running articles about abuses and pretending to be the
friend of the poor and all that slush, and the better class of business
won't stand for it. Once a paper gets yellow, it has to keep on.
Otherwise it loses what circulation it's got. No advertiser wants to use
it then. The department stores do go into the 'Clarion' because it gets
to a public th