Evening Republican, Volume 59, Number 68, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 March 1917 — Newspaper Most Potent of the Three Instruments That Mold Public Opinion [ARTICLE]

Newspaper Most Potent of the Three Instruments That Mold Public Opinion

By REV. FRANK L. LOVELAND

of Indianapolis, Ind.

The founders of our republic.painfully learned and plainly saw that only by a free press and free speech could w'e have a free republic. •J If public opinion be wielded in a wrong direction through the newspapers, the church cannot makeAgints as_ lasi asT vice and ignorance can. make sinners. So we__no..longer-look---on The bimk, thebusiness house, as private institutions, but as builders of the national ideals, makers There are three instruments, that mold public’opinion—the church,the school and the newspaper, amMhe-greatest of these is the newspaper.. The church reaches its handful of people twice a~week; the school reaches its larger group five times a week, but the newspaper reaches its thousands daily. Lesp than one-fourth of the people go to church, less than one-fourth graduate from the common schools, and only'2 per cent graduate from college; but thousands find their A-hurch. their college and their culture through the newspapers, for 99 pereent- read the newspapers, periodicals and magazines, and more >so here than any other country on earth,. / - ' ■*■■■■ ... . : r . In the days'-when I boy the newspaper was the expression of the editorial opinion of one man, as instance Horace Greeley and James Gordon Bennett.. But now the editor is a supervisor, and the skilled reporter is read more than the writer of editorials. There are today 30,00(1 newspapers in this'country,. 3,000 of them dailies. There are 10,000,000,000 copied in circulation annually, or more than one hundred, papers for every man, woman and child in Americ*.