TABLING THE TABLOIDS

The optimistic outlook for journalism which Walter Lippman pictures in the current Yale Review will be balm to those hurt minds which have seen the decline of civilization in the scare head lines, scandal stories, and lurid illustrations of the tabloids. Mr. Lippman fore-tells a general revulsion against the romantic tricks of the yellow press which will lead to a new "objective" journalism. Fresh reporting methods rather than sensational stories will be the means of preventing papers from acquiring the soporific faculty of government reports.

Any such improvement in the quality of journalism must depend on a change in the public's mode of thought. As long as sensationalism sells papers, it will not disappear. Even if the dailies admit that news is what the papers play up, some will continue to seek readers by playing up the most extravagant stories available. The "popular commercial press" is bound to remain commercial.

With a constantly renewed supply of immature readers added to the mass of mildly educated people in the country, there is every prospect for the continued vigor of tabloids and semi-tabloids. Nevertheless the optimism of such an outstanding journalist as Mr. Lippman is cheering. Post-war feverishness has found expression largely in the metro-politan dailies, and a revival of sanity and restraint in the press would be a hopeful sign for American civilization. It will be interesting to observe the ratio between the Times and the Graphic in the subway cars.