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Newspaper Advertising 337
up all night hunting for clues and keeps reporters busy, the false story of a jewel robbery — these are a few of the luscious but sour activities which have been misappropriately called "clever publicity." These were inherited from the days when the advance circus man came to town, and faked and fooled and hoaxed as many as he could because he knew he would be gone when the truth came out. The theatre is now a permanent institution, often set solidly in granite and steel, representing an investment of over a million dollars, an institution which is to last in a community as long as the college, the court house, the newspaper building, the department store, the library. If the motion-picture theatre were a tent show, that would pass on at the end of the week; if it were a fly-by-night carnival, then hoax publicity might have some justification. As it is, such tactics are detrimental.
The motion-picture "hoax publicity man" is a detriment to the locality, rather than an asset. When he comes into a community to "help" the local manager, the "help" usually consists in collecting tear sheets from the newspaper to be freighted to the home office as "eye wash" for the executive who signs his three-figure salary check. The more he hoaxes, and the more he fakes, the harder it will be for the local manager to straighten out the damage after he has gone.
Hoax publicity is splendid exploitation — for the hoax publicity expert. It is bad for the industry.
The real showman does not fool the newspaper men. He gets no young reporter into trouble with fakes and falsehood. He knows newspaper men. He knows that a newspaper, like any other institution, cannot fool its customers. He knows the newspaper man is not **a sucker." He knows that the newspaper man will believe what seems to be the truth, until he has found that the teller uses language for something else than it was intended.
Ethics.
The ethics of the newspaper business is no different from the ethics of the theatre business or the ethics of any business. The hoax publicity expert usually justifies his activity with some such statement as: "Showmen are born and not made,"