Moving Picture World (Feb 1917)

820 THE MOVING PICTURE WORLD February 10, 1917 YOtir Home TOWn Paper® H a B a By Louis Reeves Harrison SLOWER than the local press may be the trolley that meets all trains; stupider may be old "Pro Bono Publico," who tells over again, in poorer language, and with inferior skill, what has been inimitably told before, but there is small doubt that the average country editor is not one because he has anything new or interesting to say. He is the hack of the hackneyed. The questions he rarely asks himself are, "What have I to say?" "Is it worth saying?" "How shall it be convincingly said?" "In what are my readers most interested ?" He goes ahead and writes what happens to suit him at the moment, sure of getting it into print, regardless of those he addresses. An enormous number of people are interested in baseball games played entirely by professionals. Columns are devoted to a record of the games, to records of the players, to gossip on the subject, to pictures, to continuous publicity which benefits financially only the club owners. The point made is that people are interested in what is almost purely a form of entertainment. Reasoning from the same premises, an enormous number of people are interested in moving pictures. Here is an entirely new form of literature, so popular that ten millions read it every day on the screen. What does the local paper say? What the local paper has to say about moving pictures does benefit some remote entertainer of the public in remote large cities. It is of direct and immediate interest to the people at home to the benefit of the local exhibitors. From the sum of material cheerfully furnished by publicity departments of live producers can be extracted a great deal of interest, even without objectionable bias. It does not all belong in the waste. On the publicity staff of producing concerns there are hundreds of very bright writers, many of them capable of original work done in a masterly way, some of them careful students of entertainment conditions. A live editor can easily select from the stuff sent to him those articles which show the experienced hand, which present a freshness and charm of their own, instead of the hackneyed phrases and stale old material of "Pro Bono Publico." With an abundance of that matter to draw from, with the Moving Picture World at his elbow, the live editor can evolve columns of comment and entertaining information for the enjoyment of his subscriber. There is a secret envy in the breasts of many an editor. He regards the picture show much as the laboring man once regarded machinery. He looks upon the screen as the enemy of his paper. Either that, or he fails utterly to grasp the significance of this wondrous new art. To him it may mean nothing. The primrose by the river's brim is but a primrose to him, and it is nothing more. When the laboring man took intelligently to machinery he found his wage increased. When the editor takes intelligently to pictures he will find his support increased. The great difficulty in the way of local comment on this or that specific feature shown is that notices of it must precede the actual exhibition, and the latter is rarely repeated in small towns. Under such circumstances, where it is impossible to obtain an advance view of what is being shown, where comment would be nothing more than advance publicity of the biased kind, not always in strict accord with the truth, there are two ways out, one comment on the general excellence of a program, the other such news and opinion as might easily be of live interest to the great mass of people daily attending the picture shows. A great deal depends on editorial judgment as to what is of real value and interest to the people who read a paper, but one could hardly call it an exercise of good judgment to omit every day from the columns of a local medium what deeply concerns so many people as the quality of pictures shown. If the editor has good taste in literature and other arts of expression, if he is intent on letting the people of his town know what broadens and betters them in the pictured story, if he is willing to better and broaden himself so that he may be fit to exercise judgment, it will do him a lot of good to attend the exhibitions himself. The same co-operation that exists between the local newspaper and manly sports, the drama, literature and music could be extended to the advantage of all concerned into the field covered by screen exhibitions. It .is an editor's privilege, and often his proud duty, to help formulate public opinion along right lines. Moving pictures are addressed to all classes. They are a source of pleasure to the rich as well as the pastime of the lowly, a humanizing influence, their general drift to bring the people of different sections and different shades of thought into a finer and more comprehensive understanding of one another. It is not meant that news columns should become dependent in any manner upon advertisements. The moment they are given over to biased publicity copy their purpose, and even that of the copy, becomes self-destructive. Nothing is so killing to confidence in a paper as unpaid-for publicity in the news columns. The opinion expressed by a journal is like that given by a critic, without value when influenced by mercantile considerations, a factor for good to all concerned only when it is intelligently presented, just, fearless and incorruptible. The editor of your home town paper can raise his own value along with that of his mouthpiece by recognition and right estimation of moving pictures as an art of expression. He can help his readers to grasp the idea, even though he may not believe that stagecraft is one thing and screencraf t another. It will come to him in time that these two, although on friendly terms, are not so intimately related as they seem to be at first glance. Meanwhile, discussion of the subject from all points of view would quicken interest in the exhibitions and in the paper at the same time. Moving pictures present a live topic everywhere they are shown — they are part of the life of a community. When the editor of your home town paper does not give part of his reading space to notice of what has become a part of the life of his community, he may be alive, but he is not progressive. In a bewilderingly short time he becomes an authority on international politics, yet he is as blind as a mole as to what is going on under his nose, if he fails to perceive the growing power of the picture exhibition. Good ones help to make the town worth living in : they arouse new interest in all that his paper stands for. He must keep step with them or get out of the procession. Instead of considering the picture show as a rival, the home town editor can easily make it his powerful ally. People have taken to the visualized story in preference to that set forth in print of their own accord. Producers were far behind the popular demand at the start, and they have never been able to catch up. Why not supplement this natural demand by whatever helps people to appreciate the meritorious? Why not enlarge and improve critical vision? There is a large and rich field lying fallow within easy reach of the Home Town Editor.