The Psychology of Newspapers: Five Tentative Laws.

The article presents information on the psychology of newspapers along with an exhaustive study of the treatment, which Boston newspapers accorded to revision of the Neutrality Act that gripped the attention of the U.S. in the fall of 1939. This investigation is based upon a complete sample of weekday and Sunday editions of English-language newspapers published in Boston, Massachusetts. The extent to which this simplification of the story took place in the Boston papers was estimated as carefully as possible. The evidence indicates that editors and newswriters attempt to give as comprehensive and adequate a representation of events as they dare; while the readers insist upon selecting, sharpening, and pointing the issue still further to suit their desire for simplification and definiteness. Newspapers must dramatize and select in order to produce in their readers the emotional integration required for a good fight. A newspaper's pattern of influence is built around its editorial policy. Most papers do to a certain extent select news items favoring the editorial policy of the paper, and reject those that are opposed. In summary, the evidence reported in this study is interpreted as supporting five generalizations which are offered here as tentative laws in the new field of the psychology of newspapers: (1) issues are skeletonized; (2) any given newspaper's field of influence is well-patterned; (3) readers are more emotional than editors; (4)public interest as reflected in newspapers is variable in time; (5) public interest rapidly fatigues and presses for an early closure.