USA > New York > A short history of New York State > Part 66
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pictures. The News has now more than two million daily circulation- which is a commentary of sorts on the American reading public. There are, of course, other millions who don't read anything. The Journal American is the New York link in the Hearst chain. Many of these newspapers sponsor some sort of charitable enterprise as a sideline; for example, the Times is famous for its annual promotion of a drive to aid the Hundred Neediest Cases; while the Herald Tribune has operated, for nearly seventy-five years, a Fresh Air Fund, aimed at providing sum- mer vacations for needy city children.
Despite their vast circulations and the increasingly high esteem in which they are held, the metropolitan dailies have not, over the past fifty years, exerted great political influence, at least on the local scene. During the 1890's, and earlier, many newspapers embarked boldly on crusades-either political, economic, or social. They fought great battles against Entrenched Evil and won ( sometimes) great victories. Of recent years, they have been more peaceful, embarking on fewer crusades for specific changes and encountering less success in those which they under- took. With the exception of the La Guardia and Wagner administrations, hardly a word could be found in a metropolitan newspaper express- ing approval of the municipal government; but nobody seemed to feel a need to change this government or even to throw out the rascals of the moment. The existence of racketeering along the water front was a matter of public knowledge for years before various scandals made it advisable recently to get rid of certain overfamiliar figureheads. But the newspapers of the city have attempted little in the way of exposure or reform, and their few efforts have usually gone astray. Perhaps the papers themselves are less responsible for this change than their increasingly apathetic readers; at all events, the change has rendered New York journalism definitely less exciting than it used to be.
Naturally enough, the metropolitan newspapers have the largest cir- culation in the state; in addition, several of them are widely read throughout the nation. Upstate, the Gannett enterprises, headed by Frank E. Gannett, operate a highly successful and notably independent chain of newspapers in such cities as Elmira, Binghamton, Rochester, Albany, Utica, Newburgh, and Ithaca. There are also dozens of inde- pendent local hometown newspapers, such as, for example, the weekly Rhinebeck Gazette, the Watertown Times, the Greenwich Journal, the Schuylerville Standard, and the daily Canandaigua Messenger, which keep thousands of readers informed and entertained. As for fortnightlies and monthlies, their name is legion. Of the 719 publications classified as newspapers in New York State in 1950, no less than 561 were pub- lished either once a week or less frequently than that.
Because so many of its citizens are of foreign ancestry, the state has
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twenty-eight foreign-language dailies, almost a third of the nation's total. In all, approximately 190 foreign-language newspapers and periodi- cals are published in New York State, making it the foreign-language center of the United States. No less than thirty languages other than English are used to print these periodicals. A Czech, a Finn, a Greek, a Chinese, or an Arab may find a New York periodical in his native tongue. Hungarian, Portuguese, Polish, Ukrainian, Albanian, and Car- patho-Russian are other languages used. One may even read New York publications in Welsh and Latin!
Because it is a major financial center and the home of the New York Stock Exchange, the metropolis is also a major center for the publication of business and financial journals. Pre-eminent among these is the Wall Street Journal, first published in 1889, and ever since then required read- ing for budding and blooming capitalists. A special branch of this indus- try is that devoted to newsletters and other forms of advice for investors: these have become more numerous lately, as ownership of American industry has steadily been dispersed among thousands of small investors. And of course many specialized trade journals are published in New York, calling attention to developments in such fields as finance, law, clothing and textiles, metals, commerce, motion pictures, house furnish- ings, and agriculture.
Practically all daily newspapers, and many weeklies, subscribe to one or more of the wire services, such as the Associated Press, International News Service, and United Press, which have branches in all the major news centers of the world. Other syndicated services disseminate special feature stories, photographs, cartoons, fiction, advertising (known irrev- erently around the newspaper office as "boilerplate"), and articles on fashions, sports, religion, homemaking, and science. By making use of these syndicated services, small-town newspapers can compete qualita- tively with the big-city publications. Almost half of the 219 newspaper feature, picture, and news syndicates in the United States are located in New York.
Periodical publications, whether newspapers or magazines, tend to pass through something like a life cycle. They are born, flourish, are successful, and then, unless carefully watched, tend to wither and fade or to be absorbed in some more successful enterprise. The outstanding leader of newspaper consolidation in the state was Frank A. Munsey, an old newspaperman who had long cherished the idea of establishing a newspaper chain. His first effort in this direction ended in failure, but in 1916 he consolidated the New York Press with the New York Sun and Evening Sun. He then acquired the New York Herald and its satellite the New York Evening Telegram; when he tried and failed to buy the New York Tribune, he sold the Herald to the Tribune's owners, Mr. and
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Mrs. Ogden Reid. Thus emerged the Herald Tribune in 1924. Meantime Munsey acquired the Evening Globe which he merged with the Sun. Just before his death he purchased the Evening Mail and merged it with his Evening Telegram. And now in recent years the Sun has been merged into the offspring of a merger between the old World and the Evening Telegram, so that we have a triple product, the World-Telegram and Sun.
Very much the same process of merging and emerging projects goes on in magazine publishing, but here the hopeful signs of birth are more in evidence. True, the magazines which made such a tremendous repu- tation during the old muck-raking era generally failed to survive that era. And the old Literary Digest ran into such difficulties, when it pre- dicted the overwhelming election of Alfred Landon over Franklin Roosevelt in 1936, that it folded soon thereafter. But in New York, at least, the sprouting of new magazines seemed like almost a continuous process. The Reader's Digest sprang into prominence during the 1920's by shrinking long articles into short ones and presenting a monthly selection. Americans, who appreciate being reminded of how busy they are, responded enthusiastically; and soon the Reader's Digest was an established and influential journalette. But the most sensational successes in magazine publishing during the 1920's were those wrought by Henry R. Luce. In 1923 he created Time, the first weekly news magazine, a compressed, clever, brightly written and strongly edited magazine of news and news interpretation. Its point of view was that of the business community; its prose style was often so mannered that, in the words of a famous parody, "Backward ran sentences till reeled the mind." But it was brisk, crisp, sententious, and opinionated writing, often illuminated by a high order of intelligence. Inopportunely titled, Fortune appeared on the scene just as the Great Depression was setting in (1930). It was, and remains, an expensive and beautiful publication for the business and technical community. These were such successful ventures that in 1936 Mr. Luce climaxed his career by revitalizing the old and moribund joke- and-cartoon magazine, Life. He turned it into a magazine of news photo- graphs, the pictures beautifully selected and completely timely, the surrounding captions and predigested text ruthlessly simple. The success of Life as measured by the pitiless barometer of newsstand sales was phenomenal beyond precedent; indeed, the magazine was soon so securely entrenched that it could afford occasional ventures into the unsensational field of public education. Here its lucid, simple texts and brilliant illustrations performed a major function in making Americans aware of the world about them, of the facts of their own history, and of the first grand principles of scientific thought. Life is now an American institution, a barbershop fixture. With these three major blocks in place,
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the Luce empire was essentially complete; and to this day it stands as the most massive and influential of New York's magazine-publishing struc- tures.
Look and Pic are broadly similar to Life; Newsweek is similar to Time. There are imitations of the imitations, there are mortalities, rehabilita- tions, and brave new ventures. And behind all the shifting façades of periodical publication lies the omnivorous and sleepless "angle-worm" -the periodical feature-writer on the lookout for a fresh approach to old material, the editor who wants the old story told with a new gim- mick. He is out to hook the reader's curiosity in order to build up na- tional newsstand sales as a bait to attract advertisers, who pay the freight that makes the difference between profit and loss.
In the years after World War I, a magnificent new medium of dramatic entertainment burst upon New York State, as upon the nation. Many of the early movies were made by Broadway stars in New York City studios; others were made by the woods, gorges, lakes, and falls of upstate Ithaca. Executive offices, cutting studios, and some rather specialized production operations still remain in New York; but by and large the production phase of the industry has been inveigled westward to Southern Cali- fornia. New York money remains powerful in the industry and serves to lure New York talent to the golden fleshpots of the West. But for the average New York citizen, movies have become strictly a consumption item. They are consumed in quantity and with gusto. The Saturday-night movie date became a staple item in America's entertainment diet. The star system and the mass audience combined to encourage the creation of a standardized product; and a mysterious, businesslike arrangement known as "block booking" created something close to absolute uniformity of distribution. Sooner or later everyone, whether he lived in a hamlet or a metropolis, saw the same movie. This had both good and bad aspects. While it standardized experience, it widened many people's range of experience, and it provided, on occasion, intellectual stimula- tion of a fairly high order. People could be found discussing the merits of a movie who would have had the greatest difficulty discussing the merits of a book-even supposing they had all read the same book.
Of course there are always problems for a medium which depends, like the movies, on a mass audience. Timid producers with their eyes riveted on the box office tended to produce only scripts guaranteed not to offend, irritate, or arouse disagreement. Innocuous banality heavily flavored with sex appeal has been a successful formula for years; and the unrelenting pursuit of it has thwarted, in some measure, the full development of the movie industry's enormous potential. Yet a few fine movies do break through the barrier; and when current production is thin and banal, fine old films are often brought back to the neighbor-
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hood houses. Moreover, several small companies and more or less informal organizations in the city are devoted to the appreciation or production of experimental movies. Perhaps the best known of these is Cinema 16.
Because of its vast resources of wealth, population, technical skills, and technical facilities, New York State has pioneered in the radio broadcasting industry. Radio broadcasting had its beginning in the state, as in the nation, during the early 1920's. In 1922 there were about 400,000 radio receivers in the entire nation; twenty-five years later there were more than ten times that many receivers in New York State alone. By the middle of the twentieth century, 98 per cent of all the families of the state had at least one receiver. New York was not only the birth- place of the great radio networks but also of commercial broadcasting. In 1923 Station WEAF had twenty-five sponsors, including the R. H. Macy Department Store, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, the Colgate Company, and I. Miller Shoes. In a very real sense, this was the beginning of commercial radio, not only for New York but for the world.
Most early radio stations were owned by radio-equipment manufac- turers who broadcast programs in order to sell their equipment. The high cost of adequate programing, however, soon convinced manu- facturers that profits from the sale of radio sets were insufficient to finance the radio stations. Hence, the sale of air time to advertisers. This proved to be a lucrative business. Since half the state's fifteen million population live in the five boroughs of New York City, this is a tre- mendous, compact market. It is supplemented by other millions in the metropolitan area outside New York City boundaries, who easily hear broadcasts emanating from the city. Consequently, it is not sur- prising that more than thirty radio stations are concentrated in the New York City area.
It was New York City, too, which acted as the first center for the major networks which spread across the entire country. In 1926 the Radio Corporation of America formed the National Broadcasting Com- pany in New York City; the following year, it built its second, or "Blue" network, which, in 1943, became the American Broadcasting Company. The third major network to be established was the Columbia Broadcasting System, organized in 1927 in New York City on the basis of a sixteen-station hookup. The Mutual Broadcasting System started operations in 1934 with four stations; today this system has a larger number of stations than any other. In the field of regional broadcast- ing, New York can boast of the Rural Radio Network centered at Ithaca. Through a combination of AM and FM facilities and a unique system of remote-control broadcasting, this network covers the state.
The leadership in the radio industry which New York City early
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attained has been buttressed over the years. The city has increasingly become the entertainment capital of the nation, continually attracting great numbers of talented people: musicians, singers, actors, dancers, directors, writers, producers, and stage artists of every description. Particularly since the advent of television after World War II, New York has assumed leadership in the business of entertaining the nation. With its insatiable appetite for new faces and fresh material, television has vastly enlarged the field of the entertainment industry. It has made possible audiences of millions for performers who previously played only to hundreds. And it has brought headline performers into hamlets which had never seen entertainment more exalted than a traveling medicine show. As with radio and with motion pictures, the mass audience has imposed a certain leveling and simplification of taste. But wonderful programs may now and then be seen on television; the happy viewer may visit Greenland or the castle of Hamlet at Elsinore, as well as take a participant's seat at the historic events of the day, from boxing bouts to political campaigns.
Not usually considered a cultural so much as a technical phenomenon, the automobile changed the folkways of New Yorkers and of Americans generally. Over the last three or four decades, it has transformed America from a nation of homebodies to one of gadabouts. Gone are the days when a York-Stater might live and die within the bounds of his native village; gone, indeed, is the old distinction between the country bumpkin and the city slicker. Nothing has done more than the automobile to obliterate the distinction between town and country. Indeed, of a weekend, when long lines of cars stand bumper-to-bumper along the parkways, it is often a question whether there are more city people leaving town for the weekend or more country people escaping from the birds, flowers, and trees for a weekend in the city.
With the possession of vast quantities of automobiles (more than four million in 1953), New Yorkers have become surpassingly mobile. Huge belt parkways enable the motorist to travel, without the interruption of a single traffic light, from Manhattan Island to the border of Indiana; the great New York Thruway permits one to drive clear across the heart of the state without so much as the impediment of a grade crossing. A great public park like Jones Beach on the south shore of Long Island is as much a creation of the automobile as is the drive-in theater. The home has lost some of its importance, the neighborhood has lost some of its distinctness, now that one may be forty miles away in less than an hour. Automobiles are, of course, marks of social prestige; they are art-objects, perhaps the most exciting aesthetic experience that the American ever undergoes; they have gone a long way toward replacing the bus, the train, and the vacation resort. With trailers attached, they become moving vans or complete traveling homes; at drive-in theaters,
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they turn into mobile movie seats. Versatile and enormously glamorous, automobiles have radically transformed New York's economy and the cultural life of her people.
The very popularity of the automobile has led, of course, to tre- mendous problems. In less than fifty years, more Americans have been killed by the automobile than by all the wars in which our country has engaged since the days of George Washington. The big cities of the state are being gradually choked by their own traffic and parking is a perpetual problem.
One advantage of the automobile is almost completely unchallenged. It has opened up to the citizens of the state the real beauty and variety of their natural heritage. Nothing has done more than the combination of fine cars and good roads to bring Americans out of doors and into the country. Within a few hours' time, any inhabitant of New York State can be in the depths of the Catskills or the Adirondacks, climbing a mountain, riding a horse, hooking a trout, or paddling a canoe. For those who crave the rugged and isolated wilderness, the forests and mountains of the Adirondack and Catskill State parks are ideal. In the fall, hunters swarm through all the wild areas of the state, in pursuit of game ranging from squirrels and rabbits to bears (and, alas! too often, other hunters); during the winter months skaters and skiers visit by the thousands the great resort areas like Lake Placid. And all year round there are visitors who come to the natural scenic areas of the state simply to look at the scenery, sniff the fresh air, and smooth out the wrinkles in their faces and their souls.
Particularly popular in these days of high-priced hotels are the state- operated camping areas which are maintained in strategic locations throughout the state. Along the Finger Lakes, by the shores of Lake Ontario, and in the depths of the Adirondacks, there are camping grounds in the public parks where for a few dollars a day one can rent a tent or a cabin and enjoy the outdoor life as energetically or as lazily as one chooses. At the juncture of Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River are the famous Thousand Islands, which annually at- tract hordes of vacationists. With the completion of the St. Lawrence Power and Seaway Projects, the St. Lawrence below the Thousand Islands will be an added attraction for tourists and visitors. The creation of a new thirty-mile lake, from Massena to Point Rockaway in the town of Lisbon will transform once-turbulent rapids into broad, placid waters for fishing, boating, swimming, and the enjoyment of the region's scenic beauties. The state has also provided public picnic grounds along main highways, lean-tos or open camps along principal trails in the forest preserves of the Catskills and Adirondacks, and places for tents on the islands of Lake George and in many other locations.
Other outstanding scenic attractions in the state include the world-
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renowned Niagara Falls, famous in song and story as the habitat of honeymooners; the Genesee Gorge in Letchworth State Park near Rochester; the Howe Caverns near Cobleskill; Watkins Glen near Ithaca; Ausable Chasm near Lake Champlain; and the petrified forest near Saratoga Springs. And, of course, for sheer scenic magnificence, there are very few regions anywhere in the world which can rival the splendid stretch of the lordly Hudson River Valley.
New York State has at least fifteen hundred summer camps for boys and girls. Many of these are run by groups such as the Boy Scouts, religious and fraternal organizations, and educational and community centers. All camps must be registered with the state Department of Health.
Although it flourishes there, sport is not by any means confined to bucolic surroundings. The metropolis nurtures its own natural breed of athletic contest, stickball, hopscotch and other sidewalk games, touch football, and the infinite varieties of handball. And of course the city is the home par excellence of professional sports. Since the turn of the century, New York City has been represented in the major leagues by three professional baseball teams; and many of the truly great figures of the game have performed for the home team within the hallowed precincts of Ebbets Field, the Polo Grounds, and Yankee Stadium. The Stadium is often known in the special parlance of the sportswriter as The House That Ruth Built, for it was conceived as a showcase for the home-run hitting of the mighty Babe. If the Polo Grounds were to be assigned a similar title, it might be called the House That McGraw Inhabited, for the Giants have not been a supreme power in their league since the legendary days of John J. McGraw and the peerless Christy Matthewson. As for the Dodgers (once the Robins), those long lean years during which the players won from their fans the affectionate, contemptuous nickname of "Bums" came to an end with the 1940's. In the modern era, the team has won pennants-even, in 1955, a World Series! Few things render the national pastime more en- dearing than its ability to achieve the unexpected and improbable. In addition to its major-league representation, New York State has entries in the International League, the Eastern League, the Pony League, and numerous semiprofessional and industrial circuits. The Little League movement, started in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, just after World War II, spread quickly throughout New York State and has been highly influential in making the pastime available, in an organized and super- vised way, to the youngsters of the state.
In 1925 Madison Square Garden was opened as a sports arena and convention hall; and since then, almost every form of professional sport has been housed in the great Eighth Avenue arena. Boxing bouts and
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wrestling displays are regularly scheduled in the Garden. Six-day bike races, ice hockey contests, basketball games, tennis matches, horse shows, dog shows, and political rallies fill out the Garden's program. And every spring, early in April, the circus comes to town and settles down in Madison Square Garden for a long stand before going on tour. On a smaller scale, upstate cities, notably Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse, are centers of commercialized sport.
Growing interest in promoting health and in dealing constructively with juvenile delinquency put a premium on the providing of recrea- tional facilities, particularly in urban centers, where adequate space for parks, playing fields, golf courses, tennis courts, and skating rinks was not always easy to obtain. Fortunately the state of New York and its largest city have had the devoted services of Robert Moses as head of their park systems for several decades. He has made great strides, often in face of what seemed insuperable difficulties, in providing for recrea- tional needs.
For those who are interested in history, the state abounds in land- marks and relics of early American life and Indian culture. Seven Indian reservations are still maintained, for example; and while the ancient rites are no longer a matter of everyday practice, customs and traditions are carefully preserved. The New York State Historical As- sociation operates an interesting museum of antiquities at Cooperstown, not far from the equally memorable Baseball Hall of Fame. At Hyde Park the beautiful country estate of former President Franklin D. Roosevelt is maintained as a public memorial, while Washington Irving mementos crowd the area around Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow. On the west bank of the Hudson, forty miles north of Albany, is the state's only national park, the Saratoga Battlefield National Park, marking the scene of the Battle of Saratoga and of the surrender of General Burgoyne.
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