The last person interviewed by the Pall Mall Gazette is
Mr. Albert Pulitzer, editor and proprietor of the New York Morning Journal, a halfpenny paper, which has had an astonishing success. This gentleman is "one of the latest men of the time," and has described his method to the interviewer, with half- cynical, half-humorous plainness. His secret appears to he this —he has comprehended the infinite littleness and frivolity of modern society, especially in New York ; and produced a. paper which never instructs, or enlightens, or leads, but deals solely in trifles, personalities, and small gossip. People, says Mr. Pulitzer, are not hungering for instruction. This is also the secret of the Society journals ; but Mr. Pulitzer, wiser, or it may be better, than most of his confreres, has perceived that to sell largely at a halfpenny it is necessary, besides being trivial, to be orthodox in religion, conservative as to social arrangements, and clean in suggestion to the verge of prudish- ness. For example, the journal will mention the fact of a divorce, but not that it was decreed for adultery. Pleasant, proper, good-natured inanity, like that of a well-regulated lady's- maid, is, it seems, the article which before all others " fetches " the New Yorkers. Well, they might have worse things to read ; but one wonders if Mr. Pulitzer thinks dust a noble article of commerce because it is not mud, and also why the Pall Mall thinks such principles original. Most village papers act on them.
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