Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
surmise, proving to be as important as the direct action. In many cases
newspapers have gone after articles for themselves, after having seen
some of ours in print”.
25
And as Slosson explained to a fellow scientist:
We are concentrating our efforts largely upon the newspapers, since in
this way we can reach the largest possible public. The newspapers, how-
ever, demand 'news', that is, something which has a definite event on
which to hang the general information and necessary explanation.
26
Once persuaded of science's potential for news value, editors then had to
be convinced that science would sell. In one of his first promotional
letters to advertise what became the
Daily Mail Report
, Davis promised
that Science Service offered news of importance, news their competitors
were getting, and news that was reasonably priced:
Off the beaten tracks real news is breaking. What scientists and engi-
neers are doing today will affect the world tomorrow. Are you getting
this news?
Science Service is covering this important field for over forty news-
papers from Bermuda to San Francisco. A news report […] formerly
mailed weekly but beginning today to be mailed daily, brings them inter-
esting, readable copy, scientifically accurate, yet understandable by the
non-technical person. It costs them only the fraction of the pay of an of-
fice boy.
27
Such efforts soon had a noticeable impact. By January 1924, Scripps
executive H.L. Smithton wrote to Ritter about the publicity received by a
recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science:
The leading headlines of the [local] papers were given to the subjects of
the convention and to interviews with the scientists. Collisions of the at-
oms displaced automobile and railroad collisions; slaying of bacteria and
undesirable insects completely overshadowed similar 'activities' among
humankind; pictures of scientists ornamented the pages hitherto deco-
25
E.E. Slosson to E.W. Scripps, September 2, 1921; SIA RU7091, Box 12, Folder 2.
26
E.E. Slosson to W.A. Cannon, Carnegie Institution of Washington's Coastal Labora-
tory, February 23, 1923; SIA RU7091, Box 16, Folder 1.
27
Science Service form letter sent to editors of newspapers from 'Watson Davis, News
Editor', September 11, 1922; SIA RU7091, Box 60, Folder 2.
