Indeed, who would think of hiring Mark Twain or Stephen Crane? Absurd. Pandering to masses.

First, some very good news for my readers: I’m not gonna be posting here anymore! Not in the foreseeable future. Way too busy, but working on some exciting stuff. Announcements coming in a month or so (for the three of you who come to this blog and five of you who follow me on Twitter).

Which means I better make this post good. Less horrible will do.

April 29th, 2010. She makes this weird face. Dogs make a similar one upon being served a meal they don’t like. It’s not disgust, exactly. More like, utter flabbergastation. You can’t be serious. Right??

“Fiction? Short stories? In a newspaper?”

If the owner of the face could freely express her current thoughts – and she can’t, not here, not right now, because she had been, and always will be, a reporter for a reputable national paper – it would be something along the lines of: You people are fucking retarded. You can’t be serious.

But we are. Serious, not retarded. Potentially both. Doesn’t seem like an outrageous proposal, though. After all, it’s been done before, many times.

April 29th, 1863. William Randolph Hearst pops out, tastes air, cries, and is soon held by his mother (Now you know why there’s a photo of the dude starring at you, at the top of this post).

Will Hearst is born, and, observing the event from here, mere miles from where it took place, but exactly 147 years later, we almost feel like whispering: don’t do it. Stay in there. It’s not gonna be worth it.

Because, really, was it worth it?

The dude is 21. Writes an incredibly comprehensive, intelligent proposal for saving his dad’s failing newspaper. Comprehensive = addressed everything from quality of writing to distribution methods. Intelligent = not a single empty phrase, buzzword, not a single trivial thought.

The dude takes over the paper, which his dad got in some ancient deal and never bothered to manage.

Creates the best paper on the West Coast. In a matter of months and with virtually no financial help from his family. Defeats and humiliates, in circulation and advertisement, most of the competition. Turns a profit.

Does exactly the same in New York 10 years later.

But, it’s April 29th, 2010. Google the name. Check out the journalism books, classes and blogs. Spoiled brat and lunatic. Decided to run a newspaper for fun. Power-hungry megalomaniac. Used his vast amounts of cashish to kill the competition. Lurid sensationalism. Dragged the U.S. into a war.

Nevermind that Joseph Campbell, a Professor at American University, won an award for his 2001 book, Yellow Journalism, which debunked the myth of Hearst causing wars in order to make more money.

Nevermind that trade publications of the era considered his paper the most enterprising, entertaining and exciting in New York. Praised the quality of investigative reporting and storytelling, and its devotion to public issues.

Nevermind that nothing in his paper was any different from what was found in other contemporary papers – even the conservative, stale ones. It was merely better.

Nevermind that the moral campaign launched against him – which resulted in, ironically, numerous lurid and factually-challenged biographies – was conducted by his commercial rivals. Who were publishing old, boring, conservative, snobbish and elitist papers. Losing readers, ads and money. And panicking.

April 29th, 2010. The surprised, WTF face is gone now. She only granted the fiction idea a few seconds of her time. It was, naturally, absurd. Who would think of putting fictional stories in a paper?

Indeed, who would think of hiring Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Richard Davis Harding, Ambrose Bierce, Julian Hawthorne or Jack London to write short stories for you. Or do actual journalistic, non-fiction pieces. Which they all did for Hearst.

But, of course, it’s sensational. Pandering to the masses. Using cheap tricks to sell copies and make money. Just like the usage of visual tools to tell a story.

When first penny presses appeared, the masturbators said they were sensational, tasteless and cheap. Then the first generation of popular dailies appeared in 1860s. Those who started the penny presses were now the masturbators. And when Pulitzer and Hearst appeared, the 1860s folks were the masturbators.

So, 147 years after the birth of one of this post’s protagonists, what has changed?

Masturbators still bashing the new folks. Nick Denton seems a favorite these days. Of course. He makes money and runs a new kind of a media business. Flexible, fast and daring. But we don’t like that. In our own insecurity, it’s easier to be cynical. Bash away.

What I don’t see are the Mark Twains and Stephen Cranes. In fact, the idea is absurd. Shocking. Causes flabbergastation. Wait, we are still debating why newspaper circulation has been going down? Really?

P.S. A wise man once told me, well, it was actually today, but that doesn’t sound as good, right?, anyway, this man, he uttered the greatest truism for any journalistic or communication genre. He said: if it ain’t popular, it’s crap.

Amen. It’s definitely not the other way around. And, yes, exceptions naturally apply. Rarely.