Blank Spaces Have To Be filled

Because the newspaper always has a certain standard size, and because blank spaces are not permissible, a few jokes soon creep in as fillers. Some reader or other will want to criticise something now and then, and if the criticism is of general interest, it is printed; thus was born the "Letters to the Editor" column. Soon it becomes apparent, that the readers are especially interested in the jokes and the criticism, and so the editor engages a critic or humourist permanently; thus was born the chitchat column. The next editor can then no longer recognise the circular character of the newspaper. He thinks he must print more and more of the material appearing in the daily papers, and sometime or other an editorial will be written, too. Many of the papers which first appeared purely as news periodicals demonstrate this tendency. All were originally nothing more than news publications, in which today the "other material takes up more room than the news. Thus, the activity referred to above as the affording of supplementary educational material became possible. Here, the original purpose, to report on student events, has been transformed to a self-appointed task of the newspaper.