All this has had a most striking influence upon the country’s press. From the doubtful prestige of being “too technical” for the average reader’s mind, financial news has risen—or fallen—to the persuasive estate of being front page news, when, as and if issued. Ten years ago the financial department of even the greatest newspapers consisted of an editor, two or three assistants, and two or three pages of paper. Now it is one of the strongest departments on the editorial staff. Ten to fifteen pages of solid financial news is the ordinary thing for the New York Times. And the trucks of the afternoon newspapers, whose placarded sides once blazened the promise of the snappiest race track summaries, the best features, now clamor for attention for their “latest and most complete financial reports.” The greatest appeal of the leading Hearst newspaper in New York City is the contended excellence of its financial pages, to whose columns contribute some of the highest-paid financial brains in the country. Even more bewildering is what has taken place within the wire services, which serve the country at large. Five years ago, the Associated Press gave the country’s editors 500 words of a general lead on the stock market and a few dull briefs, and they were satisfied. The daily output has since reached 10, 000 words, and it still continues to grow.

Less than five years ago even the large cities in the interior printed only the low, high, and final quotations of leading stocks. Such summaries meant little, simply served as a sop to the inconspicuous percentage of readers who must know such things. Now even the suburban editors are demanding volume and net changes, and the larger editors have managed to get a special wire service, with the “latest leads” on conditions on the Curb and Exchange. One wire alone of the A.P.’s magnificently operated West Wire service chatters on things financial all day long.

Source: The Outlook, 18 September 1929