He felt the time had
come--the reference here and elsewhere is always to the realm of popular
magazine literature appealing to a very wide audience--for the editor of
some magazine to project his personality through the printed page and to
convince the public that he was not an oracle removed from the people,
but a real human being who could talk and not merely write on paper.
He saw, too, that the average popular magazine of 1889 failed of large
success because it wrote down to the public--a grievous mistake that so
many editors have made and still make. No one wants to be told, either
directly or indirectly, that he knows less than he does, or even that he
knows as little as he does: every one is benefited by the opposite
implication, and the public will always follow the leader who
comprehends this bit of psychology. There is always a happy medium
between shooting over the public's head and shooting too far under it.
And it is because of the latter aim that we find the modern popular
magazine the worthless thing that, in so many instances, it is to-day.
It is the rare editor who rightly gauges his public psychology. Perhaps
that is why, in the enormous growth of the modern magazine, there have
been produced so few successful editors. The average editor is obsessed
with the idea of "giving the public what it wants," whereas, in fact,
the public, while it knows what it wants when it sees it, cannot clearly
express its wants, and never wants the thing that it does ask for,
although it thinks it does at the time.
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