"I don't expect you to like it," he added.
"That doesn't matter. I do tremendously admire your editorials. They're
beautifully done; the perfection of clarity. But the rest of the
paper--I can't see you in it."
"Because I'm not there, as an individual."
He expounded to her his theory of journalism. That was a just
characterization of Junior Masters, he said: the three-ringed circus.
He, Banneker, would run any kind of a circus they wanted, to catch and
hold their eyes; the sensational acts, the clowns of the funny pages,
the blare of the bands, the motion, the color, and the spangles; all to
beguile them into reading and eventually to thinking.
"But we haven't worked it out yet, as we should. What I'm really aiming
at is a saturated solution, as the chemists say: Not a saturated
solution of circulation, for that isn't possible, but a saturated
solution of influence. If we can't put The Patriot into every man's
house, we ought to be able to put it into every man's mind. All things
to all men: that's the formula. We're far from it yet, but we're on the
road. And in the editorials, I'm making people stir their minds about
real things who never before developed a thought beyond the everyday,
mechanical processes of living.
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