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The New York Times
It will be my earnest aim that the Times give the news, all the news, in concise and attractive form . . . impartially, without fear or favor; to make the columns of the Times a forum for the consideration of all public questions of public importance.
—Adolph Ochs
Circulation 776,000 mornings. 1,400,000 Sundays. Independent. Since 1932 has supported a Democrat for President four times (Roosevelt in 1932, 1936, and 1944, Kennedy), a Republican four times (Willkie, Dewey in 1948, Eisenhower twice).
Rarely within contemporary memory has the New York Times honored Adolph Ochs's promise to be concise. Each weekday, the Times prints five times the wordage of the New Testament; its Sunday editions regularly exceed four pounds and 450 pages. This daily avalanche of newsprint contains so much of value, is so exhaustive and, for the most part, so dependable a diary of the world's doings that the Times probably rates the high compliment so often paid to it: no one can skip the awesome task of reading the Times and feel truly informed. In some foreign countries, the Times is thought of as Washington's unofficial voice—and often it is just that. Presidents and Cabinet members leak stories to the Times that they want in public circulation, usually as trial balloons. Last year, Brazil's President João Goulart was aghast to learn that the Times had been silenced (along with other Manhattan dailies) by a strike. How then, complained Goulart, would anyone ever know that he had just won a smashing victory at the polls? As the U.S.'s only newspaper of record, the Times publishes the full text of every historically important document and speech; in the case of the official U.S. report on the Yalta Conference, discharging its obligation to history took the Times a special section and 200,000 words. Perhaps moved by the same leave-nothing-out spirit, the Times betrays a tendency to run on too long on less significant affairs. Rare is the day, for example, when all the Page One stories do not run over into the inside pages—or, as one weary reader put it, "into infinity." The overweight Times and its giant corps of newsmen seem to take the position that it is up to the reader to edit the paper. "All the News" is there, says the Times in effect. "Now find it."
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
An institution that should always fight for progress and reform, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.
—Joseph Pulitzer
Circulation 356,000 evenings. 589,000 Sundays. Independent-Democrat. With two exceptions (Landon in 1936, Dewey in 1948), has supported Democrats for President since 1932.