Discussion and conclusion

 

The new details described in this article about American journalism’s classic editorial do nothing to diminish or alter the exceptionality of “Is There A Santa Claus?” For journalism historians, these insights represent fresh reminders about the importance of challenging and correcting conventional wisdom, especially about late nineteenth century journalism in the United States. Popular and scholarly understanding of that period has been distorted by enduring myths, such as those about the yellow press and the causes of the Spanish-American War. There is no small need to revise scholarly and popular understanding about the period which gave rise to American journalism’s most memorable editorial.

 

It is important to recall that “Is There A Santa Claus?” was published in 1897, an exceptionally robust year in American journalism. The editorial added to the striking richness of a year notable for the emergence and diffusion of the epithet “yellow journalism,” the first modern use of the term “public relations,” and the application of technology that allowed half-tone photographs to be printed in the main sections of newspaper on presses running at full speed.87 The Sun of the late 1890s, however, was wary about the changes afoot in American journalism, resisting innovations in typography and technology that were to recast the appearance of American newspapers. The Sun instead cultivated a reputation as a writer’s paper88 (even if the writer tended to remain anonymous), one hesitant to indulge in the self-promotion that was pervasive among large-city American dailies of the 1890s.

 

Its eccentricities and its disdain of self-promotion help explain why the Sun was slow to embrace what became American journalism’s classic editorial. Church, given the evidence that he deeply respected the anonymity of editorial-writing, also may have been responsible for the Sun’s reluctance to republish the editorial. As this article has shown, the Sun was somewhat more inclined to do so after Church’s death in 1906. Even so, the editorial did not routinely appear on the Sun’s editorial page at Christmastime until the 1920s. In the end, the persistence of readers—a doggedness which the Sun frequently acknowledged in reintroducing “Is There A Santa Claus?”—overwhelmed the newspaper’s disinclination to print “repetitions from the past.”89 Audience response helped make sure “Is There A Santa Claus?” lived on.

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NOTES

87. See W. Joseph Campbell, “1897: American Journalism’s Exceptional Year,” Journalism History 29, 4 (Winter 2004): 190–200.

88. See Irwin, “The New York Sun,” American Magazine, 301–310. Irwin’s article was a laudatory assessment of the Sun. In describing the value placed at the Sun on well-written reports, Irwin stated (304): “in that office, he who has written a good story is greater than he who conquers kingdoms.”

89. “A Steady Revolt,” New York Sun.