The Star’s Secret Cable: How Seattle’s Afternoon Paper Beat the Morning Giants

The Star has the news. Yesterday this paper contained the exclusive announcement that the Filipinos had decided to sue for peace. Today's cablegrams from Manila confirm the statement and give details of the negotiations.

For the benefit of many new readers of the paper, it may be stated that The Star uses the Rippe-Schmitt press service, which is fast becoming noted throughout the country as the very best in existence. The telegraphic news is served only to afternoon papers, and is far better than the afternoon service of the Associated Press, the lamented association being managed altogether in the interest of the morning papers.

Several years ago there were two press associations, one in the United States controlled by newspaper men called United Press and the Associated Press. Both of them discriminated against the afternoon papers, reserving the best news for their morning patrons. The proprietors of the afternoon publications protested in vain. The two monopolies were in the hands of the New York and Chicago morning paper men, and they did not propose to give their afternoon competitors a chance at the cream of the news, so long as it could be prevented.

There was discontent among afternoon publishers that was fast forming into a combined opposition to the morning associations, when a light took place between the two and ended in the death of the United Press. Then the Associated Press tried to gobble up all the papers in the country and have a monopoly of the business, but the afternoon publishers were not to be caught in that sort of a deal, and when the press association was organized a few weeks afterward, hundreds of the afternoon papers in the east applied for membership.

All morning papers were barred, and the new press association found itself on the high road to success as it was two months old. The service was quickly extended to the Pacific coast, and to lay it is taken by scores of California newspapers. Foreign bureaus have been established in all of the principal news centers of the world, and correspondents sent to Cuba, Porto Rico and the Philippines. Cablegrams from Manila are received daily and give the latest news from the front.

The Star, as a subscriber for the Rippe-Schmitt telegraphic service, is enabled with its large staff to give more than any other paper can better tell. There is an abiding certainty of getting something new every day.