The Fight Against 'Ready-Made' News
In 1884, Seattle’s labor printers stood against the rise of syndicated, out-of-town journalism, arguing that local integrity and local jobs mattered more than cheap, imported content.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
There is nothing which speaks stronger for the success and growth of a city than the character of its press. This real city, Seattle, instead of degrading her press by the import of foreign cheap labor, has advanced. The extra printers necessary for such enlargement were local workmen. It is being attempted in Seattle by the Sunday Star and the Sunday Bulletin, on the other hand, to reduce the standard of journalism by the use of ready-made, imported reading matter. These plates are then sold to newspaper proprietors by the foot or yard, at a trifling cost. They are used only by cheap country papers, as a rule, when subscribers are scarce and advertising very low. With few exceptions on this coast, no paper published in a city runs them, as they are considered by all respectable and leading newspapers to be an imposition, both on the reader and advertiser. There is no consistency in such a stand on their part. The Chinamen employed in our midst occasionally spend their money with our merchants for hats, boots, and other articles, while for the plates used in the Bulletin and the Sunday Star, the money is all sent out of town, and not one cent ever reaches the coffers of our merchants and other tradesmen.
“These plates are then sold to newspaper proprietors by the foot or yard... they are considered by all respectable and leading newspapers to be an imposition, both on the reader and advertiser.”
This 1884 labor dispute over 'ready-made' plates mirrors today's concerns about AI-generated, syndicated content replacing local reporting in newsrooms. Just as the Typographical Union saw the outsourcing of content as a threat to Seattle’s civic and economic soul, modern journalists argue that local news requires local labor to remain accountable to the community.
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