Business Management of French Newspapers.
--The
Paris correspondent of the New York World says:
‘
Speaking of newspapers, reminds me of how far behind the
American press are the journals of
France, in many important particulars, and in none more so than in their cumbrous, slow, and inconvenient business management.
In this respect, they have not changed a particle for a hundred years past, and for "slowness" and inconvenience their management will vie with any of our slowest country journals.
What would you think, for instance, in the publication office of a journal of the
city of New York, if, after a certain hour in the day, the clerk should refuse to take a subscription?
I went into the publication office of the Constitutional, a few days since, for the purpose of subscribing.
After some little trouble, I found the clerk who takes the city subscriptions, and he appearing very much surprised to see me, asked me what I desired; and upon my informing him, in the blandest and most polite manner possible, that I wished to become a subscriber to his "valuable journal," he informed me as blandly, but with an evident surprise at my ignorance, that the office was "
ferme," it being then a few minutes after 4 o'clock; and upon pressing my inquiries, he was kind enough to convey to my benighted intellect the information that subscriptions were only received from 10 A. M. to 4 P. M., so the next day at noon I sent and subscribed.
For the daily papers of
Paris no subscriptions are taken for a less period than three months, and which very properly is required to be paid in advance.
Then the subscription must either date from the first or fifteenth of the month; and a person subscribing on the tenth must either not commence receiving his journal for five days afterwards, or in case he wishes his subscription to date from the first, the clerk, when he subscribes, hands him the ten back papers.
Then the newspapers are sent out, and all my journals come to me in that way — carefully folded up and surrounded with a hand, on which is printed my name and address, the name of the journal, and the date at which my subscription terminates.--How much simpler and easier than all this is our system of daily and weekly subscriptions, payable to the carrier.
Among other good chances for American capitalists in
Paris, it seems to me that there is an excellent opportunity to start a newspaper on the "fast" American plan.
’
