Long before big business and corporations became aware 
of the image of their operation as a fiction to be carefully 
tattooed upon the public sensorium, the press had created the 
image of the community as a series of on-going actions unified 
by datelines. Apart from the vernacular used, the dateline is the 
only organizing principle of the newspaper image of the 
community. Take off the dateline, and one day’s paper is the 
same as the next. Yet to read a week-old newspaper without 
noticing that it is not today’s is a disconcerting experience. As 
soon as the press recognized that news presentation was not a 
repetition of occurrences and reports but a direct cause of 
events, many things began to happen. Advertising and 
promotion, until then restricted, broke onto the front page, 
with the aid of Barnum, as sensational stories. Today’s press 
agent regards the newspaper as a ventriloquist does his 
dummy. He can make it say what he wants. He looks on it as a