The Fountainhead

His first act was to tear down the sign over the door of the building and to throw out the paper's old masthead. The Gazette became the New York Ba

The first campaign of the Ba

The publishers of his time took pride in stamping their individual personalities upon their newspapers. Gail Wynand delivered his paper, body and soul, to the mob. The Ba

The public asked for crime, scandal and sentiment. Gail Wynand provided it. He gave people what they wanted, plus a justification for indulging the tastes of which they had been ashamed. The Ba

The Ba

"News," Gail Wynand told his staff, "is that which will create the greatest excitement among the greatest number. The thing that will knock them silly. The sillier the better, provided there's enough of them."

One day he brought into the office a man he had picked off the street. It was an ordinary man, neither well-dressed nor shabby, neither tall nor short, neither dark nor quite blond; he had the kind of face one could not remember even while looking at it. He was frightening by being so totally undifferentiated; he lacked even the positive distinction of a half-wit. Wynand took him through the building, introduced him to every member of the staff and let him go. Then Wynand called his staff together and told them: "When in doubt about your work, remember that man's face. You're writing for him."

"But, Mr. Wynand," said a young editor, "one can't remember his face."

"That's the point," said Wynand.

When the name of Gail Wynand became a threat in the publishing world, a group of newspaper owners took him aside — at a city charity affair which all had to attend — and reproached him for what they called his debasement of the public taste. "It is not my function," said Wynand, "to help people preserve a self-respect they haven't got. You give them what they profess to like in public. I give them what they really like. Honesty is the best policy, gentlemen, though not quite in the sense you were taught to believe."

It was impossible for Wynand not to do a job well. Whatever his aim, his means were superlative. All the drive, the force, the will barred from the pages of his paper went into its making. An exceptional talent was burned prodigally to achieve perfection in the unexceptional. A new religious faith could have been founded on the energy of spirit which he spent upon collecting lurid stories and smearing them across sheets of paper.

The Ba

"When there's no news, make it," was Wynand's order. A lunatic escaped from a state institution for the insane. After days of terror for miles around — terror fed by the Ba

A fire broke out in a sweatshop employing thirty young girls. Two of them perished in the disaster. Mary Watson, one of the survivors, gave the Ba

In the first years of the Ba