communal disasters by land and sea and air outrank any kind of private horror or villainy as news. Ads, in contrast, have to shrill their happy message loud and dear in order to match the penetrating power of bad news. Commentators on the press and the American Senate have noted that since the Senate began its prying into unsavory subjects it has assumed a role superior to Congress. In fact, the great disadvantage of the Presidency and the Executive arm in relation to public opinion is that it tries to be a source of good news and noble directive. On the other hand, Congressmen and Senators have the free of the seamy side so necessary to the vitality of the press. Superficially, this may seem cynical, especially to those who imagine that the content of a medium is a matter of policy and personal preference, and for whom all corporate media, not only radio and the press but ordinary popular speech as well, are debased forms of human expression and experience. Here I must repeat that the newspaper, from its beginnings, has tended, not to the book form, but to the mosaic or participational form. With the speed-up of printing and news-gathering, this mosaic form has become a dominant aspect of human association; for the mosaic form means, not a detached "point of view," but participation in process. For that reason, the press is inseparable from the democratic process, but quite expendable from a literary or book point of view. Again, the book-oriented man misunderstands the collective mosaic form of the press when he complains about its endless reports on the seamy underside of the social garment. Both book and press are, in their very format, dedicated to the job of revealing the inside story, whether it is Montaigne giving to the private reader the delicate contours of his mind, or Hearst and Whitman resonating their barbaric yawps over the roofs of the world. It is the printed form of public address and high intensity with its precise uniformity of repetition that gives to