When the Abbey Theatre installed a nightly police cordon to silence protesting playgoers during the 1907 run of Synge's The Playboy of the Western World, spectators voiced their objections in newsprint. Under pseudonyms like “A Western Girl,” “A Commonplace Person,” “A Much Interested Foreigner,” and “A Lover of Liberty,” correspondents sent letters to the Dublin Evening Telegraph, Freeman's Journal, and Dublin Evening Mail. “Vox Populi” wrote that the arrested protesters “showed an admirable public spirit, which in any other country would be highly honoured.” “Oryza” reported a conversation overheard from the stalls in which Synge had said that the audience's hissing was “quite legitimate.” After journalist and Galway MP Stephen Gwynn penned a letter supporting the Abbey, biographer D. J. O'Donoghue responded that “the vindictiveness which has been shown night after night in expelling and prosecuting people who ahve [sic], in their excitement, called out ‘It's a libel’ or ‘shame,’ or otherwise mildly protested, is a serious menace to the freedom of an audience.” He referred to the furor as a “newspaper controversy”; others called it a “newspaper war.” In a public discussion at the Abbey after the play's run, Yeats quoted from the correspondence when defending his decision to call in the police. According to playwright William Boyle, the controversy boiled down to political representation. In a letter to the Freeman's Journal, he argued that protesters had not reacted “by staying away,” as some supporters had suggested they should, “because the ‘Abbey’ is a subsidised theatre, independent of the money taken at the door. Therefore … the public had no remedy, but the one resorted to.” Private subsidy had muffled the democratic shuffling of playgoers’ pocketbooks; forced to shut their mouths inside the theatre, playgoers opened up to the newspapers that circulated around it.

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学童还是公民股东？：省剧目观众、致编辑的信和公众订阅

在 1907 年 Synge 的演出期间，修道院剧院设置了夜间警戒线，以使抗议的观众保持沉默西方世界的花花公子，观众在新闻纸上表达了他们的反对意见。记者们以“一个西方女孩”、“一个普通人”、“一个非常感兴趣的外国人”和“一个热爱自由的人”等假名向都柏林晚间电讯报，弗里曼日报， 和都柏林晚报. “人民之声”写道，被捕的抗议者“表现出令人钦佩的公共精神，这在任何其他国家都会受到高度尊重。” “Oryza”报道了一次从摊位上偷听到的对话，其中 Synge 说观众的嘶嘶声“非常合理”。在记者和戈尔韦议员斯蒂芬格温写了一封支持修道院的信之后，传记作家 DJ 奥多诺霍回应说：“在驱逐和起诉那些 [...原文如此]，在他们兴奋中喊出‘这是一种诽谤’或‘羞辱’，或者以其他方式温和地抗议，是对观众自由的严重威胁。” 他将这场骚动称为“报纸争议”。其他人称之为“报纸战争”。在该剧播出后在修道院的一次公开讨论中，叶芝在为自己报警的决定辩护时引用了信件中的内容。根据剧作家威廉博伊尔的说法，争议归结为政治代表。在致信中弗里曼杂志，他辩称，抗议者并没有像一些支持者建议的那样，“远离”做出反应，“因为‘修道院’是一个有补贴的剧院，与门口拿走的钱无关。因此……公众没有办法，只能求助。” 私人补贴抑制了玩家钱包的民主洗牌；在剧院内被迫闭上嘴巴的观众们打开了在剧院周围流传的报纸。