THE PRESS.
The editor is the great American schoolmaster. None other is worthy to
be compared with him.
He is about as numerous as all other teachers combined. His lessons are
given more frequently, they last longer and they cost less than any
others.
To him forty-nine students in every fifty are indebted for the only
post-graduate course they ever receive. Many others would have no
education at all if it were not for him.
He does not always know his business so well that he could not know it
better, but whatever he does know he imparts steadily, as well as some
that he does not honor.
He is the only influence upon whom the public can absolutely depend to
right any wrong which is being endured in spite of the efforts and oaths
of legislators. When law is lazy and legislators are venal it is the
editor, and the editor only, who comes to the relief of the public. The
public will not do this for itself. It seems to consider its duty done
when it casts its ballot. More than half a century ago, when editors
were not supposed to think their souls their own, the first Napoleon
said, “Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand
bayonets.” Napoleon certainly knew the value of bayonets.
The newspaper is the universal tribunal. It is an open court and there
is justice of a sort for every one there at a trifling cost, one cent,
two or three, as the case may be. The editor is the lawyer to whom the
poor man must of necessity come. His court is one of equity, and it is
to equity courts after all that all of us are inclined to resort when we
insist upon a final decision.
He is the people’s advocate. Before a law can be suggested in
legislature or Congress to undo a wrong or strengthen a right, the
editor has already suggested it, debated both sides of it and rendered a
decision, frequently a dozen or twenty decisions, which the public are
inclined to admit or regard as accurate. He sometimes gets hold of a
subject wrong end first, but he will submit to correction and
improvement quicker than any judge or jury on record. He may not always
admit that he has changed his mind, or that he turned over, or that he
has turned his coat, but the change is there all the same, to any one
who will read his paper.
He is the only biographer and historian which the mass of the people can
read. And he gives
[Illustration: GALLERY OF FINE ARTS.]
more information for a given amount of money than the cheapest
circulating library in the world.
The editor is also invaluable as a social barometer. As Thackeray once
said, “The newspaper is typical of the community in which it is
encouraged and circulated; it tells its character as well as its
condition.” This is awfully severe upon some communities, and upon the
readers of certain papers, but it is none the less true.
Unselfish thinkers, who are concerned chiefly for the good of the
community, are always the men who esteem the editor most highly. Wendell
Phillips, who for more than thirty years was abused by about half the
editors of the land, said, “Let me make the newspapers, and I care not
what is preached in the pulpit or what is enacted in Congress.” Many
years before, Thomas Jefferson, one of the founders of our government,
said, “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government
without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should prefer
the latter.”
The editor has improved more rapidly in the past twenty-five years than
the representative of any other profession. Theologians, physicians and
lawyers all belong to schools of one sort or other, but of late years
there has come up a new school of journalism which is called
independent, and it has become so popular with readers of newspapers
that the number of professors and students in it are increasing at a
most gratifying rate.
James Gordon Bennett, Jr., explains one difference clearly when he says:
“There is one grand distinction between journals--some are newspapers,
some are organs. An organ is simply a daily pamphlet published in the
interest of some party, or persons, or some agitation.” But the organs
are not as numerous as they used to be.
Who would have imagined any time before the late civil war that in any
great political campaign preceding a general election in this country
there would be scores and almost hundreds of independent newspapers. The
time was when a newspaper could not exist unless it were a party or
personal organ. But the newspaper has gradually risen from being a mere
partisan or personal mouthpiece to being the mouthpiece of its own
proprietor. At the present day no properly qualified journalist need
attach himself to either party for financial reasons. If he is competent
to make a good newspaper he is quite free to express his own opinions
regardless of whom he may help or hurt, and the position is so
delightful that a great many editors rush into it apparently for the
mere pleasure of expressing their own opinions. During the last general
election the scarcity of strong party organs, even in the largest
cities where they were supposed most to be needed, was a matter of
general comment among practical politicians, and it is known that some
newspapers changed hands solely for the purpose of being turned into
party organs and that it was frequently so difficult to obtain control
of existing journals that new ones had to be started for the sole
purpose of supplying their respective parties with mouthpieces. This may
be considered a compliment to the personal interest of the average
journalist or to his personal ability. But, whichever it is, it is
highly creditable to the profession, and it is a result which could not
have been hoped for twenty-five years ago.
Now-a-days every journalist of actual ability, no matter which party he
belongs to, wishes that he may become owner of an independent newspaper.
It is impossible for him not to see that the independent newspaper is
not only the most quoted and the most talked about, but the most
profitable. The paper which is read by both parties is sure of more
subscribers, purchasers and advertisers than that which draws all its
inspiration from the platform formed by a single convention. The
independent editor hears himself quoted in Congress by men of both
parties; and these same men are quite likely to grumble and swear within
a week to find themselves castigated by the same men whose words of
wisdom they recently availed themselves of.
The possibilities of the press for good, now that independence in
journalism is practicable and also a business temptation, cannot be
overestimated. Public opinion can be created more rapidly by daily
appeals and arguments which the newspaper reader can quietly look over
by himself, pausing whenever he may like to think over what he has read,
than anything that can appear in campaign speeches or magazine essays or
books by the most noted writers and specialists. The editor, as a rule,
has dropped the old stilted form of the essay, and puts his arguments in
the ordinary colloquial form, with homely illustrations and forcible
applications so far as words go. If it didn’t seem like complimenting
him too highly and making him vain, it would not be unfair to say that
his method is that in which the more valuable portion of the four
gospels was written. He has learned that political power is no longer in
the hands of the learned classes, but that all portions of the community
feel and read and think; and that, as every man has a vote, the larger
the audience he talks to, the simpler and clearer must be his arguments.
Consequently the press is giving us a class of debaters such as the
world never knew before, and such as no parliamentary body in the world
possesses even now or can hope to possess for some time to come.
With increased freedom from party reins and ties, the editor is
continually increasing and enlarging the interests to which he addresses
himself. There is scarcely a newspaper in the United States at the
present day which restricts itself entirely to political subjects.
Anything in the nature of human interests, social economies, moral
reforms, and even the tastes and amusements of the people is a fair
subject for the editor. He is not only a teacher; he is a preacher, and
he preaches six days in the week instead of one. In fact, he frequently
extends his ministrations into the seventh day also, to the great
annoyance of preachers who occupy more dignified positions, but with not
so large a congregation.
The press hereafter must be the principal moral, political and social
influence of the country. There is no way to put it backward. It is
being more and more trusted--more and more read--more and more depended
upon to be equal to every emergency; and, to do it justice, it seldom
disappoints expectations--a statement that cannot be made with any
shadow of truth of any class of statesmen, except the very best. Years
ago Lamartine was laughed at as a dreamer when he said, “Newspapers will
ultimately engross all literature; there will be nothing else published
but newspapers,” but Lamartine’s prophecy is being rapidly fulfilled.
The newspaper is invading every department of literature, and giving
the reader the best at the lowest price.
There is a great hubbub once in a while in courts and among lawyers
about what they are pleased to style trial by newspaper, and it is
astonishing that before a court can reach any important case, the
conduct of the case, its merits and its probable conclusion have been so
well foreshadowed by the press that interest in the trial itself is
comparatively slight. So general is the resort to newspapers for
information and opinion, that a short time ago when one of the famous
boodle aldermen of New York was called up for trial, it was impossible,
under the jury laws of the State, to find even one single competent
juror in a city the population of which was one million and a half.
Everybody had formed opinions, and the opinions generally agreed. They
had seen the testimony--seen it discussed from all sides and all
points--discussed so clearly, that they had no reasonable doubt of the
guilt of the accused. And all this they saw in the newspapers.
It begins to look as if the time might come when lawyers, courts,
jurors, judges, would all be supplanted by the editor, and as if soon
afterward teachers and preachers also might feel occasion to shake in
their shoes. There is no danger in such an event of the editor becoming
conceited. He always has a regulating principle close at hand. It is
right in the counting-room at the book-keeper’s desk. The public can
change its opinion of a newspaper as quickly as it can of a political
candidate; and when it does, the editor knows of it at once by a class
of figures that never are allowed to lie.
Because all this is true--and everybody admits that it is--a great many
men of more ambition than brains are attempting to be full-fledged
editors at a single bound. “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”
Angels, who have unequalled opportunities of knowing the true inwardness
of things, would think twice, or oftener, before attempting to be
editors, without first going through a laborious apprenticeship. It
seems the easiest thing in the world for a man who has a lot of money of
his own, or, better still, some money which belongs to other people, to
start a newspaper and air his own opinions--which consist principally of
partialities and prejudices--but the end is sure to be disastrous. Many
daily papers have started in our large cities and reached a large
temporary circulation, which afterward disappeared in the mists of
oblivion and left nothing but debts behind. A successful newspaper is
the result of natural growth and accretion.
Henry Watterson, editor of the Louisville _Courier-Journal_, says: “The
result of any newspaper enterprise depends upon the character of the
man who engages in it--his capacity to discern correctly and to adapt
his paper to the wants and needs of the audience it is meant to serve.”
Whitelaw Reid, editor of the New York _Tribune_, and now Minister to
France, says: “Every great newspaper represents an intellectual, a moral
and a material growth--the accretion of successive efforts from year to
year--until it has become an institution and a power. It is the voice of
the power that the twenty or thirty years of honest dealing with the
public and just discussion of current questions have given.”
Horace Greeley, the founder of Mr. Reid’s paper, said truthfully that
“The office of a newspaper is first to give the history of its time, and
afterward to deduce such theories or truths from it as shall be of
universal application.” Can any mere peddler of news and scandals, or
any man whose sole gratification is a desire to see his own impressions
in print, live up to this standard?
Conscience, application and money, as well as intellect, is necessary to
the successful management of a newspaper. George W. Childs, editor of
the Philadelphia _Ledger_, snatched the sympathies of all decent members
of the editorial fraternity when he said: “Few persons who peruse the
morning papers think of the amount of capital invested, the labor
involved, and the care and anxiety incident to the preparation of the
sheet which is served so regularly.” Charles A. Dana, editor of the New
York _Sun_, says: “The legal responsibility of newspapers is a reality,
but their moral responsibility is greater and more important.” E. L.
Godkin, editor of the New York _Evening Post_, says: “News is an
impalpable thing--an airy abstraction; to make it a merchantable
commodity, somebody has to collect it, condense it, and clothe it in
language, and its quality depends upon the character of the men employed
in doing this.”
George William Curtis, editor of _Harper’s Weekly_, admitting the
tremendous influence of the press, voices the sentiment of successful
editors everywhere when he says: “If the newspaper is the school of the
people, and if upon popular education and intelligence the success and
prosperity of popular government depends, there is no function in
society which requires more conscience as well as ability.”
Evidently newspaper men who amount to anything realize their
responsibilities. The press is not “all right,” but it seems as far from
wrong as conscience and common sense can make any earthly institution.