The making of an editor is a complex affair. Poets and painters are said to
be born. Editors and orators are made. Many essential elements enter into
the editorial fabrication; need to be concentrated upon and embodied by a
single individual, and even, with these, environment is left to supply the
opportunity and give the final touch.
Aptitude, as the first ingredient, goes without saying of every line of
human endeavor. We have the authority of the adage for the belief that it
is not possible to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Yet have I known
some unpromising tyros mature into very capable workmen.
The modern newspaper, as we know it, may be fairly said to have been
the invention of James Gordon Bennett, the elder. Before him there were
journals, not newspapers. When he died he had developed the news scheme in
kind, though not in the degree that we see so elaborate and resplendent in
New York and other of the leading centers of population. Mr. Bennett had
led a vagrant and varied life when he started the Herald. He had been many
things by turns, including a writer of verses and stories, but nothing very
successful nor very long. At length he struck a central idea--a really
great, original idea--the idea of printing the news of the day, comprising
the History of Yesterday, fully and fairly, without fear or favor. He was
followed by Greeley and Raymond--making a curious and very dissimilar
triumvirate--and, at longer range, by Prentice and Forney, by Bowles and
Dana, Storey, Medill and Halstead. All were marked men; Greeley a writer
and propagandist; Raymond a writer, declaimer and politician; Prentice a
wit and partisan; Dana a scholar and an organizer; Bowles a man both of
letters and affairs. The others were men of all work, writing and fighting
their way to the front, but possessing the "nose for news," using the
Bennett formula and rescript as the basis of their serious efforts, and
never losing sight of it. Forney had been a printer. Medill and Storey were
caught young by the lure of printer's ink. Bowles was born and reared
in the office of the Springfield Republican, founded by his father, and
Halstead, a cross betwixt a pack horse and a race horse, was broken to
harness before he was out of his teens.
Assuming journalism, equally with medicine and law, to be a profession,
it is the only profession in which versatility is not a disadvantage.
Specialism at the bar, or by the bedside, leads to perfection and
attains results. The great doctor is the great surgeon or the great
prescriptionist--he cannot be great in both--and the great lawyer is rarely
great, if ever, as counselor and orator.
[Illustration: Henry Watterson--From a painting by Louis Mark in the
Manhattan Club, New York]
The great editor is by no means the great writer. But he ought to be able
to write and must be a judge of writing. The newspaper office is a little
kingdom. The great editor needs to know and does know every range of it
between the editorial room, the composing room and the pressroom. He must
hold well in hand everybody and every function, having risen, as it were,
step-by-step from the ground floor to the roof. He should be level-headed,
yet impressionable; sympathetic, yet self-possessed; able quickly to sift,
detect and discriminate; of various knowledge, experience and interest; the
cackle of the adjacent barnyard the noise of the world to his eager mind
and pliant ear. Nothing too small for him to tackle, nothing too great,
he should keep to the middle of the road and well in rear of the moving
columns; loving his art--for such it is--for art's sake; getting his
sufficiency, along with its independence, in the public approval and
patronage, seeking never anything further for himself. Disinterestedness
being the soul of successful journalism, unselfish devotion to every noble
purpose in public and private life, he should say to preferment, as to
bribers, "get behind me, Satan." Whitelaw Reid, to take a ready and
conspicuous example, was a great journalist, but rather early in life
he abandoned journalism for office and became a figure in politics and
diplomacy so that, as in the case of Franklin, whose example and footsteps
in the main he followed, he will be remembered rather as the Ambassador
than as the Editor.
More and more must these requirements be fulfilled by the aspiring
journalist. As the world passes from the Rule of Force--force of prowess,
force of habit, force of convention--to the Rule of Numbers, the daily
journal is destined, if it survives as a power, to become the teacher--the
very Bible--of the people. The people are already beginning to distinguish
between the wholesome and the meretricious in their newspapers. Newspaper
owners, likewise, are beginning to realize the value of character.
Instances might be cited where the public, discerning some sinister
but unseen power behind its press, has slowly yet surely withdrawn its
confidence and support. However impersonal it pretends to be, with whatever
of mystery it affects to envelop itself, the public insists upon some
visible presence. In some States the law requires it. Thus "personal
journalism" cannot be escaped, and whether the "one-man power" emanates
from the Counting Room or the Editorial Room, as they are called, it must
be clear and answerable, responsive to the common weal, and, above all,
trustworthy.