NEWSPAPER HISTORY--THE MODERN NEWSPAPER
The young man contemplating journalism may be interested in the
beginnings of the business. The little known about them is abundantly
repeated in various histories. China seems to have been the pioneer
at a time before the Christian era. But the records of those early
years are hazy. It is known that the Peking _Gazette_, as the sheet
now is called, has been in continuous publication since the year
618 and mention is made of the Peking _News_ as being much older.
News-sheets printed in the time of Julius Cæsar speak of their esteemed
contemporaries published in China.
Before the invention of type and printing all communications intended
for public consumption were written on papyrus sheets and were hanged
in the market places, or were read to the people, or were circulated in
various ways.
Fifty years before the coming of Christ, the Roman government sent out
an official sheet for the information of its public servants, the army,
and the people, and this publication was continued for many years.
Latterly it was called _Acta Diurna_ (Daily News) and it seems to have
been exceedingly popular.
The public appetite for news and gossip appears to have been quite as
voracious then as now. The news-sheets were almost sensational in their
telling of scandals, of murders, and the details of crime. There seems
to have been little regard for the proprieties in those days, for we
read in the _Acta Diurna_ that “the funeral of Marcia was performed
with greater pomp of images than attendance of mourners.” Extracts from
Cicero’s speeches are given, and one commentator writes:
When Cicero was sent as governor to Cilicia he asked a friend
to send him the news of Rome. The friend employed scribes, the
reporters of that day, to gather the information and prepare
the letters. The man who wrote the first letters reported
everything from the procedure of the Senate to the result of the
latest gladiatorial contest. Cicero objected to his methods and
complained that the letters contained items that he would not
have bothered with when at home. What he wanted, he explains,
was advance information to keep him in touch with the political
movements of the time.
It was during the reign of the Cæsars that the news-sheets were in full
request. They were written in Latin, of course, and were marvels of the
penman’s art on papyrus; and they were expressed with an epigrammic
terseness and a snap that might well be imitated to-day. Dr. Johnson
translates a few of them in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ as follows:
The Latin festivals were celebrated, a sacrifice performed on the
Alban Mount, and a dole of fish distributed to the people.
A fire has happened on Mount Coelius; two trisulae and five
houses were consumed and four damaged.
Demiphone, the famous pirate, who was taken by Licinus Nerva, a
provincial lieutenant, was crucified.
The red standard was displayed at the Capitol and the Consuls
obliged the youth who were enlisted for the Macedonian war to
take a new oath in the Campus Martius.
The Aedile Tertinius fined the butchers for selling meat which
had not been inspected by the market overseers. The fine is to be
used to build a chapel for the temple of Tellus.
M. Tullius Cicero pleaded in defense of Cornelius Sylla, accused
by Torquatus of being concerned in Catiline’s conspiracy and
gained his cause by a majority of five judges. The Tribunes of
the Treasury were against the defendant. One of the Praetors
advertised by an edict that he should put off his sittings for
five days on account of his daughter’s marriage.
A report was brought to Tertinius, the praetor, while he was
trying cases at his tribunal, that his son was dead. This
was contrived by the friends of Coponius, who was accused of
poisoning, that the praetor might adjourn the court; but the
magistrate having discovered the falsity of the story, returned
to his tribunal and continued in taking information against the
accused.
After Cæsar’s time the Roman sheets gradually disappeared and
newspaper history becomes very misty. News publications reappeared,
however, in Vienna and in Augsburg in 1524 and Pendleton in his
“Newspaper Reporting in Olden Time and To-day,” after quoting
Chalmers in his “Life of Ruddiman,” observes:
But he admits that the first modern sheet of news appeared in
Venice about the year 1536, that it was manuscript, and was
read aloud in certain parts of the city--a journal that proved
a great attraction, for it was issued once a month only, and
narrated in polished stirring words how the Venetians fared in
their war against Turkey. The fee paid for reading this sheet
in manuscript was a gazzetta, and the news-sheet gradually got
the name of the coin (_The Gazette_). At least Blount, in his
Glossographia published in the seventeenth century, would lead
on to this conclusion, giving as the definition of the word
gazzetta, “A certain Venetian coin scarce worth one farthing;
also a bill of news or short relations of the occurrences of the
times, printed most commonly at Venice, and thence dispersed
every month in most parts of Christendom.” It was not until 1612
that the gazzettas of the Venetians first appeared as numbered
sheets but some years previously the thirst for news--now
well-nigh unquenchable in every civilized part of the globe--had
spread to England.
All through the Middle Ages the news-letters were restrained both
by church and state. The privilege of printing them was withdrawn,
and by the year 1500 they virtually had ceased to exist. When
they reappeared they were under strict government direction and
censorship. The use of movable type and the printing press now
facilitated their production, but all authority frowned on them
save that authority which made use of them for its own ends.
The newspaper censorship of the next one hundred and fifty years
was the severest ever known. Lord Burleigh, who was Prime Minister
in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, seems, however, to have understood the
value of publicity--understood that a handful of facts is worth
a hatful of rumors when it comes to influencing the people. The
appearance of the Spanish Armada in 1588, with its one hundred
and twenty-nine ships, its twenty thousand soldiers and its ten
thousand sailors, bent on the invasion of England, had long been
looked for, and on its approach the people were overcome with
hysterical excitement. But Burleigh had a news-letter printed from
day to day telling the exact facts of the situation and the panic
subsided.
Dr. James Melvin Lee, head of the Department of Journalism in New
York University, believes that the first newspaper to be printed in
the English language was published in Amsterdam, December 2, 1620,
and in proof of his belief he produces a facsimile of the sheet. It
was half sheet folio and had no title. A descriptive of the battle
of Weissenberg was its chief feature.
In a discussion as to the early use of the word “reporter,” Mr.
Henry N. Cary, a New York journalist, quotes from a pamphlet of
1613 of which the title is:
The Wonders of this windie winter, by terrible stormes and
tempests, to the losse of lives and goods of many thousands of
men women and children. The like by Sea and Land hath not been
seene nor heard of in this age of the world. London. Printed
by G. Eld for John Wright, and are to be sold at his shop neer
Christ-church dore.
In this pamphlet is the following:
Ships were perishing to the number of a hundred, and forty
seafaring men, besides other passengers, both of men and women
which at that time made their watery graves in the deep sea. This
first strooke feare into the hearts of people, which hath since
seconded with many calamities, which lieth heavily upon the heart
of the reporter.
The details of this storm’s destruction are far less interesting to
us than is the way they circulated the news in 1613 when there were
no newspapers.
For the next one hundred years the news-sheet was the chief source
of information to the English people. A few weekly newspapers were
started, the first being edited by Nathaniel Butter, in 1622. It
was called the _Weekly News_, but it seems to have had few readers.
The people stuck to the news-sheets in which they had confidence.
Possibly they did not credit Butter’s yarns. Pendleton quotes two
of them as specimens of seventeenth century journalism:
A true relation of the strange appearance of a man-fish about
three miles within the river Thames, having a musket in one hand
and a petition in the other, credibly reported by six sailors who
both saw and talked with the monster.
A perfect mermaid was by the last great wind driven ashore near
Greenwich, with her comb in one hand and her looking-glass in the
other. She seemed to be of the countenancy of a most fair and
beautiful woman, with her arms crossed, weeping out many pearly
drops of salt tears; and afterwards she, gently turning herself
upon her back again, swam away without being seen again any more.
Later in the century the use of the news-sheet became so general
as to clog the mails. Macaulay writes interestingly of the
disseminating of information in those days:
In 1685 nothing like the London daily paper of our time existed
or could exist. Neither the necessary capital nor the necessary
skill was to be found. Freedom too was wanting, a want as fatal
as that of either capital or skill. During the great battle of
the Exclusion Bill, many newspapers were suffered to appear. None
of them was published oftener than twice a week. None exceeded
in size a single small leaf. The quantity of matter which one
of them contained in a year was not more than is often found in
two numbers of the _Times_. After the defeat of the Whigs, it
was no longer necessary for the King to be sparing in the use
of that which all his Judges had pronounced to be his undoubted
prerogative. At the close of his reign no newspaper was suffered
to appear without his allowance; and his allowance was given
exclusively to the London _Gazette_. The London _Gazette_ came
out only on Mondays and Thursdays. The contents were generally
a royal proclamation, two or three Tory addresses, notices of
two or three promotions, an account of a skirmish between the
imperial troops and the Janissaries on the Danube, a description
of a highwayman, an announcement of a grand cockfight between two
persons of honor, and an advertisement offering a reward for a
strayed dog. The whole made up two pages of moderate size.... The
most important parliamentary debates, the most important state
trials, recorded in our history, were passed over in profound
silence. In the capital the coffee houses supplied in some
measure the place of a journal. Thither the Londoners flocked as
the Athenians of old flocked to the market place, to hear whether
there was any news. There men might learn how brutally a Whig had
been treated the day before in Westminster Hall, what horrible
accounts the letters from Edinburgh gave of the torturing of
Covenanters, how grossly the Navy Board had cheated the crown in
the victualling of the fleet, and what grave charges the Lord
Privy Seal had brought against the Treasury in the matter of
the hearth money. But people that lived at a distance from the
great theatre of political contention could be kept informed of
what was passing there only by means of news-letters. To prepare
such letters became a calling in London. The news-writer rambled
from coffee room to coffee room collecting reports, squeezed
himself into the Sessions House of the Old Bailey if there was
an interesting trial, nay perhaps obtained admission to the
Gallery of Whitehall and noticed how the King and Duke looked. In
this way he gathered materials for weekly epistles destined to
enlighten some country town or some bench of rustic magistrates.
Such were the sources from which the inhabitants of the largest
provincial cities and the great body of the gentry and clergy
learned almost all they knew of the history of their own times.
We must suppose that at Cambridge there were as many persons
curious to know what was passing in the world as at almost any
other place in the kingdom out of London. Yet at Cambridge during
a great part of the reign of Charles II, the Doctors of Laws and
the Masters of Arts had no regular supply of news except the
London _Gazette_. At length the services of one of the collectors
of intelligence in the capital were employed. It was a memorable
day on which the first news-letter from London was laid on the
table of the only coffee house room in Cambridge.
At the seat of a man of fortune in the country the news-letter
was impatiently expected. Within a week after it had arrived
it had been thumbed by twenty families. It furnished the
neighboring squires with matter for talk over their October, and
the neighboring rectors with topics for sharp sermons against
Whiggery and Popery.
It is scarcely necessary to say that there were then no
provincial newspapers. Indeed except at the capital and at the
two Universities there was scarcely a printer in the kingdom.
This was the condition of the newspaper business at the end of the
reign of King Charles II.--a period distinguished by less interest in
literature and study than any period of England’s history after the
Elizabethan revival of learning. The reading of books and the search
for information had been abandoned in the quest for pleasure. The
people had joined in imitating the profligacy, the licentiousness and
the revels of Charles’s court. They who champion the newspaper as a
great uplifting influence in community might instance these profligate
days in which there were no newspapers and compare them with later
years.
But the opening of the eighteenth century brought fresh impetus to
study and a new interest in literature. Several weekly newspapers
had been set going. The first daily newspaper was started in London
in 1702. It was called the _Courant_. It was a small single-sheet
publication printed on one side only, and it gave but a meager
assortment of news items. It refrained from expressing opinions, the
editor saying that “he would give no comments of his own as he assumed
that people had sense enough to make reflections for themselves.”
Scores of editors even to the present day have launched initial numbers
of their editions with this same resolution, expressed in the same way,
but somehow it does not last long.
Then came the _Review_ founded by Defoe, and Richard Steele’s _Tatler_
and the _Spectator_ by Steele and Joseph Addison, which publications
mark the real beginnings of journalism. By this time Pope and Swift,
William Walsh, whom Dryden praised as a great critic, and Arthur
Maynwaring and others of the famous Kit Cat Club were writing for the
periodicals.
Editorial comment, or the expression of editorial opinion seems to
have had no place in newspapers until toward the close of the reign
of King Charles II. Then, while the London _Gazette_, appearing under
government direction, was printing news only, Sir Roger Lestrange
was permitted to print a journal of comment without news, called the
_Observator_. Lestrange had been a Tory pamphleteer, and for a short
time had edited small news-sheets and under the government. He had
been Surveyor of Printing Offices and Licensor of the Press. The
_Observator_ was ferociously against the Whigs and the Protestants.
Because editorial comment was new, it focused much attention. Here
was the first editor to write violent political editorial articles.
He confined his subjects to politics and to religion which was then a
part of the politics of the day. He inspired a host of imitators and
the leading article, of which he was the parent, has been the leading
feature of all journalism ever since. Great in its political use,
immediately after him, were Dean Swift in his _Examiner_, and Daniel
Defoe in the _Review_ which he started in 1704 while in jail for
political offense.
It was just at the beginning of the eighteenth century that Steele
and Addison began their _Tatler_ and _Spectator_. Their first impulse
was to write of politics, for Steele was alive with political zeal
and Addison was interested; but presently they seemingly sensed the
opportunity for success in the new direction of a publication given
to the elucidation and the discussion of general topics, of subjects
on which politics was unlikely to produce diversion of opinion--social
life, play-house criticism, literature, morals, ethics and personal
conduct. The _Spectator_ was printed daily. To the policy of minimizing
politics and exalting general topics of interest it adhered.
Newspapers and periodicals increased rapidly after this time. Henry
Fielding, the novelist, was editor of the _True Patriot_ in 1745
and the _Jacobite Journal_ in 1747. Dr. Samuel Johnson started the
_Rambler_ in 1750 and the _Idler_ in 1758. In 1714, eleven papers were
appearing in London. In 1733, the number had increased to eighteen and
in 1776, to fifty-three.
John Wilkes in his newspaper the _North Briton_ accused the king of
lying in his address at the opening of Parliament in 1762, for which
Wilkes was committed to the tower and expelled from the house, of which
he had been a member.
Oliver Goldsmith wrote his delightful letters from “A Citizen of the
World” for the _Public Ledger_. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Hazlitt and
John Campbell were writers for the _Morning Chronicle_.
And in after years, contributing to the London _Times_ at one period
or another as writers, were: Beaconsfield, Lord Chancellor Brougham,
Cardinal Newman, Lord Grey, Lord Macaulay, Sir William Harcourt, Moore,
Dean Stanley, Lord Sherbrook, and Dr. Groley.
The constant and consistent progress of the newspaper since its feeble
beginnings, and especially its development in the last two hundred
years, attest its importance to mankind. Rarely, indeed, has progress
been more deliberate; rarely has it been more substantial. Long
years of experience with it have tested and verified the newspaper’s
usefulness.
Thirst for news and for information has always prevailed and newspaper
progress undoubtedly must have taken a vigorous spurt with the
invention of type and printing but for the reason that both church and
state joined in its repression. In 1685, at the close of the reign of
King Charles II. there were in all England two newspapers only, worthy
of the name, and both of them were under the strict supervision of the
royal censor.
The first real jump in newspaper progress came with the relaxation
of government repression just after the year 1700. It was then that
Addison, Steele, Defoe, Fielding, Swift and Dr. Johnson, gave the
real beginnings to journalism. Thereafter, for a hundred and fifty
years, the advance and improvement in the making of newspapers were
deliberate and irresistible. From chatterers and gossipers only the
journals came gradually to be leaders of thought and of public opinion
and circulators of essential information. But the change in them was so
slow as to be almost unnoticed from year to year.
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, however, came the
invention of the modern printing press which permits the printing of a
newspaper of thirty-five pages or more at the rate of thirty thousand
or more copies an hour; the invention of the stereotyping process by
which newspaper pages may be duplicated to indefinite numbers, in solid
metal, and used on an indefinite number of presses in the printing
of a single edition; and the invention of the typesetting machine by
which type may be cast and placed with something like six times the
speed of the old-time process of hand composition. They were marvelous
inventions.
These inventions removed mechanical difficulties that had confined the
size and restricted the circulation of newspapers, and great changes
came quickly. Heretofore the newspapers had been restricted to eight
pages and many of them printed four pages only; but immediately twenty
and twenty-four page editions appeared and thirty-five and forty
page ones are common now. This great increase in volume permitted a
like increase in scope and we now see in the newspapers a mass of
information on an innumerable number of topics. Moreover, all changes
in national or social life bring changes in newspapers. Big business
brought big newspapers, as soon as they could be made.
Greatly increased newspaper importance has followed this expansion.
It is possible to present great events with a fullness of detail and
an attention to side issues hitherto unknown. A senator’s attack on
the Administration may be printed in full--six or seven columns of
it. An investigation involving the conduct of the war may be reported
question and answer verbatim. Pages are devoted to a catastrophe
like the blowing up of Halifax that a few years ago would have been
described in as many columns. Scores of special articles are printed
the like of which never had found place in the daily newspaper. And in
the evening sheets, especially, are department features intended to
interest women and children, funny picture series, puzzles, medical
information, screeds, and freak features--all of which emphasize the
very great change from comparatively a few years ago. And every change
from the beginning has been in the direction of progress, has made
the newspaper a greater and a better product, has given to it the
increased confidence of the public. Confidence in a production of any
sort usually is withheld until experience has tested and verified it.
The value and the importance of the newspaper have come to be firmly
established.
Many persons do not require the services of a lawyer. Many rarely
employ a physician. Thousands seldom listen to a clergyman. But in
these wide-awake days everybody of any account must read the newspaper,
for the reading of the newspaper has come to be absolutely essential
to the daily routine of every intelligent person. The things we read
in the morning newspaper are the things we talk about during the
day. If you are interested in politics, or if you are interested in
finance, or the fluctuations of prices, or the movements of society,
or any phase of trade or commerce, or in any of the vital questions
of the hour--for all of these you turn to the newspaper. The things
taught in the colleges are the things of the past, or the principles
that experience has tested and verified. The things taught by the
newspapers are the things of the present. You cannot learn politics
from a textbook. You must absorb the politics of the day by a study
of the events of the day. Your financial policy must be governed by
existing monetary conditions rather than by conclusions drawn from the
panic of 1873 or that of 1907. The events of the day, the progress of
the day, are of more importance to the man in business life or the
man in social life than any other consideration. The newspaper is his
great source of inspiration and instruction. The newspaper informs you,
instructs you, influences you, amuses you, inspires you, directs your
thoughts, assists your conclusions, fires your ambitions, enlarges your
vocabulary--all of which are of the utmost importance to you. It may
be said, therefore, with confident complacency that the profession of
journalism rests on the solid foundation of supplying an essential need.
In a lecture before the students of Dartmouth College, Mr. John Lee
Mahin said:
The family that pays a cent or two for its big morning newspaper
receives a carefully digested review of the political, economic,
social and commercial activities of the entire world for the
previous twenty-four hours. Probably five hundred men in New York
City would pay a thousand dollars a year each for the commercial
information alone that they receive from the New York _Times_ if
they could not obtain it in any other way.
In considering these changes it should be remembered that the
journalism of fifty years ago was conspicuous for the reason that a
famous bunch of editors stamped their personality on almost every
column. It was the period of personal journalism. These editors were
inspired by the tragedies and the ferocities of the Civil War and by
the magnitude and the political importance of events involving as they
believed the very life of the nation. They were made conspicuous by the
very greatness of the causes that moved their minds and their pens.
They were stimulated to the limit of mental exaltation in what they
wrote. The country was surging with excitement. Part of the people
were clamoring for peace on any terms. Others insisted on fighting
the war to a finish at any cost of life or money. Still others were
for compromise. It is hardly possible for generations of to-day to
appreciate how intensely the war agitated the people. The editors
fought each other with a ferocity otherwise unknown in American
journalism. They were the people’s champions and their names were known
in every household; and doubtless their names will live for years to
come as the country’s greatest editors.
Nevertheless, let it be said, in all truth, that we have to-day
scores of editors equally capable of producing the crisp and pungent
paragraphs as well as the profound editorial articles of Prentice,
Greeley, Raymond, Dana, Bryant, Bowles, Watterson, Medill and Manton
Marble. The personal journalism of that day was impetuous and
impressive, but latterly and by degrees, in the big cities especially,
“the supreme importance of the editor has been transformed into the
supreme importance of the newspaper,” and we hear less about the editor
and more about the newspaper itself.
This effacement of individuality influences to exalt the newspaper
and to exalt journalism as a profession. The greatly enlarged field
has attracted thousands of most excellent writers, fine editors,
conductors, and managers. News-gathering and news-presentation are now
regarded as of supreme importance. Our pages bristle with specialties.
Our Sunday editions are magazines of information. The great modern
newspaper represents the product of the profession rather than the
genius of a single writer.
It was not so fifty years ago. These men, whose names have come down
to us, were great editorial writers rather than great editors of the
entire newspaper. Aside from the editorial page their editions were
devoid of genius. The news columns were slovenly in appearance and
dull in narration. They lacked the cunning of embellishment with the
flavor of literature and the charm of fiction. The book reviews, the
critical articles were excellent--but the editors daubed dullness over
everything else. The newspaper of that day is not to be compared with
the newspaper of to-day in general excellence.
The editorial pages and the criticisms, however, were of high
excellence. It was a literary era and the literary impulse was a
conspicuous factor in public thought. Marble, Dana, Bryant, Curtis
and others made reputations for literary excellence in journalistic
work that would not to-day attract so much attention; for literary
excellence, while commended and appreciated, is not so much insisted
on, encouraged, or taught, as it was forty years ago.
The foreign correspondence of that day as printed in the newspapers
consisted largely of descriptions of scenery and revelations of the
writers’ emotions while climbing to Alpine heights or floating by
moonlight on the silent waters of Italian lakes. It was written mostly
by staff members who were on vacation trips and who were inspired by
the travel notes of Washington Irving and Nathaniel Hawthorne that
had obtained great attention. The journals of fifty years ago did not
maintain regular correspondents abroad. All first class important
papers to-day have representatives in the capitals of Europe, but
they do not write descriptions of scenery. Some of the foreign
correspondence of that day was very good, however, notably that of
Bayard Taylor for the New York _Tribune_.
The most conspicuous difference between the newspapers of 1850 or 1860
and those of to-day is in the treatment of news. Very little space was
given then to really important events. The national convention that
nominated a candidate for the presidency was reported in two columns
or so, whereas to-day from three to six pages are required. A bare
half column was given to the stock market. The commercial markets
were equally pinched; two or three pages of matter are now devoted to
them. There was no real estate department. The court calendars were
not printed for the lawyers, nor the list of buyers in town for the
merchants; nor was there a sporting page, or a woman’s page, or a
list of school teachers appointed, or of policemen transferred, or of
firemen granted a leave of absence. The news was presented in the most
perfunctory and routine fashion, with no attempt to make it attractive
or interesting. News collecting had not been systematized or especially
studied, as to-day. The Associated Press was in its infancy, devoting
itself almost entirely to congress proceedings and to market reports.
Raw reporters were permitted to intersperse their own comments through
what they wrote and their conclusions received little revision or
supervision. Every line in the modern newspaper is revised by a copy
reader editor and not a suggestion of reportorial opinion is permitted.
The edition of fifty years ago was more or less subject to haphazard
inexactitude and casual error.
The present-day newspaper is prepared with great care. Its ambitious
articles are studied out. The errors in its news columns are the
results of haste rather than ignorance--the haste compelled by
necessity in getting to press on the minute. The Sunday edition
supplements, devoted to general topics and to literature, are
already taking the place of many kinds of literature. They print
new fiction by popular authors. They exploit and expand the latest
developments in science, art, music, medicine, mechanics, construction,
transportation--indeed, anything that is new or important. They quickly
transfer to their columns any important matter contained in a new book.
The reading of newspapers is immeasurably greater than the reading of
any other kind of matter. The new book of which fifty thousand copies
are sold is called very successful, of which one hundred thousand are
sold is pronounced a wonder, of which two hundred thousand are sold,
phenomenal. Yet in New York City alone a million and a half newspapers
are printed every morning and nearly two millions every afternoon. In
America, millions of persons who do not read more than five books in a
year read a newspaper or two every day.
And the newspaper of to-day is a better paper because it is more
accurate of statement and more faithful to fact, and more fair-minded
in the presentation of passing events. The long weary day of
misrepresentation in news reports is drawing to its close. The chief
events of the time are recorded with such fidelity to accuracy that
in future years they must be accepted as historically correct. All
decent newspapers now take pride in their accuracy of statement in
the news columns and there is little intentional misrepresentation.
In our political campaigns the attitude of each candidate is decently
described and what he says is faithfully reported and made equally
conspicuous. In this respect the newspapers have changed greatly within
a few years.
Moreover, the collection of news has been greatly facilitated by
increased telegraph and telephone and ocean cable efficiency. These
agents give much better transmission, making communication with all
parts of the world little short of instantaneous. Speaking of the
benefits to the world secured through electricity, Mr. W. W. Harris
said in a recent address:
When the Norsemen were on their way to the discovery of America
they had no compass; yet the compass had been discovered by the
Chinese many centuries before. But the news of the compass had
not in all these centuries gotten half way around the world. And
the science of navigation came not until that piece of news had
made its way to the European world. To-day any important fact
girdles the globe in a cable’s flash.
The newspapers of to-day are better because more study and thought are
put into their construction. Not only are the editorial writers men of
education, but the sub-editors, the night editors, the revisers of copy
and the reporters are mostly educated men--men who have been taught
where to seek and how to find information, who have been taught to be
confident and self-reliant and original. The proportion of college-bred
men on newspaper staffs is much greater than it used to be, and the
intelligence of the staffs has increased in the same proportion.
The modern newspaper wants men of brains who know how to use their
brains--men who can think rapidly and act instantly.
This unceasing, irresistible, cumulative progress is making newspapers
more important, is making the profession of journalism more attractive.
Even as years of experience and study and laborious patient application
have perfected and solidified the practice of law and medicine,
have made firm and substantial the developments of electricity and
mechanics, and have solved the problems of transportation and great
business, so the making of newspapers is settling down to a strong
substantial basis.
INDEX
Abbott, Lyman, 89
_Acta Diurna_, 197
Addison, Joseph, 89
Arnold, Sir Edward to Tennyson, 64
Barnato, Barnard, 110
Beecher, Henry Ward, 93, 173
Bowles, Samuel, 91, 148
Brisbane, Arthur, 174
Bryant, William Cullen, 147
Burleigh, Lord, 200
Butler, Samuel, 55
Butter, Nathaniel, 202
Cary, Henry N., 201
Cable, Costs, 107, 112, 190
Censorship, 164
Chaucer, 65
_Christian Science Monitor, The_, 89
City Editor, The, 2
Conquests, the public’s great interest in any kind of a fight, 97
Copy Readers, 29, 35
Correspondent, the Washington, 10, 12
Correspondent, the Foreign, 112
Corbett, James, 97
_Courant, The London_, 205
Crooke, William, 18
Dana, Charles Anderson, his fine leadership, 48;
great as an editor, 61;
advice to his Managing Editor, 62;
on hasty editorial writing, 80;
on making the _Sun_ talked about, 94
Dickens, Charles, experience as a reporter, 16
Edison, first public test of the household electric light, 13
Editorial writer, The, 76, 78
Editorial council, The, 79
Editor in chief, The, 79
Editor, letters to, 80
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 52
Exaggeration, where it may be tolerated, 70
Field, Eugene, 148
Field, William H., 194
Fiske, John, 181
Forney, Colonel John W., 35
_Fourth Estate, The_, 119
France, Anatole, 68
Froude, James Anthony, 148
_Gazette, The Peking_, 197
_Gazette, The London_, 206
George, Lloyd, 111
Gladden, Washington, 157
Gosse, Edmund, 56
Gray, 55
Greeley, Horace, 61, 91, 94, 147
Harris, W. W., 216
Hay, John, 148
Halsted, Murat, 148
Hearn, Lafcadio, 53, 55, 89, 172
Hearst, William R., 88
Heenan, John C., 97
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 148
Howells, W. D., 148
Imitation, its repressive influence against a writer’s
advancement, 135
Irving, Washington, 65
Jefferson, Thomas, 148
Jenkins, how he got a job as reporter, 18
Johnson, Samuel, 56, 173
_Journal, The New York_, 101
Lauzanne, Stéphane, 149
Lee, James Melvin, 201
Lestrange, Roger, 206
Lincoln, Abraham, 159
Macaulay, T. B., 55, 71, 202
Machiavelli, 59
Mahin, John Lee, 211
_Mail, London Daily_, 185
Managing Editor, 46-49
Medill, Joseph, 148
Nelson, Colonel William Rockhill, 15
Newspaper, the modern, made with bewildering speed, 43
Newspaper, the village, its opportunities for community service, 130
Newspaper specialties, those embracing politics and finance the most
important, 180
Newspapers, indispensable to republican or representative form of
government. The government speaks to the people through them, 161
News, local, does not exist in New York City; all important in the
village, 140
Northcliffe, Lord, 173, 175
_Observator, The_, 206
Ochs, Adolph S., 91
_Patriot, The Fulton_, _N. Y._, 130
Pendleton, John, 12, 199
Policy, newspaper, its reversal is dangerous to its prosperity, 91
Price, Charles W., 117
Proof reading, 40
Publications, technical and class, 119
Pulitzer, Joseph, 87
Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur, 54, 158
Reid, Whitelaw, 94
Reporter, his beginnings and progress, 1-9;
the political, 8-10;
his unpleasant tasks, 22
Reporters, first announcements of great events made by, 13
_Review, The_, 205
Roosevelt, Theodore, 31
Rossetti, 55
Sainte Beuve, 56
Saintsbury, George, 53
Salaries, newspaper, 146
Sayers, Tom, 97
Scott, Sir Walter, 55
Seitz, Don, 102
Sensationalism, wherein harmful, 103
Smith, Sidney, 70
_Spectator, The_, 205
Stead, William T., 67
Syndicate service, 138
_System_, 121
_Sun, The Evening_, 102
Talleyrand, 25
_Tatler, The_, 205, 206
Thackeray, William M., 174
_Times, The New York_, 91
_Times, The London_, 187
_Titanic_, steamship, loss of: how reported, 44
Tolstoy, 55
_Tribune, The Chicago_, 91
_Tribune, The New York_, 91
Victorian Literature, Era of, 83
Village, the American, its newspaper opportunities, 132
War, its supreme interest to newspaper readers, 99
Weather, the: its importance and interest to the reader, 100
Webster, Noah, 148
Wells, H. G., 17
West, Dean, 67
Whitman, Walt, 148
Whittier, John G., 148
Wilson, Woodrow, 58, 69, 159, 162
_Writer, The_, 60
Transcriber’s Note:
Punctuation has been standardised. Spelling and hyphenation have been
retained as published in the original publication except as follows:
Page 3
everything happens in New York than can _changed to_
everything happens in New York that can
Page 47
or off Montauk Point: judgment whether _changed to_
or off Montauk Point; judgment whether
Page 60
better expresed by _changed to_
better expressed by
Page 89
kind to whom lacrimose emotion _changed to_
kind to whom lachrymose emotion
Page 94
who succeded Greeley as editor _changed to_
who succeeded Greeley as editor
Page 102
exaggeration and breathless anouncement _changed to_
exaggeration and breathless announcement
Page 111
opinion as to the propects for peace _changed to_
opinion as to the prospects for peace
Page 198
sent as governor to Cilica _changed to_
sent as governor to Cilicia
Page 219
accounts the letters from Edinburg _changed to_
accounts the letters from Edinburgh
Page 236
_Gazette, The Pekin_ _changed to_
_Gazette, The Peking_
Page 220
Lausanne, Stéphane _changed to_
Lauzanne, Stéphane
End of Project Gutenberg's The Young Man and Journalism, by Chester S. Lord