y.-^XzT. iSil^S: ■m ^^•■^■"■w chAbles a »ANA ff\ m ,n\ m THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES .^. /A H ^/7y ^ ^u^^^-^^ yj im^^d U^^> /^-(^f^- THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING THREE LECTURES BY CHARLES A. DANA NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1895 Copyright, 1895, By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. CONTENTS. PAGE The Modern American Newspaper . . . i The Profession of Journalism . . . .25 The Making of a Newspaper Man . . .66 6143.56 THE MODERN AMERICAN NEWSPAPER. A Lecture delivered before the Wisconsin Editorial Association^ at Afilwaukee, on Ttiesday, July 24, 1888. It rarely happens to a man engaged in the active combats of life, to whom every day is a kind of march and every night a sort of bivouac, to receive an invitation from newspapers of all par- ties, representing all political organiza- tions and almost all forms of religion known in our country — all asking this man to come to Wisconsin to see them ; and I have come with the greatest pleas- ure, although by no means without tim- idity. I know the men of Wisconsin of old. I have seen them on the battle- 2 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. field, and I never saw one that flinched from a danger or retreated before a foe. The literature of Wisconsin I am also somewhat familiar with, especially that branch of it which is known as the Milwaukee School of Lady Poets. They do honor to the State. They have added something to American lit- erature, and if now and then they have been carried away by a little ardor of feeling or slight excess of imagination, we must allow that to the zeal of beginners bent on winning the laurel at any cost. It is now a good many years ago since I began to edit a newspaper. I began with a weekly literary paper ; I mean by weekly that it was published once in seven days. Then it was printed on a hand press, and it took two men to run this press, one to pull the press and make the impressions, and another to furnish the ink and take off the paper when it was printed ; and of that paper, with great industry and care, we were able to THE MODERN NEWSPAPER. 3 print in a day, and one side at a time, five hundred copies, and that was about the extent of the circulation ; and if we got rid of the whole five hundred, we thought we were doing a first-class business. When we contrast that press with the great printing machines which modern ingenuity and genius — genius not ex- ceeded in any branch of human effort — have put at the service of the newspaper profession, we may well be astonished at the change ; printing presses that run literally at the rate of a mile a minute — that is the actual speed at which these machines revolve and pursue their beauti- ful, industrious, and never-failing toil; and they print from twenty to sixty thousand great sheets an hour, printing at each operation both sides of the pa- per. The intellectual outfit of a modern newspaper presents just as great a con- trast to that which was known forty or fifty years ago, as the mechanical outfit 4 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. does. You go into the office of such a paper, for instance, as the New York Tribune and you will find there a small army of intellectual laborers, each ap- pointed to his particular task, each pur- suing his peculiar duty, and all combin- ing to produce every morning that won- derful result which we may well call " the modern newspaper." Former times knew nothing of it. It is a thing entirely beyond the conception of the people of forty or fifty years ago. There is in such an establishment, in the first place, a trained staff of reporters, accomplished men, men familiar with every branch of study that intellectual young men ordina- rily devote themselves to, men who have prepared themselves either by college studies or by practical life in their depart- ments for the peculiar duty that they have undertaken ; and they are men of extraordinary talent, knowing the world well, able to see through a deception, and sometimes able to set one up. Then THE MODERN NEWSPAPER. 5 there is the staff of correspondents in other places and in other countries. Why, it will happen to the editor of a New York paper, for instance, to go down to his office in the morning and to send a man from London to St. Peters- burg in order to report something that is going to happen four or five days later. The modern newspaper literally has its fingers reaching out toward every quar- ter of the globe, and every finger is sen- sitive and every nerve brings back the treasures of intellectual wealth that are stored up there, and a photograph of the occurrences of life that are there taking place. And then there is a separate corps of writers, editorial writers, each man having his own special line of subjects, literary, religious, scien- tific, artistic, historical, political ; and each peculiarly qualified by special knowledge and training for that particu- lar department of the great work. The pecuniary expenditure of such a 2 6 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. newspaper is something enormous. It will not be excessive if I put down the expenditure of such a paper as the New York Tribune or New York Herald at an average of from $20,000 to $35,000 a week. And it is the concentration of all that talent and of all these resources, di- rected by trained intellect, watching all the occurrences of the world, in order to bring them together and present them to the public every day, that produces the phenomenon that we call the modern newspaper. Of course, such a fact, with this im- mense expenditure and this great con- centration of varied intellectual faculties, is only possible in a very populous coun- try where civilization is far advanced, and where the people everywhere de- mand that kind of intellectual product, that great work of human art which we call a modern newspaper. In a country thinly settled, in a poor country, the thing could not be produced nor paid THE MODERN NEWSPAPER. y for ; neither could we find that amount of intelligence and intellectual cultivation which is requisite in order to accom- plish such a result. It is then the coun- try which furnishes the power to the editor and proprietor of a newspaper to perform this great intellectual work ; and it is a sure mark of high intellectual de- velopment that any country is able to provide such a thing and to support it, and not merely to support one or two papers, such as the Tribune and the Her- ald, which I have mentioned, but many others in various large cities, all similarly worthy to be held up to your admiration as specimens of the highest form of hu- man intellectual production that we are yet acquainted with. The multiplicity of newspapers is also another feature of our American civihza- tion. The number of them here far ex- ceeds the number of those found in any other land. The most populous coun- tries of Europe, Germany and England, 8 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. have not so many newspapers in propor- tion to the population as we have in this country ; nor are those of the first rank scattered abroad in such a variety of places as here. That is another peculiar- ity of the United States. In the British kingdom we find three or four papers in London, one or two in Edinburgh, and one or two in Manchester, so that in the whole of the British Islands there are not more than six or seven newspapers which are conducted upon anything like the scale which I have attempted to describe. The people don't want them ; they are not able to support them ; they are not in a condition to require them. They are satisfied for the most part with an infe- rior kind of newspaper which is produced in their own town, or with the London newspaper which they get at a later hour in the day. In England also there is this great difference, that there is a great reading of weekly newspapers ; people are willing to wait a week there to find THE MODERN NEWSPAPER. 9 out the news. The world might be revo- lutionized and they would not know it until their weekly newspaper came around. In this country there is no town of any importance which has not from one to half a dozen daily papers. But it is not the case in England, neither is it the case in Germany, which is the coun- try next to England in point of general intelligence. There are very few first- rate papers in Germany, not one any- where which is to be compared to the American newspaper in the variety of news that it furnishes, in the amount of resources that are applied to it, or gener- ally in the ability with which it is con- ducted. The German newspapers are like the German learned men, exceed- ingly learned but not always in contact with the living sentiment of the people. They pursue their own theories remote from the people and do not feel their pulse and know their thoughts and un- derstand their hearts at all times. This 10 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. is the business of the American editor. He must know what the people think ; he must know what they feel, and he must speak their ideas, or his whole work will be in vain. There is no question but that the atmosphere of freedom is essen- tial to the production of a first-rate news- paper. A country where there is anything approaching to despotism, either politi- cally or socially, is not suited to the growth of newspapers. That is one rea- son why there are so many of them in this country and of such great excellence. It is the freedom, it is the ability to grow, which belongs to American things, and does not belong in the same sense, so far as I am aware, to things in other coun- tries. We say, for instance, that France is a free country. It is a republic cer- tainly, and yet, when you come to take a French newspaper, you find that it is al- together upon a lower plane ; the note is pitched in another key ; it is not the same THE MODERN NEWSPAPER. n sort of combination. It is like the old- fashioned newspapers which were seen in this country and England forty or fifty years ago. There will be one powerful, well-written essay which is called an edi- torial, and the rest of the paper will be comparatively inferior. The collection of news will be exceedingly imperfect. There is no French newspaper to be compared, for instance, to the Tribune or the Herald, in the universality of its reports, in the industry with which they are collected, or in the general extent and accuracy of the news which it furnishes. The reason for this fact I find in the great social freedom that exists in this country, where every intellectual plant grows vigorously and bears its fruit without hindrance from any quarter. The newspaper must be founded upon human nature. It must correspond to the wants of the people. It must furnish that sort of information which the people demand, or else it never can be success- 12 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. ful. The first thing which an editor must look for is news. If the newspaper has not the news, it may have everything else, yet it will be comparatively unsuc- cessful ; and by news I mean everything that occurs, everything which is of hu- man interest, and which is of sufficient importance to arrest and absorb the at- tention of the public or of any consider- able part of it. There is a great disposi- tion in some quarters to say that the newspapers ought to limit the amount of news that they print ; that certain kinds of news ought not to be published. I do not know how that is. I am not prepared to maintain any abstract proposition in that line ; but I have always felt that whatever the Divine Providence per- mitted to occur I was not too proud to report. A great deal has been said of late years about the sort of education that the journalist should be provided with, and some of the colleges have even estab- THE MODERN NEWSPAPER. 13 lished professorships of journalism. On the other hand, I heard a very able and successful journalist the other day, who said that special studies in a university would be of no use whatever, that the only post-graduate school for a journalist was a newspaper office. That is a ques- tion worth looking at. The intellectual professions, accord- ing to the old nomenclature, include cler- gymen, lawyers, and doctors. A news- paper man, the journalist, is new ; he is a modern product. When the old division of intellectual occupations was made, and the learned were partitioned off into cler- gymen, doctors, and lawyers, there was no such thing as a newspaper man. So- ciety had not got sufficiently advanced to have newspapers, and there was no occasion for intellectual men to think of such a thing. But now there must be newspapers, and men must be taught, educated, and trained to make them, and how shall that be done? There is one 3 14 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. remarkable thing about the education that a newspaper man requires. It must be universal. He must know a great many things, and the better he knows them the better he will be in his profes- sion. There is no chance for an ignora- mus in that trade. We have all heard of the family where the smartest boy was made a lawyer, and the next smartest was made a doctor, and the one that was not good for much of anything they made a minister. In my judgment a very mis- taken application of the third young man, because, if there is any occupation which ought to command the highest talents of man, it is that occupation which teaches us how to live in this life and how to hope for another. But the educated newspaper man must be qualified to dis- cuss the questions which the clergyman has to discuss. He must be qualified to judge of the science of the physician, and he must even be able to rise to those sublime intellectual complications which THE MODERN NEWSPAPER. 15 make a great lawyer. A journalist must be an all-around man. He must know whether the theology of the parson is sound, whether the physiology of the doctor is genuine, and whether the law of the lawyer is good law or not. His education, accordingly, should be exceed- ingly extensive. If possible, he should be sent to college. He should learn everything that the college has to teach ; but, what is more important, he should be sent to the school of practical life and of active and actual business. The man in this world who is going to play a part as a teacher and adviser to the public must know, if he is to teach wisely and successfully, what are the in- terests, what are the purposes, what are the ideas, and what are the needs of the people that he is to address and instruct. College education is of high value ; the life of the family, whatever cultivates the affections, is of a higher value ; but the actual contact of business, the under- 1 6 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. standing the rules of business and the means and methods of business, I think are quite as necessary to the newspaper man. So that, after he has got through with college, after he has had the best school education that his father and his friends can give him, how is there any chance for a special instruction in jour- nalism to be added to his college course ? How is that going to do him any great good ? How is a professor who teaches journalism, and who sits up in his chair and delivers generalities on the subject, going to help forward the ambitious young man who is anxious to lay hold of one of the great prizes — for there are great prizes — that are to be drawn in this intellectual lottery ? I do not see how a college instruction in journalism can be of any adequate practical use. The school which takes the young minister and carries him through a course of theology, church history, homiletics, dia- lectics, philosophy, and metaphysics. THE MODERN NEWSPAPER. 17 instructs him in the essentials of his pro- fession, all after his college course is completed. So it is in the case of a phy- sician. He studies anatomy, physiology, and chemistry, and fits himself in that way for the professional work that he is to perform. But it is impossible, in my judgment, that there should be any spe- cial 'school which will take a young man intending to pursue the profession of journalism, after he has finished his col- lege studies, and give him much valuable instruction in the duties and labors of his future professional life, and in that gen- eral experience in business which I rec- ommend as most indispensable. There is only one school for that purpose, and that is the newspaper office, and the bet- ter the newspaper office, the more com- plete, the more varied, and the more extensive the labors that it aims at and performs, and the better educated the young man who is going to learn his trade there, the more effectually will he 1 8 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. earn it. The newspaper office is the best post-graduate college that the stu- dent of the newspaper profession can have. Let him get the best education possible and then go to work in a news- paper office, and the better the editor the better the instruction. There is no system of maxims or pro- fessional rules that I know of that is laid down for the guidance of the journalist. The physician has his system of ethics and that sublime oath of Hippocrates which human wisdom has never tran- scended. The lawyer also has his code of ethics, and the rules of the courts and the rules of practice which he is in- structed in ; but I have never met with a system of maxims that seemed to me to be perfectly adapted to the general di- rection of a newspaper man ; and I have written down a few principles which oc- curred to me, which, with your permission, gentlemen, I will read for the benefit of the young newspaper men here to-night : THE MODERN NEWSPAPER. 19 I. Get the news, get all the news, and nothing but the news. II. Copy nothing from another pub- lication without perfect credit. III. Never print an interview without the knowledge and consent of the party interviewed. IV. Never print a paid advertisement as news matter. Let every advertise- ment appear as an advertisement; no sailing under false colors. V. Never attack the weak or the de- fenseless, either by argument, by invec- tive, or by ridicule, unless there is some absolute public necessity for so doing. VI. Fight for your opinions, but do not believe that they contain the whole truth or the only truth. VII. Support your party, if you have one. But do not think all the good men are in it and all the bad ones outside of it. VIII. Above all, know and believe that humanity is advancing ; that there 20 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. is progress in human life and human affairs ; and that, as sure as God lives, the future will be greater and better than the present or the past. That is a pretty general code, but it seems to me it covers the case very well. There is another point that I would like to touch upon, and that is the ques- tion of the power of the press. We un- derstand that the press is a powerful agent. It takes men when their informa- tion is incomplete, when their reasoning has not yet been worked out, when their opinions are not yet fixed, and it suggests and intimates and insinuates an opinion and a judgment which oftentimes the man, unless he is a man of great intelli- gence and force of character, adopts as something established and concluded. That is one part of the power of the press. It is a power and influence which is exercised over the minds of people, often without any knowledge or any criticism on the part of the person who s THE MODERN NEWSPAPER. 2 1 is subject to it. That is in the nature of the case. I do not see how it can be changed, except as the individual be- comes more intelligent and more able to form and guide his own judgment, and to emancipate himself from this sort of "7 suggestive influence and control. But that does not happen to everybody. In <_ that way there is a real and remarkable power in the press, and it is a power that inspires me always with a very solemn sense of responsibility. Here you take the mind of a man, and without his know- ing it you shape it, you direct it, you send him along on a road which he does not know, and, very often, which you do not know. That, however, is not what I mean when I speak of the power of the press ; and the power that I am now re- ferring to is something which may be of much greater importance. To go back a few years, I remember when we had in this country an immense and far-reaching controversy which took 22 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING, hold of the hearts and lives of the whole people, over the question of slavery. Then the press was divided, some on one side and some on the other, but those who were on the other are not so proud of it now. There was a great power, and for the most part it was exercised by the press for the good of the people, and we rejoice now, as we look back upon that mighty controversy, those of us whose fortune it was to bear some part in it, at the great result that was finally achieved — achieved as it was through blood and fire and tears that have left upon this country and upon the history of the world a mark that never will be obliterated. That is what I mean by the power of the press ; the power of speak- ing out the sentiment of the people, the voice of justice, the inspiration of wis- dom, the determination of patriotism, and the heart of the whole people. But if the press goes wrong in such cases, as those friends of ours did who were on THE MODERN NEWSPAPER. 23 the other side in that controversy, their judgment, their labor, their power is nothing. It is wiped out. You look for it and it is there no longer, and all their efforts have disappeared as the dew dis- appears when the sun rises. There is, however, another function of the press which is connected with this that I have now been speaking of, and which is perhaps even more momentous. In this free country our Constitution puts into the hands of the executive officers of the Government a tremendous authority. There is no king, no em- peror, no autocrat in the world who wields such authority, such power, as the President of the United States. We will suppose the time should come — God forbid that it ever should come — that there should be in the post of the Presi- dent a man who has gained such influ- ence over the hearts of the whole people that they become deaf to the suggestions of wisdom, and give to his ambition a 24 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. free sway and an open field. Suppose that he sets aside, little by little, the restraints of the Constitution. Suppose that he tramples upon that great prin- ciple of personal liberty which is the noblest inheritance that our fathers have left us, because it is the very life of the repubHc ; suppose that he tramples down that principle ; the executive power is in his hands, even the courts incline to sub- serviency, the army follows and obeys him. Where, then, is the safeguard of the public liberty against his ambition? It is in the press. It is in the free press. When every other bulwark is gone, the free press will remain to preserve the liberties that we mean shall be handed down to our children, and to maintain, let us hope, the republic in all its majesty and glory for ever and ever. THE PROFESSION OF JOURNALISM. A Lecture delivered to the Students of Union College, Friday, October ij, iSgj. If there is anything in life that is de- lightful to an old man, it is the opportu- nity of meeting intelligent and earnest young men, and telling them something out of his experience that may be useful to them ; and, as our desire is that this shall be a practical occasion, I want to say at the beginning that if any part of the subject, as I go over it, shall not seem to any one of you to be sufficiently ex- plained and elucidated, I will be very much obliged if you will get up and ask the questions that you wish to have an- swered. 25 26 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING, The profession of journalism is com- paratively new. It really is, as it exists to-day, an affair of the last forty or fifty years. When I began to practice it in a weekly paper the apparatus which we have now was quite unknown. The sheets which we daily take in our hands and from which we gather a view of the whole world and of all that has been going on in it, all the sciences, all the ideas, all the achievements, all the new lights that influence the destiny of man- kind — all that was entirely out of the question. There was no such apparatus, and it has been created by the necessities of the public and by the genius of a few men who have invented, step by step, the machinery and the methods that are indis- pensable, and without which we could not undertake to do what we do. Of course the most essential part of this great mechanism is not the mechan- ism itself ; it is the intelligence, the brains, and the sense of truth and honor THE PROFESSION OF JOURNALISM. 27 that reside in the men who conduct it and make it a vehicle of usefulness — or it may be of mischief : because what is use- ful can just as easily be turned to mis- chief if the engineer who stands behind and lets on the steam is of an erroneous disposition. The number of intellectual young men who are looking at this new profes- sion, which for the want of a better name we call the profession of journalism, is very great. I suppose that I receive myself every day, taking one day with another, half a dozen letters from men, many of them college graduates, asking for employment, and for an opportunity of showing what is in them. Of course they can not all get it in the same paper. Now and then one obtains a place, but generally the rule that is observed in all well-organized newspaper offices is that the boys who began at the beginning are taken up step by step in accordance with their faculties and their merits. This is 28 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. SO because, as we know in college, it is impossible that there should be any im- posture which sets a man's abilities above their real value, since in the daily inter- course and the daily competition of study and of recitation the real worth of a man's brain is demonstrated, so that there is never any doubt. So it is in a newspaper office. The boys who begin at the bottom come out at the top. At the same time these boys do not all start out with the best outfit, that is to say, with the best education ; and I have known very distinguished authorities who doubted whether high education was of any great use to a journalist. Horace Greeley told me several times that the real newspaper man was the boy who had slept on newspapers and ate ink. Although I served him for years and we were very near in our personal relations, I think he always had a little grudge against me because I came up through a college. THE PROFESSION OF JOURNALISM. 29 Now, here before us are a number of young gentlemen who, I have no doubt, will be led to embrace this profes- sion. We know that among a certain number of students there are so many doctors, so many clergymen, so many lawyers — sometimes too many lawyers ; and there are also, of course, a consider- able number who are looking forward to this great civilizing engine of the press ; and it is a great engine. Just consider the clergyman. He preaches two or three times in a week and he has for his congregation two hun- dred, three hundred, five hundred, and if he is a great popular orator in a great city, he may have a thousand hearers ; but the newspaper man is the stronger be- cause throughout all the avenues of news- paper communication, how many does he preach to ? A million, half a million, two hundred thousand people ; and his preaching is not on Sundays only but it is every day. He reiterates, he says it 30 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. over and over, and finally the thing gets fixed in men's minds from the mere habit of saying it and hearing it ; and, without criticising, without inquiring whether it is really so, the newspaper dictum gets established and is taken for gospel ; and perhaps it is not gospel at all. In regard to this profession there are two stages, and we will consider each of them separately. The first is the stage of preparation. What sort of prepara- tion, what sort of preliminary education should a man have who means to devote himself to this business? There are some colleges which have lately intro- duced schools of journalism or depart- ments of journalism, where they propose to teach the art of newspaper making, to instruct the student in the methods that he should employ, and to fit him out so that he can go to a newspaper office and make a newspaper. Well, I will not say that is not useful. THE PROFESSION OF JOURNALISM. 31 I do not know that there is in any intel- lectual study, or in any intellectual pur- suit, or in any intellectual occupation that is followed with zeal and attention, any- thing that can be described as useless. No. I do not know of anything, if you really learn it, although it may seem to your next neighbor around the corner rather trivial, that is not useful after all. There is certainly a great utility and a profound science in baseball, and the man who pursues it and acquires it, has acquired something that will be useful to him. He has got a knowledge, he has got an intellectual discipline that will be valuable all his life through. So it is with every study that a man may pursue, so that we can not say that anything is useless. But as for these alleged depart- ments of journalism in the colleges I have not found that a student or gradu- ate who had pursued that special course instead of pursuing other studies, was of any great avail as a practical worker in 32 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. the newspaper work that he had been trying to learn. In fact, it seems to me, if I may be allowed a little criticism, that the colleges generally are rather branching out too much, until they are inclined to take the whole universe into their curriculum, and to teach things which do not exactly be- long there. Give the young man a first- class course of general education ; and if I could have my way, every young man who is going to be a newspaper man, and who is not absolutely rebellious against it, should learn Greek and Latin after the good old fashion. I had rather take a young fellow who knows the Ajax of Sophocles, and who has read Tacitus, and can scan every ode of Horace — I would rather take him to report a prize fight or a spelling match, for instance, than to take one who has never had those advantages. I believe in the colleges ; I believe in high education ; but I do not believe in scattering your THE PROFESSION OF JOURNALISM. 33 fire before you are in the face of the enemy. When you begin to practice the pro- fession of a newspaper man, then is the best time to begin to learn it ; but while you are in college with the daily series of professors and all the appliances of study that belong to the college, make the best of them, and pursue vigorously those studies that give accuracy in learn- ing, and that give fidelity and accuracy in recitation. The great end of educa- tion, President Walker used to say, is to be able to tell what you know ; and he used to say, too, that some bright men carried it so far that they were able to tell a great deal they did not know. There is no question that accuracy, the faculty of seeing a thing as it is, of knowing, for instance, that it is two and one quarter and not two and three eighths, and saying so — that is one of the first and most precious ends of a good education. Next to that, I would put 34 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. the ability to know how and where most promptly to look for what you don't know and what you want to know. Thirdly, I would put Dr. Walker's great object, being able to tell what you know, and to tell it accurately, precisely, with- out exaggeration, without prejudice, the fact just as it is, whether it be a report of a baseball game, or of a sermon, or of a lecture on electricity, whatever it may be, to get the thing exactly as it is. The man who can do that is a very well-edu- cated man. In addition come the qualities of per- sonal talent and genius. Now, genius is a great factor. When we think of such a genius as the one I have just mentioned, the late Mr. Greeley, why, our minds may well be filled with admiration. I do not suppose more than one or two gentlemen here ever knew Mr. Greeley personally ; but he was a man of im- mense ability, of instincts of extraordi- nary correctness in many respects, and THE PROFESSION OF JOURNALISM. 35 of the power of expression, of telling what he knew in a delightfully pictur- esque, humorous way, which not merely instructed the hearer and reader, but gave him a sense of delight and satisfac- tion from the mere art that was applied in the telling. He had had no great ad- vantages of education. He had to pick up his education as he went along, read- ing in the winter evenings by the fire- light, and never wasting a chance of learning something. But he lacked one of the most precious faculties, which it is another great object of the college education to cultivate and bring out, and that is what we will call the critical faculty, the# judgment which, when a proposition is stated to you or a fact is reported, looks at it calmly and says, " That is true," or else, " That is false " ; the judgment, the instinct, the developed and cultivated instinct which knows the truth when it is presented and detects error when it comes masquerading be- 36 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. fore you, without the necessity ol any long examination to ascertain whether it is truth or error. This great man of whom I am speaking, this great and bril- liant journalist, one of the greatest we have produced, was deficient in that faculty, so that sometimes he was mis- taken. We are all of us mistaken occa- sionally, I dare say, but perhaps his mis- takes were more conspicuous because of his great power in writing, and his rare genius. Now, as for the preliminary studies of the journalist apart from the ancient lan- guages, whose importance, I think, can not be overestimated : and the reason why this importance, in my judgment, is so great is that they lie at the founda- tion of our own language, and the man who does not know the three or four of those old languages, or at least two of them — if he knows three, if he knows the old Teutonic all the better — the man who has not that knowledge does not THE PROFESSION OF JOURNALISM. 37 really know the English language, and does not command its wonderful re- sources, all the subtleties and abilities of expression which are in it. Certainly, without Greek and Latin no man knows English ; and without Teutonic no man's knowledge of English is perfect. The first thing for the man who is looking forward to this profession, in which the use of the English language is the main thing, since it is the instrument that he must apply continually for the expression of ideas and for the dissemi- nation of knowledge, is to know this language thoroughly, and that is the very cornerstone of the education that a journalist should look forward to and should labor after, and should neglect no opportunity of improving himself in. After a knowledge of the English lan- guage comes, of course, in regular order, the practice, the cultivation of the ability to use it, the development of that art which in its latest form we call style, and 38 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. which distinguishes one writer from an- other. This style is something of such an evanescent, intangible nature that it is difficult to tell in what it consists. I suppose it is in the combination of im- agination and humor, with the entire command of the word-resources of the language, all applied together in the con- struction of sentences. I suppose that is what makes style. It is a very precious gift, but it is not a gift that can always be acquired by practice or by study. It may be added that certainly in its highest perfection it can never be ac- quired by practice. I do not believe, for instance, that everybody who should en- deavor to acquire such a style as the late Dr. Channing possessed, could succeed in so doing. He was a famous writer fifty years ago in Boston, and his style is of the most beautiful and remarkable character. As a specimen of it, let me suggest to you his essay on Napoleon Bonaparte. That was perhaps the very THE PROFESSION OF JOURNALISM, 39 best of the critical analysis of Napo- leon that succeeded the period of Napo- leon worship, which had run all over the world. Channing's style was sweet, pure, and delightful, without having those surprises, those extraordinary fe- licities that mark the styles of some writers. It was perfectly simple, trans- lucent throughout, without effort, never leaving you in any doubt as to the idea ; and you closed the book with the feeling that you had fallen in with the most sympathetic of minds, whose instructions you might sometimes accept or some- times reject, but whom you could not regard without entire respect and ad- miration. Another example of a very beautiful and admirable style which is well worth study is that of Nathaniel Hawthorne. In his writings we are charmed with the new sense and meaning that he seems to give to familiar words. It is like read- ing a new language to take a chapter of 40 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. Hawthorne ; yet it is perfectly lovely, because with all its suggestiveness it is perfectly clear ; and when you have done with it you wish you could do it yourself. The next thing that I would dwell upon would be the knowledge of poli- tics, and especially of American politics. This is a very hard subject. Its history is difficult. If you go back to the foun- dation of the republic, you find it was extremely complicated even then ; and it requires very careful study and a very elevated impartiality to make your anal- ysis at all satisfactory to yourself as you go through the work. Still, it is indispensable to a man who means to fill an important place in jour- nalism, and all who begin upon it cer- tainly have that intention. No young man goes into any profession without a good degree of ambition ; no young man can carry his ambition very far in jour- nalism — I mean, in general, universal THE PROFESSION OF JOURNALISM. 41 journalism, not in special ; no man can carry his ambition very far who does not know politics, and in order to know poli- tics there must be in the man some natu- ral disposition for politics. I have often been appealed to by friends, who said : " Can't you take this young man and give him employment ? " Then I will watch that young man for a month or so and see what it is that he takes up in the morning. If he takes up the newspaper and turns to the political part of the paper, and is interested in that, why that is a good symptom of his intellectual tendencies ; but if, instead of that, he takes up a magazine and sits down to read a love story, you can not make a newspaper man out of him. And yet he may make a very good writer of love stories ; and as that is a sort of merchandise which seems to be always in demand, and to bring pretty fair prices, why, if you have a talent in that direction, go ahead. You may make 42 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. a good living, I have no doubt ; but you will not play any momentous part upon the stage of public affairs, and that is the sphere of activity to which the generous- hearted and courageous youth looks for- ward. In order to be of importance in the affairs of this world in the newspaper profession, you must be a politician, and you must know not merely the theories and doctrines of parties, not merely the recondite part of politics, but you must know practical politics, the history, the men, the individuals, their ideas, their purposes, and their deeds ; know them, if you can, as they really are, not as the blind and the prejudiced may imagine them to be. Now, Mr. Greeley is my great exem- plar in journalism. He thought a news- paper man was of little use who did not know just the number of votes in every township in the State of New York, and in every voting precinct, and who could THE PROFESSION OF JOURNALISM. 43 not tell whether the returns from the Second District of Pound Ridge, in Westchester County, were correctly re- ported or not without sending to the place to find out how many votes had really been cast. That was one of his great points of distinction and success; but I would not advise you to labor after that sort of knowledge unless you have inherited a natural talent for it. But you should understand and appreciate the theory of the American Government, you should know where this republic began, where it came from, and where it belongs in the history of mankind, and what part it is destined to play in the vast drama of human existence. That is the sort of politics that must appeal to any intelligent man, and that will surely test his utmost powers. And while we are on this point, we may say in passing that an American who thinks another country is better than this should not go into journalism. You must be for the 44 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. Stars and Stripes every time, or the peo- ple of this country won't be for you, and you won't sell enough papers to pay your expenses. In order to understand the theory of the American Government, the most se- rious, calm, persistent study should be given to the Constitution of the United States. I don't mean learning it by heart, committing it to memory. What you want is to understand it, to know the principles at the bottom of it ; to feel the impulse of it ; to feel the heart-beat that thrills through the whole American peo- ple. That is the vitality that is worth knowing ; that is the sort of politics that excels all the mysteries of ward elections, and lifts you up into a view where you can see the clear skies, the unknown ex- panse of the future. Besides the Consti- tution of the United States, it is well to be acquainted with the constitutions of all the States. All these constitutions are more or less modeled upon the cen- THE PROFESSION OF JOURNALISM. 45 tral Constitution : but there are differ- ences, and those differences a man ought to know. The citizen of New York ought to understand the Constitution of New York, and for himself get at the reasons for this and that provision. Take, for instance, the great question which has occupied the people of New York so long, the question of an elective judi- ciary or of a judiciary appointed by the Governor : which is better, which is right ? That is better and that is right, evidently, which gives better judges and which produces a more equable, steady, consistent, and just administration of law. Well, now, the young man who sets to work and studies out that ques- tion has accomplished a great deal ; he has got a light in his mind that will go with him a great way, and that will help out his judgment in other things. Sup- posing that he is conducting a news- paper, and is responsible to the people for conducting it in an instructive and 46 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. useful manner, and for having it such that when he says a thing is so the peo- ple will know that it is so ; the man who knows the constitutions of the States, of his own State, and of all the principal States, as well as the Constitution of the United States, is well fitted for conduct- ing a newspaper, or even for administer- ing a government. The modern newspaper, however, is not confined to any neighborhood or to any country. You have got to look be- yond your own land ; you have got to study the history of every European country. You must know, first of all, the history of England. We came from England ; the American Constitution is rooted in English principles and in Eng- lish history. You want to know where it started from. You want to go into the garden where the seed was first sown and watch the growth of this great prod- uct of wisdom and beneficence which we call the American Constitution. You THE PROFESSION OF JOURNALISM. 47 see, the course of preparatory study is pretty large ; and it is not very easy ; it must be carried on in earnest. It is not a matter of fancy or of play. And so not merely with the history of England, but with the history of all of Europe, of every great and every little country. The course of human history offers a safe guide for human action, and especially for political action. The history of France is a chapter that is worthy of the utmost attention that can be given to it. Why have such and such results been produced ? What is there from which this and that effect has proceeded ? These are the sort of questions that care- ful study can bring an answer to ; and without careful study you will never get the answer. But I do not propose all these things as a course of preparatory study for a young man. You can not learn every- thing in a day. It is as much as many men can do to learn a few things in the 48 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. lapse of a long life ; but at least try to learn something solid, to add to your stock of efficacious knowledge, to add to your understanding of principles, and to feel that as little effort as possible has been wasted and as little time as possible flung away. The next point to be attended to is this : What books ought you to read ? There are some books that are indispen- sable — a few books. Almost all books have their use, even the silly ones, and an omnivorous reader, if he reads intelli- gently, need never feel that his time is wasted even when he bestows it on the flimsiest trash that is printed ; but there are some books that are absolutely indis- pensable to the kind of education that we are contemplating, and to the profession that we are considering ; and of all these the most indispensable, the most useful, the one whose knowledge is most effect- ive, is the Bible. There is no book from which more valuable lessons can be THE PROFEFSION OF JOURNALISM. 49 learned. I am considering it now not as a religious book, but as a manual of utility, of professional preparation, and professional use for a journalist. There is perhaps no book whose style is more suggestive and more instructive, from which you learn more directly that sub- lime simplicity which never exaggerates, which recounts the greatest event with solemnity, of course, but without senti- mentality or affectation, none which you open with such confidence and lay down with such reverence. There is no book like the Bible, When you get into a controversy and want exactly the right answer, when you are looking for an ex- pression, what is there that closes a dis- pute like a verse from the Bible ? What is it that sets up the right principle for you, which pleads for a policy, for a cause, so much as the right passage of Holy Scripture ? Then, everybody who is going to practice the newspaper profession ought 50 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. to know Shakespeare. He is the chief master of English speech. He is the head of English literature. Considered as a writer, considered as a poet, con- sidered as a philosopher, I do not know another who can be named with him. He is not merely a constructor of plays that are powerful and impressive when they are shown upon the stage, with all the auxiliaries of lights, and scenery, and characters ; he is a high literary treasure, a mighty storehouse of wisdom, the great glory of the literature of our language ; and, if you don't know him, knowing the language may not be of much avail after all. Perhaps that is an exaggeration, and I take it back ; but it is an object to know Shakespeare ; it is indispensable to a journalist. Then there is another English author who ought not to be neglected by any young man who means to succeed in this profession. I mean John Milton, and I invite your attention to that immortal THE PROFESSION' OF JOURNALISM. 51 essay of his, too little known in our day, the Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing. It is a treasury of the highest wisdom, of the noblest sentiments, and of the greatest instruction ; study that, and you will get at once the philosophy of English liberty and the highest doctrine that has ever been promulgated, to my knowledge, with regard to the freedom of the press. When I advise you to make yourselves familiar with these glories of English literature, I do not say that these writers ought to be taken as models. Do not take any model. Every man has his own natural style, and the thing to do is to develop it into simplicity and clearness. Do not, for instance, labor after such a style as Matthew Arnold's — one of the most beautiful styles that has ever been seen in any literature. It is no use to try to get another man's style, or to imitate the wit or the mannerisms of an- other writer. The late Mr. Carlyle, for 52 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. example, did, in my judgment, a consid- erable mischief in his day because he led everybody to write after the style of his French Revolution, and it became pretty tedious. They got over it after a time, however. But it was not a good thing. Let every man write in his own style, taking care only not to be led into any affectation, but to be perfectly clear, perfectly simple, or, in other words, to follow the honored and noble traditions of Union College. That is all that it seems to me nec- essary to say with regard to the studies and the education of the journalist. Now, let us turn to the practice of this profession. One of the parts of the news- paper profession which employs the greatest number of men, and I may also say the greatest amount of talent, is the business of reporting. In a large news- paper office, as in the Tribune in New York, for example, where there may be one hundred men who are attached to THE PROFESSION OF JOURNALISM. 53 the paper as writers, as correspondents, as reporters, and to the strictly edito- rial department, out of this one hundred, sixty or seventy will be reporters — that is, men who are sent out when any event of interest occurs, when a bank breaks, when a great fire takes place, when there is an earthquake, to inquire into the facts and collect information, and to put that information into form so that it can be printed the next da3\ That is one of the most important branches of the pro- fession, and it is paid very liberally, I am glad to say. For instance, I know many reporters who earn ten or fifteen dollars a day and some who earn more. They have constant employment, and their labor is entirely agreeable to them- selves. That is one of the first things, when a young man comes for employment and you take him on and give him a chance, that he is set to do. There, you see, all this culture that we have been considering is at once brought into ac- 54 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. tion. He must learn accurately the facts, and he must state them exactly as they are ; and if he can state them with a little degree of life, a little approach to elo- quence, or a little humor in his style, why, his report will be perfect. It must be accurate ; it must be free from affec- tation ; it must be well set forth, so that there shall not be any doubt as to any part or detail of it ; and then if it is en- livened with imagination, or with feel- ing, or with humor, why, you have got a literary product that no one need be ashamed of. Thus we see this depart- ment of the newspaper is really a high art, and it may be carried to an extraor- dinary degree of perfection. At the same time, the cultivated man is not in every case the best reporter. One of the best I ever knew was a man who could not spell four words correctly to save his life, and his verb did not always agree with the subject in person and number ; but he always got the fact so THE PROFESSION OF JOURNALISM. 55 exactly, and he saw the picturesque, the interesting, and important aspect of it so vividly, that it was worth another man's while, who possessed the knowledge of grammar and spelling, to go over the re- port and write it out. Now, that was a man who had genius ; he had a talent the most indubitable, and he got hand- somely paid in spite of his lack of gram- mar, because after his work had been done over by a scholar it was really beautiful. But any man who is sincere and earnest, and not always thinking about himself, can learn to be a good re- porter. He can learn to ascertain the truth ; he can acquire the habit of see- ing. When he looks at a fire, what is the most important thing about that fire? Here, let us say, are five houses burning ; which is the greatest ? whose store is that which is burning? and who has met with the greatest loss ? Has any individ- ual perished in the conflagration ? Are there any very interesting circumstances 56 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. about the fire ? How did it occur? Was it like Chicago, where a cow kicked over a spirit lamp and burned up the city ? All these things the reporter has to judge about. He is the eye of the paper, and he is there to see which is the vital fact in the story, and to produce it, tell it, write it out. Next to the reporter, a very impor- tant functionary in the newspaper is the man who reads the other newspapers and makes extracts from them, Mr. Greeley used to think that it was enough to make a good paper if he had an able man to read the exchanges, provided he himself was there to add up the returns of the elections. The man who reads the ex- changes is a very important man ; and, let me say, too, he is a pretty highly paid man. He has to read, we will say, three thousand papers regularly. All the newspapers in the country come into the office, and he does not do anything else. He sits at his desk all day, and a pile of THE PROFESSION OF JOURNALISM. 57 newspapers, or say a cord of newspapers, is laid before him every morning ; he starts to work and turns them over and over to see what is in them. He has to know what it is that should be taken from them and put into his paper. What is the interesting story? It requires judgment to know this ; it requires knowledge and experience as well as tal- ent. It also requires a sense of humor, because there are a great many things that are really important that may not seem so at the first glance, and the news- paper reader has got to judge about that. He must always be on hand and spend a great many hours at his desk ; and he is pretty tired when he gets through with his day's task. It is a hard duty, but he has lots of amusement, and, as I said, he is very well paid. So he is happy. Next to the exchange reader in the newspaper organization comes the man whose duty it is to receive manuscripts and examine them and prepare them for 58 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. the press, to edit them, correct them ; where the writer has made a little slip of rhetoric, to put the right word in or the right turn of the phrase ; to clarify it all ; to make the sentences clean. That is a hard job in the writing of a great many persons. They interject ; they put sub- sentences in parentheses. They do not begin and say the thing in its exact order, taking first the man and then what he did, and where he went; but they mix it up and complicate it. The editor who examines the manuscripts has got to go through all these things and straighten them out and disentangle the facts that the writer has twisted up ; and then he must correct the punctuation, mark the paragraphs where one idea is finished and a new idea begins. He also receives the correspondence. Letters from all over the world go into his hands. You will get a letter from Madagascar, per- haps. Ought it to be published ? There is a lot of news in it, perhaps, that is of THE PROFESSION OF JOURNALISM. 59 no interest in New York or in Schenec- tady, He has got to determine whether it is worth while to put that in or to leave it out, although you may have to pay for it and not use it. Masses of mat- ter are paid for in a large newspaper office that are never used. So, you see, he is a very important functionary, and it requires a great deal of knowledge, a great deal of judgment, a great deal of literary cultivation to be able to fill that position. Then finally you come to the editor- in-chief, and he is always a man who gets into his place by a natural process of se- lection. He comes there because he can do the work, and T have known some young men who had no idea that they would ever have control of a newspaper who have risen to that place, and who have filled it with wisdom and success and force. Yet at the bottom of it all, it is always a question of character, as well as of talent. A fellow that is practicing 6o THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. arts of deception may last a little while, but he can not last long. The man who stays is the man who has the staying power; and the staying power is not merely intellectual, it is moral. It is in the character, and people believe in him, because they are sure he does not mean to say anything that is not so. Now, every one who has written or talked about newspapers, has made a great account of the matter of news, and in these remarks that it has been my opportunity to make I have not said any- thing yet on that subject. News is un- doubtedly a great thing in a newspaper. A newspaper without news is no news- paper. The main function of a newspa- per is to give the news, and tell you what has happened in the world, what events have occurred of all sorts, political, scien- tific, and nonsensical. By the way, one person that I have not mentioned is the scientific man. That is also a place that has to be filled by special cultivation. A THE PROFESSION OF JOURNALISM. 6l scientific man, one who knows electricity and chemistry ; one who can really un- derstand the inventions of Edison, and who can tell what is going on in the sci- entific world where so many men of gen- ius are incessantly at work bringing out and developing new things. There must be a man of that sort on a newspaper. That is a department of news of supreme consequence. But the business of collecting news, which has always been regarded as of prime importance, is rather declining into a second place. It is a necessity, and it is very costly, to collect and to bring here to Schenectady, for instance, for printing to-morrow morning, the news of the whole world, from England, from Germany, from Russia, from France, from Africa, from South America, from the Pacific, so that it may be presented to the reader who takes up the paper to- morrow, and he may have a panorama of all the events of the preceding day. 62 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. What a wonder, what a marvel it is that here for one or two cents you buy a history of the entire globe of the day before ! It is something that is mi- raculous, really, when you consider it. All brought here to Schenectady and printed ! All brought here by electric- ity, by means of the telegraph ! So that the man who has knowledge enough to read, can tell what was done in France yesterday, or in Turkey, or in Persia. That is a wonderful thing. But the very necessity of bringing all this matter to- gether, and the immense expense attend- ant upon it, have led to the formation of associations among newspapers, and to the organization of agencies. I won't undertake to say now how much the ex- pense is, because I do not remember it with absolute certainty, but it is an enor- mous sum, say perhaps three to five thou- sand dollars a day ; but when it is divided among the four or five or six thousand newspapers in the United States, first THE PROFESSION OF JOURNALISM. 63 divided among all the great cities and then among the cities of the second class, which pay less, and so on until finally it is distributed all around, why, it costs each individual newspaper very little ; and the system which is most perfectly organized is the establishment known as the United Press. It supplies the news of the whole world, so that the individual editor sit- ting at his desk has only to look after the news of his own locality. When he has got that, he gets from the United Press the news of all the rest of the world, and, putting them together, his report of the day's history of the globe is complete. That is an institution which has revolu- tionized and is revolutionizing the opera- tions of the profession, so that instead of the struggle to hunt after the news, to appreciate the importance of events that people generally do not see, and to re- port them so that you may have in your journal something that the others have not got, that struggle is mainly obvi- 64 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. ated by this organization of the United Press. The news of the entire world is brought to you, and the editor, the news- paper, is put back into the position which the thinker occupied before this supreme attention to news was regarded as indis- pensable. The editors and writers of the newspapers are now emancipated from all that drudgery, and have become in- tellectual beings again. The work of news-getting is performed by this great and wide-reaching agency of the United Press, and the individual editor here in Schenectady, or in Chicago, or New Orleans has no anxiety on that subject any longer. He devotes himself to the intellectual part of his business, and is able to carry that on with a nearer ap- proach to perfection than he has ever been able to attain before. That, I think, is a revolution that is going to make a great change in the profession of news- paper making, raising it to a higher dig- nity than it has ever occupied. I look THE PROFESSION OF JOURNALISM. 6$ forward to the effects of this revolution with the greatest hope and confidence, and I think you young gentlemen who have not yet embarked in the profession may be congratulated on being able to come into it under such auspicious cir- cumstances. Gentlemen, I am greatly indebted to you for your kind attention, and I bid you farewell ! THE MAKING OF A NEWSPAPER MAN. A Lecture delivered at Cornell University, on Founders Day, January ii, i8g4. Every age and every stage of social evolution requires and produces new exemplars and new leaders, men better suited than others to the work that age has to do, to the business it has in hand in the vast drama of man's existence upon earth. Two men, two kinds of men, seem to me especially the guides, the leaders, the servants, the benefactors of the present day ; and the first of these is the man of thought, of science, the man who grasps the secrets of Nature, and who brings out new methods and 66 MAKING OF A NEWSPAPER MAN. 6/ new appliances by which they are con- verted into agents of human use. Con- sider, for instance, what such a man as Edison does for the world, or a man like Tesla, who is bending all the faculties of original genius to give us new means and new powers, so that the abilities and the resources of humanity are doubled or quintupled, and men become able to live better upon this planet, and to leave behind them the faculty of still better living for those who are to follow after. That is one class of men that 1 refer to, the thinkers, the men of science, the inventors ; and the other class is that of those whom God has endowed with a genius for saving, for getting rich, for bringing wealth together, for accumu- lating and concentrating money, men against whom it is now fashionable to declaim, and against whom legislation is sometimes directed. And yet is there any benefactor of humanity who is to be envied in his achievements and in the 68 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. memory and the monuments he has left behind him, more than Ezra Cornell ? Or, to take another example that is here before our eyes, more than Henry W. Sage ? These are men who knew how to get rich, because they had been en- dowed with that faculty, and when they had got wealth, they knew how to give it for great public enterprises, for uses that will remain living, immortal as long as man remains upon the earth. The men of genius and the men of money, those who prepare new agencies of life, and those who accumulate and save the money for great enterprises and great public works, these are the peculiar and the inestimable leaders of the world, as the twentieth century is opening upon us. It is expected that I shall say some- thing here to-day about the newspaper and the art of making it. The news- paper is an article of primary necessity. You must have your breakfast, but you must have your newspaper too. With- MAKING OF A NEWSPAPER MAN. 69 out it we don't know what has happened in the world, we don't know what new ideas, we don't know what shocking events, we don't know what well-founded or what fantastical hopes are looming before the minds of the masses of men. We don't even know who is married. Now, in these remarks that I shall at- tempt to make, there will be necessarily a great many details and a great many small circumstances ; and I shall be in- debted to any one who does not see exactly the fact that I am stating, or who wants some further explanation of it, if he will interrupt me and get up and put his question. The result may not be ex- actly a lecture, but a kind of academic conversation that may be more lively and more useful than a formal discourse. The newspaper profession is certainly a learned profession in one sense. It is a profession in which the utmost amount of learning can be put to use. But at the same time I am sorry to say that 10 70 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. there are newspapers in which learning is very sparingly applied, and more facts and better logic would be an improve- ment. But a newspaper is very much like human nature ; it is right sometimes, and it is wrong pretty often. But, on the whole, there is no question that the newspaper is not only a needful institu- tion, but that it is a useful, advantageous, and beneficial institution. Just now the business of making news- papers is going through a revolution ; it is passing through changes of a very radical and remarkable nature. These changes are due, first, to the invention of new printing machinery, which makes it possible to publish the large editions and the large newspapers that we see all around us. Before these machines were invented it was not possible to do this, and a machine, an old-fashioned press that could turn out six hundred or seven hundred copies a day from the hands of the operator, was the best there MAKING OF A NEWSPAPER MAN. 71 was in the world. Now the most im- proved presses — and I say frankly that the best that we have are those made by Hoe in New York — can turn out at one impression large sheets of eight, ten, or twelve pages and deliver twenty thou- sand finished papers in an hour. We hear sometimes figures more surprising, but that is about the maximum of safe and good work. One peculiarity of these machines is that the papers are not only printed, and printed well, but they are folded by the machine ; and, what is more, they are counted and laid out in piles of a certain number, so that when the dealer who buys them comes to the office to get his papers, he does not need to count them ; they are all counted and ready for him to take away. When I was in the Tribune, thirty years ago, we had to employ men to count the papers after they were printed, and it was a very important duty. If they made a mistake of any moment, there would be 72 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. trouble. But now there is no mistake possible. The papers are handsomely folded, and they are laid down and counted, so that the dealer picks out his pile and goes away certain that he has got just what he has bought. Next to the press comes the type- setting machine. We who have reached a certain maturity of life grew up in the impression that a machine to set type was something impracticable. In fact, ever since I was a boy I have known men trying to make them, and not will- ing to set their failures down as real failure. But, as a matter of fact, it is not more than fifteen years, let us say, since a machine, operated with keys like a piano, was actually invented that could set up type by mechanical means, and furnish matter set up and corrected, and ready to be put upon the press. There are a good many of these machines of very different nature and operation. The one that is now most in use is the inven- MAKING OF A NEWSPAPER MAN. 73 tion of a man of talent named Mergan- thaler. By that machine the t3'pe are set up, a line is formed and corrected, just one line at a time, and then with melted metal a cast of that line is made, so that, instead of a mass of type, you can take in your hands what printers call a slug ; and then they go on and make another until the whole article and the whole page is put together, ready to be used on the presses. Then there is another ma- chine which a certain literary gentleman named Mark Twain — I presume most of you have heard of Mark Twain — is in- terested in. He has spent a good deal of money on the invention, and I am glad to say that he has had it to spend, all created from the brain of a man of genius. It is a machine of exceeding delicacy, and it does exactly what the human fingers do. It picks up the type and puts it in the box and secures it there, so that finally the column, the article, can be put into the form and the 74 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. impression be made. It seems to do all that a man can do by mechanism. I should have said that with all the modern printing machinery no types are put upon the press to be printed. A stereotype plate, usually of a whole page, is made, with a curve in its shape that will fit the press, and from that the print- ing is done. But this gentleman, this friend of Mark Twain, sets his type up one by one by his machine, and the type is put into the form, and the stereotype plate of the whole page is made from that. Then there are half a dozen other inventions, but the most successful one so far, the one that is in use in a great many newspaper offices, is that of Mer- ganthaler, or, as it is commonly called, the Linotype machine. I have never taken to that very much, because it didn't seem to me to turn out a page as hand- some, in a typographical point of view, as a page set up by hand. The differ- ence in expense is something consider- MAKING OF A NEWSPAPER MAN. 75 able, however. I have been told by one large newspaper publisher who employs that machine that he gets his typesetting done for one half the cost of typesetting done by hand. Mr. Whitelaw Reid, of the Tribune, thought that he had it for less than half. Of course the effect of using these mechanical typesetters is to cheapen the newspaper when it is done and ready for sale. But the great revolutionary agent is the cheapness we have reached in the cost of paper. I remember very well when paper was made of rags, and pres- ently it became evident that the country and all countries didn't supply rags enough. The manufacturers couldn't get the rags, and so we were liable to be left without paper. Then there came along a Frenchman who invented a chemical method of making paper from rye straw ; and I remember that the value of rye straw here in the interior of New York rose all at once from six to 76 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. twenty dollars a ton because of the de- mand created for it to make paper with. That, however, was not the end of the movement. The rye straw always had, after it was converted into paper, a sili- ceous surface, a flinty, glassy surface, and that wore the type out, so that a set of type for a newspaper, that ought to last a year, wouldn't last more than three months. But then came the great change of all, when people turned from the rye field and its straw to the forests. And now all printing paper that is used in newspapers is made out of wood ; and when you pick up your paper in the morning to look at it, the probability is that you are picking up a piece of spruce tree from Norway, or that you have got hold of a spruce taken out of the Adi- rondack country, or wherever in North America spruce timber can be found. A few years ago a man conceived that he had invented an immense thing that was sure to give new value to the big swamps MAKING OF A NEWSPAPER MAN, 77 along the Mississippi. From Illinois down to the mouth of the Mississippi there are immense forests, growing al- most everywhere on each side of the river, chiefly of a sort of poplar known as Cottonwood, and he was going to make paper out of that. He did the thing, but the paper was too good, and the cost price was too high, and I do not imagine that any paper of that very fine sort is now used. What we all employ is made, as I have said, out of spruce trees, or pine trees, or almost any kind of soft wood. They put it through a mill and grind it up into powder, as fine as flour, and then it is converted into pulp, and from that the paper is made ; and the manufacturers of paper now generally buy their material in the form of pulp. You know there is a justly distinguished statesman of New York, who instead of being called by his first name has been popularly known as Wood Pulp. He has contributed much toward making n 78 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. newspapers and toward diffusing views which do not always agree with his own. Yet he is all right. We owe him grati- tude, and I desire to pay in all sincerity my share of this general tribute. You will perhaps be able to appreci- ate the importance of the revolution a little better when I tell you that the cost of paper for making newspapers which, thirty years ago, was twelve to twenty cents a pound, has steadily declined un- til now we buy it for two and a quarter cents a pound. Twenty years ago our weekly paper bill was the heaviest bill we had to pay, but now it is one of the light- er ones. For two and a quarter cents you get a pound of paper all fit and ready to be printed. One pound of this paper will give you, taking a page the size of the Tribune, fifty-five or sixty pages ; and as a week-day edition of the Tribune is gen- erally twelve pages, you see you get five or six printed sheets out of the two and a quarter cents. That makes the business MAKING OF A NEWSPAPER MAN. 79 profitable. The Tribune is retailed at three cents, and it is sold at wholesale for something like two and a half cents — I don't know precisely how much, but it is two and a half to two and three quarter cents ; and there you have a very hand- some difference between the money ex- pended for the paper and the money that is taken in for the printed journal. Now, this is a revolution of great consequence in the business of newspaper making. How far it will tend to produce any greater cheapness of newspapers I will not now attempt to say. They are al- ready sold very cheap considering their other expenses besides the printing and the paper, such as the variety of intelli- gence, the cost of getting news, the sal- aries of writers, correspondents, and assistant editors, and the rent that must be paid in a great city for the extensive quarters that are required. That is a very serious item. For instance, there is the New York Times, one of the ablest 8o THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. and most trustworthy newspapers in the world, whose company has lately been reorganized, so that, unlike some of the other large newspapers, the company does not own the building it occupies. It has to pay forty thousand dollars rent for the quarters to transact its business in, and I don't think that is excessive. Most of the large newspapers, the Herald, the Tribune, the Sun, own their own build- ings. But, taking everything, I should say that the actual capital needed and em.ployed in carrying on one of these big establishments is not less than a million dollars. That is necessary not to pay the natural losses of an enterprise just begun, but to carry on the regular busi- ness, to run the work at a reasonable cost, so that you are not swallowed up by expenses that might be avoided. If you ask how much it would cost to es- tablish a new journal entirely, why, then you have got to have a great deal more money ; but a million is the least with MAKING OF A NEWSPAPER MAN. 8 1 which a suitable outfit can be procured. You must have at least four of those big presses, costing forty-five thousand dol- lars apiece. Then you must have electric lighting and the outfit for that costs something considerable. After you have it, it doesn't cost you much to produce the electricity ; that is, after you have got the plant. The dynamo is run by the steam engine which drives the presses, and the waste power that would not be used at all suffices to keep the dynamo going and to light your whole house with electricity. There is a nota- ble advantage in electricity for lighting a newspaper office. In fact, it is indis- pensable. The only other means is gas. In the summer when the weather is hot, if your printers have their desks lighted with gas, the heat becomes difficult to bear. When we used to employ gas, in July and August there would scarcely be a hot night when one or two of our men wouldn't faint almost away. But now it 82 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. is all done with electricity, and we have no trouble or inconvenience from excess- ive heat. Now, what I have said relates to the mechanical and intellectual features of making a newspaper ; but there is a ques- tion which precedes it, namely : What kind of a newspaper will you make? and that question may be divided into two parts : First, will you make a newspaper for sensible people ? or will you make a newspaper for fools ? Now, I would not be understood as intimating that there is anything unworthy or below anybody's dignity in making a newspaper for fools. In the first place, there is impressive evi- dence to show that the fools form a large part of any community ; and we have most unquestionable testimony when we turn to the prophet Isaiah, the greatest, the most inspired, and the noblest im- agination of all the millennial prophets. He says emphatically, in speaking of the way of holiness, that the " wayfaring MAKING OF A NEWSPAPER MAN 83 men, though fools, shall not err therein." So that it is perfectly right to provide for the fools in special newspapers ; and that dut}', as you may have noticed, is extensively and conscientiously per- formed by gifted and conspicuous indi- viduals ; and I have heard that some of them make money by it. For my part, however, I find more entertainment in making a newspaper that tries to be of the other kind. And as, undoubtedly, some of the intelligent young men whose faces I gaze upon, are bound to adopt the profession of making newspapers, I suggest to them that before they make up their minds and come to a conclusion on this important question they should reflect carefully which kind they find most agreeable for their own reading. The Sunday newspaper is a rather conspicuous object, and I have heard a good deal of discussion about it ; such as whether it is right to make a Sunday newspaper ; and if it is not right to make 84 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. it, is it right to read it ? I don't think anybody should become a party to a thing that is wrong, by going and buy- ing a newspaper that ought not to be made at all. But this debate, we may perhaps say, has in great part been set- tled ; and although objectors to the Sun- day newspapers are still to be found, the public at large seems to have decided that they want them and will have them. Anyway, it is an interesting circumstance that almost every large newspaper whose daily edition we will say sells fifty thou- sand copies at two or three cents, sells on Sunday an edition of one hundred thousand or one hundred and twenty-five thousand or one hundred and fifty thou- sand at five cents, four cents or three cents and three quarters being the wholesale price. Now, as long as the people will buy the Sunday papers, I suppose they will be made. At the same time, considered as a question of con- science, and of moral and social duty, I MAKING OF A NEWSPAPER MAN. 85 am bound to say that I can not yield to the objection. I do not see anything wrong either in making or in reading a Sunday newspaper. In fact, if I found anything noxious in the Sunday news- paper I should be ready to denounce it ; yet, while there is liable to be something you would wish to have changed in any newspaper and in every newspaper, we do not find any special fault in the Sunday newspaper. It is a picture of the world as it is ; of the good men and of the bad men, the virtues and the crimes ; and as the crimes of half a dozen are more startling and tend more to ar- rest our attention than the virtues of a thousand good men, it is to the crimes that a great deal of attention is neces- sarily paid. But is it wrong to report and to publish these things? Everybody will talk about them. The newspapers could not suppress them if they would ; and if any one newspaper regularly omitted to give an account of interesting 86 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. swindles, or forgeries, or murders, the people would stop reading that paper and go off and get one where they could find all the news. Besides, I have been led to conclude, in reasoning upon this subject, that if the Divine Providence permits such things to happen, we, who are merely the witnesses of its operation, may certainly stop a moment and report the facts to each other. Now, a newspaper is naturally the organ of a party, political or other. Its editors, its conductors, hold certain ideas, certain principles, certain social, political, religious principles ; and, in discussing the events of the times, they will express those principles. Now, ought a news- paper to stick to its party always ? Here we will suppose is an editor who is an advocate of what is called free trade. Some of you people understand what that means, I presume ; and he is in the habit of presenting the good effect which the adoption of free trade would have. MAKIXG OF A NEWSPAPER MAN. g/ He goes, therefore, with the party that is most favorable to free trade. But by and by the party professing free trade does not do it ; what is he going to say then ? Shall he stand by the party, or shall he express his own sincere, honest sentiment, and say the party is wrong, and he is against it in that thing? Well, now, human nature is so constituted and the weaknesses of men's hearts — I don't think women's hearts are so weak in that way — lead them often to stay in a club, a church, or any organization that they do not agree with an}- longer. But it seems to me that with a newspaper there ought to be some dividing line, some certain point where it will manifest its independ- ence, if it does not violently declare it. There should be in the editor, the pub- lic guide, a power of determination, and there should be intelligence. He should know what his principles are, and he should express them clearly, so that other people may know them. There should 88 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. be faithfulness, and not a new illustration of what Ben Wade — old Senator Wade, of Ohio — said in the Senate one day, speaking of Senator Benjamin, of Louisi- ana, when he described him as " a He- brew with Egyptian principles." At that very time there were plenty of such He- brews, and there were plenty of North- ern newspapers and politicians hating slavery in their hearts, who stood up and, without a blush, pressed by neces- sity, defended slavery more or less frank- ly. Now, I do not like it. The news- paper must be independent of its party, or it is not the ideal sort of newspaper that we want to praise very much. And nobody who remembers it can ever for- get — I am sure that my friend Mr. Sage remembers it distinctly — that noble ut- terance of Horace Greeley when the Whig party had nominated General Scott on a pro-slavery platform. Greeley said, " I spit on the platform ! " He was hotly abused, and yet he remained a MAKING OF A NEWSPAPER MAN. 89 member of the party, and nobody thought of turning him out, hardly even when he afterward became a Democratic candidate. Now, allow me a word as to the edu- cation that a young journalist should work for. In the first place, he should learn everything that it is possible for him to know. I never saw a newspaper man who knew too much, except those who knew too many things that were not so. I am myself a partisan of the strict, old-fashioned classical education. The man who knows Greek and Latin, and knows it, I don't mean who has read six books of Virgil for a college examination, but the man who can pick up Virgil or Tacitus without going to his dictionary ; and the man who can read the Iliad in Greek without boggling, and if he can read Aristotle and Plato all the better — that man may be trusted to edit a news- paper. But, above all, he should know his own language, the English language. 90 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. The more you understand it, the more you go down into the depths of it, the more familiar you are with the roots and the complications and the developments of it, the more you will look at it with wonder and admiration. The man who is going to publish a daily manual of news and facts and ideas and truths, or even lies, in that language, should know the language thoroughly. Otherwise he may sometimes say what he does not mean. I have known that to happen. I remember once we had in the Tribune a smart young fellow named Henderson. He was afterward a rather conspicuous Republican politician in Michigan. He had written something one day that Mr. Greeley didn't like. Greeley came in and said, " Henderson, did you write that?" " Yes, sir," said he. "Go away from here ! I don't want you here any more ; I discharge you ! " The next morning I came down to the office and found Henderson sitting at his desk and MAKING OF A NEWSPAPER MAN. 91 working tranquilly away as usual. I said : " How is this ? I thought Mr. Greeley discharged you." " Yes, sir, he did ; but 1 didn't put confidence in all that he said." Then there are a great many sciences of the present day that the young news- paper man ought to learn. He ought to know the practical sciences above all, especially chemistry and electricity ; his- tory he should know, too, particularly American history, the American Consti- tution, and constitutional law. About political economy I don't speak so em- phatically. Carlyle said it was a dismal science, and I have noticed that a great many young men who had studied it very carefully, and who could discuss it with much emphasis, didn't always seem to know so much themselves. But it is there, and it must be attended to, no doubt. The earlier discussions about the art and science of making newspapers have 92 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. dwelt always upon the importance of looking out for the news, and not being beaten in the news. That is certainly very desirable ; but fortunately the pro- curing of the news is provided for by news agencies or associations, in which several newspapers combine and provide for supplying themselves with the news ; so that the editor of each individual paper is left in comparative leisure to attend to study and discussion, and the more important duties that he has on his hands. For instance, within the last two years some eight or ten papers in the city of New York have organized an as- sociation for supplying themselves with the news of New York and its vicinity. Formerly we each of us kept half a dozen reporters, I don't know how many, who were employed for that particular duty ; but now this association, conducted by these united newspapers, provides every one with all the news that is to be found, and they are all supplied at reduced ex- MAKING OF A NEWSPAPER MAN. ^3 pense. Moreover, the same system pre- vails with regard to the general news of the world and the country. For in- stance, the next day after an election in the State of New York, we are able, through the operation of this associative arrangement, to publish the figures of every place in the State, every county, every important town, every voting pre- cinct, if that should be necessary. That emancipates the manager of the paper and the editor of the paper from the necessity of the strenuous attention, the watchful vigilance, which they formerly were obliged to apply to their news col- umns. So that now they can make the paper more interesting by correspond- ence, and literary or scientific or roman- tic articles, and they can do it in the same time that used to be absorbed in getting the petty news of the town, and in reporting, for instance, that Mrs. Mc- Tabby had fallen down in the street and broken her toe. The consequence is that 13 94 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. not quite so many men are employed on the newspapers, but they are apt to be better educated and more capable men. I ought to have said, when I was speak- ing of the decline in the cost of making newspapers, that it has not been accom- panied by a decline in the salaries of the men employed, but rather by an increase of them. The writers, correspondents, re- porters, although considerably affected by the hard times that we have had dur- ing the past two years, are, on the whole, better paid than they were five years be- fore. But when I say men, I am guilty of a little inaccuracy. There are now a great many ladies employed on the news- papers, not only in New York city, but, I dare say, almost everywhere else. They are employed as reporters, as writ- ers, as artists, and they are valuable as- sistants in almost every department. There is only one difficulty about it ; they don't stay. When you have found a lady about whom you are convinced MAKING OF A NEWSPAPER MAN. 95 it is impossible to replace her, then she goes and marries some rich man, espe- cially if she is pretty ; and there the poor editor is left, helpless and without con- solation. Another interesting question is the illustrations, the pictures. You have noticed, of course, that all the newspa- pers now abound in pictures, and there is no newspaper so poor that it can't print just as many pictures as it likes. Twenty years ago, if we wanted to print the portrait of any distinguished man, Senator Hill or Mr. Cleveland, for in- stance, why, we had first to get a photo- graph, then we had to get a draughts- man, then a wood engraver, and then after the engraving was cut in the wood we had to have a stereotype made of it before we could print it. It was a very expensive operation, I should think, to make a good and adequately extensive portrait of Mr. Cleveland, after the old fashion, would cost forty or fifty 96 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. dollars ; while now, such is the progress of the practical sciences and arts, we don't need to have a wood engraver at all. You don't even need a draughts- man. You put your photograph by means of the photographic camera on a zinc plate, which is prepared for the pur- pose you require. That is, it is covered with a gelatinous and sensitized sub- stance sufficiently thick for the purpose. On that you put your photograph, and then you apply an acid which eats the features of Mr. Cleveland and his noble figure into the zinc plate ; and there it is finished for you, without a hand touching it, except in removing it from one plate to the other ; and all you have to do is to screw it upon a wooden block, and the thing is done. And what is more, instead of costing you thirty or forty dol- lars, the finished picture costs you one dollar and twenty-five cents ! This is the age of experiment, and, as I said, of revolution also. You can afford a great MAKING OF A NEWSPAPER MAN. gy many pictures, and some of the most im- portant newspapers of the country de- vote themselves to fancy pictures. They have even gone so far as to invent a press which prints pictures in different colors, so they turn out from one ma- chine, without moving the form at all, pictures that are red and green and yel- low, and all the rainbow. That is pretty expensive, because, as I have said, it re- quires a special press, and it has to be operated slowly and carefully. But they think that it is a fine thing. There are lots of pictures of men dancing on tight ropes, for instance, and ladies dancing without any tight ropes. These are sup- posed to be very popular. I dare say they are. I know of one of the most distinguished newspapers in the country which publishes perhaps an actual edi- tion of sixty thousand on week days, but on Sunday it sells two hundred and thirty thousand or two hundred and fifty thousand, mainly, as they think, on ac- q8 the art of newspaper making. count of the pictures. Now, I am an old-fashioned expert. I don't believe so many pictures are going to be required for any great portion of the next cen- tury. It is a passing fashion. It seems to me that it has gone by already to a considerable extent. I asked Mr. White- law Reid one day what was his opinion, and he said he was against these pic- tures, that they didn't add anything to the purpose of the newspaper, which is to convey intelligence and enlighten thought. Any picture, he said, which is in itself of the nature of news, which gives you the likeness of a distinguished man whose portrait you wish to see, or anything which really illustrates to your mind an event of the day, that is a legiti- mate newspaper picture. " But the fancy, fantastic, devil-to-pay pictures," he said, "■ those I am not in favor of." I think he is entirely right on that subject, as on many others. There is one other curious point MAKING OF A NEWSPAPER MAN. 99 which I passed over without reflection when discussing the present cheapness of printing paper, and which I will come back to now. It is a pretty interesting curiosity. Paper is so cheap that, sup- posing you are interested in proving that the circulation of your newspaper is something immense, enormous, you can do it for certain with very slight expense. Having got your plates, your presses, and everything there, you can print a couple of hundred thousand extra papers at a cost which is almost nothing com- pared to the advertising you may get from it ; and then, instead of a circulation of five hundred thousand every morning, you can show a circulation of seven hun- dred thousand. The utility of that mass of printed papers is not destroyed. They are not sold, to be sure, but their print- ing is recorded truthfully by the presses, and they show in the figures of your cir- culation, which the advertisers love to examine. Then you can transport them, 100 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. SO I have heard, let us say to Glens Falls, where we will suppose there is a factory in which they make paper boxes ; and you can send your two hundred thou- sand sheets, which you have printed for advertising display, and have them brought back to you in the form of paper boxes, that are really useful and may be sold for something. The advertisers are much impressed, but they don't get the boxes. I ought to give, perhaps, some facts about the artists who are now employed on so many papers. Many of them are women. Women excel, particularly in drawing fashion pictures ; and a clever girl who really has talent will get per- haps forty or fifty dollars a week as a steady salary. That is, she can have it until she gets married and goes ofiF. The salary of a good artist, who draws what- ever is required in a paper, will be from twenty to one hundred dollars a week. He makes his pictures so that they can MAKING OF A NEWSPAPER MAN. iqI be transferred to the plate, and that is all he has to do. The expense of these pic- tures greatly varies. The Herald prob- ably spends in preparing its pictures two thousand to four thousand dollars a week. They are mostly used on Sunday, though on special occasions they are put in liber- ally on other days. The Herald prints more pictures, and generally better ones, than any of the other papers. In the organization of a newspaper there are three kinds of men who are of special value besides the business mana- ger, who is necessarily of the greatest importance. I refer now to three kinds of the intellectual workers, and the first of them that T desire to mention is the reporters. A very good reporter can earn one hundred dollars a week, and I suppose that in any well-organized news- paper office there are perhaps thirty ca- pable men whose pay will average from forty to sixty dollars a week, and whose duty is simply reporting. Then there are 14 I02 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. many others of the sort of reporters who skirmish around and are employed to-day by one paper and to-morrow by another, and are paid for the matter that they de- liver. The qualifications of the reporter you can not estimate too highly. In the first place he must know the truth when he hears it and sees it. There are a great many men who are born without that faculty, unfortunately. But there are some men that a lie can not deceive ; and that is a very precious gift for a reporter as well as for anybody else. The man who has it is sure to live long and pros- per ; especially if he is able to tell the truth which he sees, to state the fact or the discovery that he has been sent out after, in a clear and vivid and interesting manner. The invariable law of the news- paper is to be interesting. Suppose you tell all the truths of science in a way that bores the reader ; what is the good ? The truths don't stay in the mind, and nobody thinks any better of you because MAKING OF A NEWSPAPER MAN. 103 you have told him the truth tediously. The telling must be vivid and animating. The reporter must give his story in such a way that you know he feels its qualities and events, and is interested in them. Next in importance to the reporter is the man whose duty it is to read the newspapers of this country and other countries and take out of them the things that his own paper wants. Mr. Greeley used to say that the exchange reader was the greatest man on the newspaper, and if all the good things were got out of the other papers it didn't make any differ- ence whatever whether there was any- thing else or not. But that was going rather too far. INIr. Greeley was a man of delicate humor, and sometimes sought to impress a truth by an apt exaggera- tion. Next after the newspaper reader, or exchange editor, as he is sometimes called, comes what we call the city ed- itor. He is the head of the local depart- 104 ^-^^ ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. ment. He looks after all the news of the vicinity or locality or town or neighbor- hood. He employs the reporters and pays them, and he has to be a man of great sense, of alertness of mind, of fidel- ity to his duty, and of untiring industry ; and he enjoys also what may sometimes be an advantage, that he is the man with whom all the fault is found. He had no business to have it so. Then there is the managing editor. He is a gentleman of real importance, of vital importance. He looks after the making up of the paper. He looks after the correspondents ; he employs them. He determines how much the correspondent in Paris shall be paid for a particular contribution, and he has to see that everybody under him does his duty and does it at the right time ; for a duty done at the wrong time is about the same as a duty entirely neg- lected. Then next to him is of course the editor. He is the head of the paper; he determines what its purpose shall be. MAKING OF A NEWSPAPER MAN. 105 He determines whether it shall be for prohibition or high license ; whether it shall stand by the party in a wrong pol- icy or not. He is the final authority in everything. Well, now, there is one point that I want particularly to impress upon you, young gentlemen, and that is that every one of these men— the reporters, the as- sistants, the editor, every one of them— while they require the literary and scien- tific education that I have been speaking of, require also a business education. It is only by being put through the mill of business that a man acquires the science of this world, and knows how to deal with business, and to consider business questions of every kind. I can not ex- press my sense of this too strongly. In fact, I have always felt — I mention the circumstance merely as an illustration — that the six years I worked in a dry- goods store in Buffalo, as a boy, have been worth to me more, as a matter of I06 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. practical education, than some other years passed elsewhere in other pur- suits. It is very desirable indeed that the newspaper man, who has to deal with the actual affairs of this world, should know them and should know them personally. And it is very desirable, also, that he should have that knowledge of human nature which can not be gained so well, so far as my experience goes, as in a wholesale and retail business estab- lishment. One of the most interesting things that the editor of a newspaper or a news- paper maker has to deal with is the liter- ature of the day, and this includes not merely the books published, but espe- cially what appears in newspapers and magazines — the fiction, the poetry, the fancy articles. The newspaper man ought to be well informed in these things, and he ought to have cultivated in him- self a sentiment of art and a love of beauty, because the sense of beauty will MAKING OF A NEWSPAPER MAN. 107 enable him to judge of all sorts of pro- ductions of art, even though he may not be technically and thoroughly familiar with them. There is often expressed an idea that this sort of popular literature is declining in quality, going out in fact — especially the poetry. People often come to me and say that the poetry of the present day is not so good as it used to be when they were youngsters. Well, if you will allow me, Mr. President, to vary the monotony of this dry statement of facts by reading a little poetry, I shall be glad to do it, because I want to show you that there is produced among us to- day as good an article in that line as ever has been produced in the past. First, I would like to read a poem of a rather humorous character. I cut it out of the Hartford Courant : Under the slighting light of the yellow sun of Octo- ber, Close by the side of the car track, a gang of Dagos were working ; Io8 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. Pausing a moment to catch a note of their liquid Italian, Faintly I heard an echo of Rome's imperial accents. Broken down forms of Latin words from the Senate and Forum, Now smoothed over by use to the musical lingua Romana. Then the thought came, Why, these are the heirs of the Romans ; These are the sons of the men who founded the empire of Caesar ; These are they whose fathers carried the conquer- ing eagles Over all Gaul and across the sea to Ultima Thule ; The race type persists unchanged in their eyes and profiles and figures. Muscular, short, and thick-set, with prominent noses, recalling " Romanes rerum dominos, gentemque togatam." See, Labinus is swinging a pick with rhythmical motion ; Yonder one pushing the shovel might be Julius Csesar — Lean, deep-eyed, broad-browed, and bald, a man of a thousand ; Further along stands the jolly Horatius Flaccus ; Grim and grave, with rings in his ears, see Cato the censor. On the side of the street in proud and gloomy seclu- sion, Bossing the job, stood a Celt ; the race enslaved by the legions. MAKING OF A NEWSPAPER MAN. 109 Sold in the markets of Rome to meet the expenses of Caesar. And, as I loitered, the Celt cried out : " Warruk, ye Dagos ! Full up your shovel, Paythro, ye hathen ! I'll dock yees a quarther." This he said to the one who resembled the great imperator ; Meekly the dignified Roman kept on patiently dig- ging- Such are the changes and chances the centuries bring to the nations. Surely the ups and downs of the world are past cal- culation. " Possibly," thus I thought to myself, " the yoke of the Irish May in turn be Hfted from us, in the tenth genera- tion. Now the Celt is on top, but Time may bring his revenges. Turning the Fenian down, once more to be bossed by a Dago." Now let us hear a strain of a higher mood. I found my copy of it in the San Francisco Argonaut. I dare say you have all seen it. It is called " High Tide at Gettysburg " : 15 no THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. A cloud possessed the hollow field, The gathering battle's smoky shield ; Athwart the gloom the lightning flashed. And through the cloud some horsemen dashed. And from the heights the thunder pealed. Then at the brief command of Lee, Moved out that matchless infantry. With Pickett leading grandly down, To rush against the roaring crown Of those dread heights of destiny. Far heard above the angry guns, A cry across the tumult runs : The voice that rang through Shiloh's woods, And Chickamauga's solitudes : The fierce South cheering on her sons. Ah, how the withering tempest blew Against the front of Pettigru ! A khamsin wind that scorched and singed. Like that infernal flame that fringed The British squares at Waterloo ! A thousand fell where Kemper led ; A thousand died where Garnett bled ; In blinding flame and strangling smoke. The remnant through the batteries broke. And crossed the works with Armistead. " Once more in Glor)''s van with me ! " Virginia cries to Tennessee ; " We two together, come what may. Shall stand upon those works to-day ! " The reddest day in history. MAKING OF A NEWSPAPER MAN. \\\ Brave Tennessee ! Reckless the way, Virginia heard her comrade say, " Close round this rent and riddled rag ! " What time she set her battle flag Amid the guns of Doubleday. But who shall break the guards that wait Before the awful face of Fate ? The tattered standards of the South Were shriveled at the cannon's mouth, And all her hopes were desolate. In vain the Tennesseean set His breast against the bayonet ; In vain Virginia charged and raged, A tigress in her wrath uncaged, Till all the hill was red and wet ! Above the bayonets mixed and crossed Men saw a gray, gigantic ghost Receding through the battle cloud. And heard across the tempest loud The death-cr}- of a nation lost ! The brave went down ! Without disgrace They leaped to ruin's red embrace ; They only heard fame's thunder wake, And saw the dazzling sunburst break In smiles on Glory's bloody face ! They fell who lifted up a hand. And bade the sun in heaven to stand ; They smote and fell who set the bars Against the progress of the stars, And stayed the march of Motherland. 112 THE ART OF NEWSPAPER MAKING. They stood who saw the future come On through the fight's delirium ; They smote and stood who held the hope Of nations on that slippery slope, Amid the cheers of Christendom ! God lives ! He forged the iron will That clutched and held that trembling hill ! God lives and reigns ! He built and lent The heights for Freedom's battlement, Where floats her flag in triumph still ! Fold up the banners ! Smelt the guns ! Love rules. Her gentler purpose runs. A mighty mother turns in tears The pages of her battle years, Lamenting all her fallen sons ! As long as such things can be pro- duced in the newspapers of the country, there is no danger that the love of art and beauty or the spirit of patriotism can die out. There is one point more, with which I will close. The value of the free press is not now sufficiently appreciated in this country. It is only some particular circumstance, some unusual occurrence, that can make it rise clearly before the MAKING OF A NEWSPAPER MAN. 113 eyes of us all. I don't know that I can state it with sufficient distinctness, but in my judgment the highest function of the press is that at last it forms the final bar- rier which stands between the people and any gross wrong that may be at- tempted, by a dominant party or by a ruling public favorite. If such a circum- stance should ever happen — and God grant that it may not ! — the mission of the press, lifting its voice in defense of the Constitution and in defense of the spirit of liberty, will be recognized ; and the free press will be appreciated as the defender of the public welfare, of the Constitution, and of Liberty itself. And now let me finish with two or three maxims which seem to me of value to a newspaper maker : I. Never be in a hurry. II. Hold fast to the Constitution. III. Stand by the Stars and Stripes. Above all, stand for Liberty, whatever happens. 114 '^^^ ^"^^ ^^ NEWSPAPER MAKING. IV. A word that is not spoken never does any mischief. V. All the goodness of a good ^g^ can not make up for the badness of a bad one. VI. If you find you have been wrong, don't fear to say so. There is a tradition in some news- papers of the old school that you must pretend to a silly infallibility, and never admit you have been wrong. That is a silly rule. If a man has not the moral courage to say " Yes, I was wrong, and I don't now believe what I said at some former time " ; if he has not courage to say that, he had better retire from busi- ness, and never try to make another newspaper. THE END. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. OCT 2 71949 AN 1 8 1951,1 I) ICT 2 9 1954 IP 1\.|i t'' IPR2 41957 T RECL CT 1 2 ^9S9 REC'D MLO NOV 3 1959 UN 7 aL9-2m-6,'49(B4568) Uu ^J iJ u u uu^ DEC 10 MAYS! 444 URU 1963 79;? THP. TTRPARV ' ^ UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000 408 122 I o — u _) PLEA<5r DO NOT REMOVE THIS BOOK CARD ] X^tlfBRASYQ. ^mmyi^"^ University Research Library -zj ^ _i<