The measure of his success as an editor may be found in his ability to recognize what is news and what is not. This is an editorial accomplishment that may be enriched by study and observation. Let him seek to know what will interest his reader, what his constituents are thinking about and especially what he can print that will set them to talking. To make the paper interesting, to make it talked about, should be his constant anxiety.

The mission of the village sheet is to amuse, to gossip, to reflect community life rather than to educate. The editor lives in close intimacy with his people and if he be wise he will assume the attitude of making their interests his interests. He will make elaborately long accounts of their public meetings, the social gatherings, the ball games, the school contests, the things the people do. His constituents may know of world-wide events from the city papers but they cannot read about themselves anywhere else than in his paper. Thousands of Americans never see their name in print except perchance in the village newspaper and they are grateful, indeed, to see it there.

The village newspaper should not seek to imitate the city sheet. Its editor should devote his energies to the rural needs and the rural activities of his five thousand or ten thousand constituents. Let them get their outside information from the city dailies or the periodical press.

And our provincial editor's acute temptation will be to imitate—to make his sheet like his neighbor's sheet.

He will be tempted to save time and study by stealing the thoughts of others. He wants a leading editorial article. What so easy as to rewrite one from the columns of a distant daily changing not the form of construction or the argument or the conclusion— changing nothing but the wording. This is a common practice of the lazy editor. I hope to be forgiven for so constantly referring to it as a repressive influence, as a serious detriment to the progress of American journalism. It easily becomes a habit. Its practice is alluring for, if it produces a more thoughtful article than the editor is capable of writing, the people praise it thus giving to the editor the most subtle of all flattery, the flattery that is undeserved, the flattery that attributes to a man something he does not possess. The editor enjoys it overmuch.

The village editor usually is deep in local politics. Quite as much as any one else does he help to name the town officers, the county rulers, the man to the legislature, the congressman. Frequently, indeed, he is called to these posts or to the higher honors of the State. He sits on governing boards and he is a delegate to all sorts of conventions. He is big in public affairs.

This kind of newspaper life is entirely different from that of the city. It is a life that may be made exceedingly attractive and that may be enjoyed to the uttermost because of its independence, its great influence, its close intimacy with the people and its opportunities for wholesome service. What the editor

writes is read by everybody, the children as well, and we all know how a child is influenced by what it reads.

Some one has said of the village editor: "He comes pretty near being the boss of the entire town."

CHAPTER IX

THE DAILY NEWSPAPER IN THE

SMALL CITY

"I HAD rather be the editor of a daily in a small city than hold any other newspaper post," remarked a journalist who had tried almost every kind of newspaper work-and many will agree with him. Increased facilities for gathering news and information and the wonderful improvement in printing office mechanism permit the making of a complete newspaper almost anywhere. The small cities may have just as good a daily sheet as the big ones if the owners care to pay the price of producing it. The news associations and the telegraph companies deliver news simultaneously in all parts of the country. The newspaper in the remote Northwest or the extreme South gets the same telegraphic news as is furnished to New York City or to New England.

Any editor may supplement his news service with syndicate articles-by which is meant, articles written in New York, Washington, the State Capital, or anywhere, and duplicated to any number of newspapers. Syndicate service has come to be an important feature of American journalism. Its use saves the editor time, trouble, and expense. A few syndicates in New York

and Washington send special news by wire but most of the matter goes by mail. It consists largely of articles on national topics, social topics, business, the theaters, music, art, and sports. At this writing a syndicate is sending from New York a service of excellent editorial articles on general topics. All sorts of feature matter also may be had: the medical column,^ the cookery department, the fashion show, the question and answer diversion, the short daily or weekly story of fiction, a daily cartoon or a comic strip or cut. Entire pages of matter are offered on every imaginable topic for use in Saturday and Sunday edition supplements. They include even the comic pictorial broadsides in vivid color. Several of the big metropolitan sheets sell their miscellaneous Sunday features entire and some of them furnish a special news service intended to supplement the news associations' report. This news service and Sunday syndicate service sent from the big newspapers furnish the identical articles that appear in the papers from whose offices they are sent. By their use the out of town editor may go a great way toward reproducing the big city sheet. All of this kind of matter is offered at ridiculously low prices, the profit to the producer being, of course, in its repeated duplication.

The modern multiple printing press, the modern stereotyping process and the linotype typesetting machine are in general use all over the country, giving the same mechanical facilities as enjoyed in the larger cities.