Lapas attēli
PDF
ePub

presented in the most perfunctory and routine fashion, with no attempt to make it attractive or interesting. News collecting had not been systematized or especially studied, as to-day. The Associated Press was in its infancy, devoting itself almost entirely to congress proceedings and to market reports. Raw reporters were permitted to intersperse their own comments through what they wrote and their conclusions received little revision or supervision. Every line in the modern newspaper is revised by a copy reader editor and not a suggestion of reportorial opinion is permitted. The edition of fifty years ago was more or less subject to haphazard inexactitude and casual error.

The present-day newspaper is prepared with great care. Its ambitious articles are studied out. The errors in its news columns are the results of haste rather than ignorance the haste compelled by necessity in getting to press on the minute. The Sunday edition supplements, devoted to general topics and to literature, are already taking the place of many kinds of literature. They print new fiction by popular authors. They exploit and expand the latest developments in science, art, music, medicine, mechanics, construction, transportation-indeed, anything that is new or important. They quickly transfer to their columns any important matter contained in a new book.

The reading of newspapers is immeasurably greater than the reading of any other kind of matter. The new book of which fifty thousand copies are sold is called very successful, of which one hundred thousand

are sold is pronounced a wonder, of which two hundred thousand are sold, phenomenal. Yet in New York City alone a million and a half newspapers are printed every morning and nearly two millions every afternoon. In America, millions of persons who do not read more than five books in a year read a newspaper or two every day.

And the newspaper of to-day is a better paper because it is more accurate of statement and more faithful to fact, and more fair-minded in the presentation of passing events. The long weary day of misrepresentation in news reports is drawing to its close. The chief events of the time are recorded with such fidelity to accuracy that in future years they must be accepted as historically correct. All decent newspapers now take pride in their accuracy of statement in the news columns and there is little intentional misrepresentation. In our political campaigns the attitude of each candidate is decently described and what he says is faithfully reported and made equally conspicuous. In this respect the newspapers have changed greatly within a few

years.

Moreover, the collection of news has been greatly facilitated by increased telegraph and telephone and ocean cable efficiency. These agents give much better transmission, making communication with all parts of the world little short of instantaneous. Speaking of the benefits to the world secured through electricity, Mr. W. W. Harris said in a recent address:

When the Norsemen were on their way to the discovery of America they had no compass; yet the compass had been

discovered by the Chinese many centuries before. But the news of the compass had not in all these centuries gotten half way around the world. And the science of navigation came not until that piece of news had made its way to the European world. To-day any important fact girdles the globe in a cable's flash.

The newspapers of to-day are better because more study and thought are put into their construction. Not only are the editorial writers men of education, but the sub-editors, the night editors, the revisers of copy and the reporters are mostly educated men-men who have been taught where to seek and how to find information, who have been taught to be confident and selfreliant and original. The proportion of college-bred men on newspaper staffs is much greater than it used to be, and the intelligence of the staffs has increased in the same proportion. The modern newspaper wants men of brains who know how to use their brains-men who can think rapidly and act instantly.

This unceasing, irresistible, cumulative progress is making newspapers more important, is making the profession of journalism more attractive. Even as years of experience and study and laborious patient application have perfected and solidified the practice of law and medicine, have made firm and substantial the developments of electricity and mechanics, and have solved the problems of transportation and great business, so the making of newspapers is settling down to a strong substantial basis.

Abbott, Lyman, 89
Acta Diurna, 197
Addison, Joseph, 89

INDEX

Arnold, Sir Edward to Tenny-
son, 64

[blocks in formation]

hasty editorial writing, 80;
on making the Sun talked
about, 94

Dickens, Charles, experience as
a reporter, 16

Edison, first public test of the
household electric light, 13
Editorial writer, The, 76, 78
Editorial council, The, 79
Editor in chief, The, 79
Editor, letters to, 80
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 52
Exaggeration, where it may be
tolerated, 70

Field, Eugene, 148

Field, William H, 194
Fiske, John, 181

Forney, Colonel John W., 35
Fourth Estate, The, 119
France, Anatole, 68

Froude, James Anthony, 148

Gazette, The Pekin, 197

Gazette, The London, 206

George, Lloyd, 111

Gladden, Washington, 157
Gosse, Edmund, 56

the Foreign,

Gray, 55

Corbett, James, 97

Courant, The London, 205
Crooke, William, 18

Dana, Charles Anderson, his
fine leadership, 48; great as
an editor, 61; advice to his
Managing Editor, 62; on

Greeley, Horace, 61, 91, 94, 147

Harris, W. W., 216
Hay, John, 148

Halsted, Murat, 148

Hearn, Lafcadio, 53, 55, 89,
172

Hearst, William R., 88
Heenan, John C., 97

« iepriekšējāTurpināt »