James Melvin Lee

“ And all these touches of nature make us wondrous kind. It is the country newspaper, bringing together daily the threads of the town's life, weaving them into something rich and strange, and setting the pattern as it weaves, directing the loom, and giving the cloth its color by mixing the lives of all the people in its color-pot—it is this country newspaper that reveals us to ourselves, that keeps our country hearts quick and our country minds open and our country faith strong. ”

“ It is my passion, my delight, my thought by day, and my dream by night to conduct The Herald, and to show the world and posterity, that a newspaper can be made the greatest, most fascinating, most powerful organ of civilization that genius ever yet dreamed of. ”

“ On that score we can not surely fail in knowing at least how to build up a reputation and establishment of our own. In debuts of this kind many talk of principle—political principle—party principle, as a sort of steel-trap to catch the public. We mean to be perfectly understood on this point, and therefore openly disclaim all steel-traps, all principle, as it is called—all party—all politics. Our only guide shall be good, sound, practical common sense, applicable to the business and bosoms of men engaged in every-day life. ”

“ We, on the contrary, eschew all such affectation as weak and silly; we think there is a difference between notoriety and distinction; we recognize the social obligation to act and dress ac- cording to our station in life; and we look upon cleanliness of person as inseparable from purity of thought and benevolence of heart. In short, there is not the slightest resemblance between the editor of The Tribune and ourself, politically, morally, or socially; and it is only when his affectation and impudence are unbearable, that we condescend to notice him or his press. ”

“ The American press was doubtless influenced by the results of censorship in England, where papers like The London Times and The London Daily Mail had asserted that press censorship was pernicious and had been used solely to protect office-holders and blunderers from the penalties of their own stupidity and in- efficiency. "Secrecy helps these men," said Lord Northcliffe, owner of the two papers just mentioned, "to protect their false positions and to do damage to the nation. Publicity pricks the bubble; that is why so many of them hate publicity when it begins to be critical." ”

“ Though stopping at a time when the American newspaper is undergoing many changes, it must of necessity be an unfinished chapter to be edited and revised later. Of nothing can it more truthfully be said, that "no man knoweth what the day or hour may bring forth," than of the newspaper. But one need not be a prophet, nor the son of a prophet, to realize what has so often been stated in the pages of this book, that the newspaper is a motion picture of life's drama, with a plot furnished by the politics and the society of the times. ”

“ Prominent among the leaders of this new journalism was Samuel Bowles, of The Springfield Republican. It was his aim to create a newspaper "that should stand firmly in the possession of powers of its own; that should be concerned with the passing and not with the past; that should perfectly reflect its age, and yet should be itself no mere reflection; that should control what it seemed only to transcribe and narrate; that should teach with- out assuming the manners of an instructor, and should com- mand the coming times with a voice that had still no sound but its echo of the present." ”

“ We shall support no party—be the organ of no faction or coterie, and care nothing for any election or any candidate from president down to a constable. We shall endeavor to record facts on every public and proper subject, stripped of verbiage and coloring, with comments when suitable, just, independent, fearless, and good-tempered. If The Herald wants the mere expansion which many journals possess, we shall try to make it up in industry, good taste, brevity, variety, point, piquancy, and cheapness. ”

“ If there be those who would some time destroy Slavery, I do not argue with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union and is not either to save or destroy Slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about Slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union, and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. ”

“ Your paper should take a more dignified stand; and not condescend to notice the assaults of the degraded penny press. The price of your journal is such that it is taken only by readers of the more intelligent classes; readers who despise the vulgarity of the penny newspapers, and who have cause to feel themselves affronted when you give so large a space, or any space, indeed, to a refutation of their absurdities. ”

“ He becomes the thinker, in fact, for a vast number of his fellow-beings. His mind transfuses itself through many bodies. His station renders him, not an individual, but a host; not one, but legion. Is this not a vocation of inherent dignity? to address, daily, myriads of men, not in words that fall on cold and inattentive ears, and are scarce heard, to be immediately forgotten ”

“ Sheldon had long held the view that the daily newspaper was as much bound to give readers the things they needed instead of what they wanted as was the pulpit to give what was needed instead of what was wanted. He once asserted, "I have as much right to go into my pulpit next Sunday and preach to my people the things they want in theology or moral living as editors have to print in their papers anything below the high standards that govern human beings, for the rules of moral conduct are the same for an editor as for a minister." ”

“ Heaven grant that the FREEDOM of the PRESS, on which depends the FREEDOM of the PEOPLE, may, in the United States, ever be guarded with a watchful eye, and defended from Shackles of every form and shape, until the trump of the celestial messenger shall announce the final dis- solution of all things.
After Massachusetts had repealed the act which taxed news- paper advertising, no State, because of the odium attached to a Stamp Act, attempted to impose a duty upon newspapers until the fifth decade of the next century. ”

“ This great desideratum the penny press supplies, not as well and thoroughly, perhaps, as the philanthropist could wish, but to such a degree as to be necessarily productive of immense benefit to society. It communicates knowledge to those who had no means of acquiring it. It calls into exercise minds that before rusted unused. It elevates vast numbers of men from the abjectness of mere animal condition, to the nobler station of intelligent beings. ”

“ We also give audiences to visitors, gentlemen on business, and some of the loveliest ladies in New York, who call to subscribe Heaven bless them! At one we sally out among the gentlemen and loafers of Wall street find out the state of the money market, return, finish the next day's paper close every piece of business requiring thought, sentiment, feeling, or philosophy, before four o'clock. We then dine moderately and temperately read our proofs take in cash and advertisements, which are increasing like smoke and close the day by going to bed always at ten o'clock, seldom later. ”

“ After remaining, for ten months past, overwhelmed and sunk, in a sea of tyrannic violence and rapine, The New York Journal, just emerg- ing from the waves, faintly rears its languid head, to hail its former friends and supporters, to assure them that unchanged in its spirit and prin- ciples, the utmost exertions of its influence, as heretofore, will ever be applied, vith a sacred regard to the defence and support of American rights and freedom, the advancement of true religion and virtue and the happiness of mankind. ”

“ It is true that the new journal becomes a power only when it is sold on the market that is, when it circulates among the public. For this talent is needed and the matter published must be attractive and congenial for the readers. Here, we might think, was some guarantee of the moral value of the undertaking men of talent will not serve a feeble or contemptible editor or publisher; the public will not support a newspaper which is not a faithful echo of public opinion. ”

“ The manufacturers of medicines of merit maintain that it is just as honorable to advertise a product which will relieve a stomach of an ache as it is to advertise a mincemeat that puts an ache in the stomach: that it is as ethical to describe the merits of a corn plaster to take corns away as it is to sell shoes which make corns. Whatever opinion may be held about these matters there can be no question that the American newspaper is no longer a directory of patent medicine manufacturers of products of no merit. ”

“ The Tribune, of Chicago, accepted the view that the modern newspaper "must not only help in the fight for a clean city, but must aid the clergy and others to fight for a clean home, and in entering the everyday life of its readers, it must, like the parish priest, be guide, counselor, and friend." It was while speaking on this point that the general manager of The Tribune said: "I have often thought that a newspaper can most closely realize its real mission the nearer it comes to attaining the ideals of the parish priest and the clergyman in his ministrations to his flock. ”

“ In answer to the charge that he was once a pedler in the streets of Glasgow, Bennett once replied in his paper as follows:
I am, and have been, a pedler and part of my name is Gordon. This I admit. From my youth up I have been a pedler, not of tapes and laces, but of thoughts, feelings, lofty principles, and intellectual truths. I am now a wholesale dealer in the same line of business, and people generally believe I have quite a run, and what is better, no dread of suspension. ”

“ There is hardly a day that does not develop in some line of thought a man or woman, generally young, who has discovered that the inherited experience of the human race in its social and political relations is worthless. If the humdrum newspapers which deal in their ignorant way with life as it is and has been were to accept all these prophets at their self-valuations, this world would be more of a bedlam than it is. ”

“ Nathaniel Butter was the first regular publisher of this printed news-letter, The Weekly Newes, and posterity has called him rather than Archer the founder of the English newspaper press. There had been an occasional printed news-sheet or news-book before the appearance of The Weekly Newes, but to Nathaniel Butter belongs the honor of "printing all the news of the day upon a single sheet and publishing it regularly week by week upon fixed days and of giving it a distinctive title at a time when there was nothing that could with strictness be called a newspaper." ”

“ One man's physical food is another man's poison, and until all think alike the ideal paper cannot come into being. And may it never come, for when all men think alike the spice of life will be gone, initiative will be smothered, and the world will be reduced to a dull level of mediocrity.
The nearest that the endowed newspaper has come to a realization in America was the partial promise of Andrew Carnegie to be one of ten men to finance such a venture. It would take just about ten men of Mr. Carnegie's wealth to establish successfully an endowed daily newspaper. ”

“ The reporter of The Sun was the first to leave Boston, but he was no sooner out of sight than the reporter of The Herald sent his loco- motive to the round-house and got out a special edition of The Herald in Boston on the press of The Mail. This special edition of The Herald, sent by train to New York, was the first to give the news, for The Sun, thinking that the express of The Herald had been wrecked when it did not arrive, had not rushed the news into type as rapidly as usual. ”

“ On this point the late Whitelaw Reid, when editor of The New York Tribune, said :
The thing always forgotten by the closest critic of the newspapers is that they must be immeasurably what their audiences make them; what their constituencies call for and sustain. The newspaper cannot uniformly resist the popular sentiment any more than the stream can flow above its fountain. To say that the newspapers are getting worse is to say that the people are getting worse. They may work more evil now than they have ever wrought before, because the influence is more widespread ”

“ The war made readers more thoughtful and the thoughtful reader has always been a reader of the editorial page. Once again American journalism found itself divided into two groups, one of which was pro-Ally, the other, pro-German, in its editorial sympathies. The editorial battles between the two developed military critics in the editorial sanctum. The entrance of America into the Great European War brought these two factors together into practically a harmonious press, with only here and there an exception to prove the general rule. ”