Lucy Maynard Salmon

“ If at one time the generals of an army trembled before the war correspondent, [80] it is the war department and the ministry as a whole that tremble before the editor and owner of a string of newspapers. [81]
The editorial has thus seemed to be drawn in opposite directions; one set of influences has tended to minimize its importance while another has given it a standing and a power it has never had before. It is the part of the historian in his use of the newspaper to weigh the influences behind the editorial and to measure its importance in his own work. ”

“ Maturity of years and of judgment, mental balance, upright character, freedom from official entanglements are the qualifications everywhere to-day demanded in an editor. Moreover, the individual editor is to-day not infrequently merged into an editorial board,—a change advocated in influential circles as assuring complete independence and impartiality in editorials, but by no means universally commended. ”

“ Yet in this, as in every other question connected with the press, no one answer fits all cases. Editors and editorials differ in different countries, they differ at different times in the same country, and an editor does not always agree with himself.
In France the article de fond is often an expression of opinion by a well-known man and his views do not necessarily correspond with those of the paper itself,—the paper is perhaps most often read from an intellectual curiosity to see what the editor or a special writer may say on a somewhat academic question. ”

“ The rural free delivery brings the city paper to farms and villages, but the city paper does not supersede the country paper. The country editor emphasizes still more the local news, and pushes ever farther back the frontiers of his dominion,—he becomes more and more the man of authority in the community because his opinions tend more and more to be based on knowledge. "Closest to the paper," says Harger, "nearest to their home life, its hopes and its aspirations, the country editor is at the foundation of journalism." ”

“ Not only are the editorials of a single editor and the editorials from a single newspaper collected and published in book form, but the editorials of one paper are reprinted on the editorial pages of other papers, they are reprinted as advertisements, they are copied in the news columns of the press, and they are collectively copied in an effort to secure a consensus of public opinion on important questions. ”

“ Write with speed, write at once, write well: only so many hours lie between you and the most critical and competent audience in the world;" [73] from the eighteenth century remark, "I will make no comments of my own in this paper, as I assume that other people have sense enough to make reflections for themselves," [74] to the twentieth century statement that "an editor has not only to supply his readers with the latest and truest information, he has to furnish them with ideas. ”

“ The controlling desire of a great modern newspaper is to give its readers the news, and the news therefore may show progressive action, the breaking of precedents, the activities of great organizations formed to uphold righteousness and peace. ”

“ J. A. Spender says that during his thirty-three years' connection with the press he has seen the power of the editor and writer constantly diminishing and the power of the proprietor constantly increasing. "Journalists can neither do justice to themselves nor serve the public honestly in a syndicated press producing opinion to a pattern designed by its proprietor." ”

“ As the editorial becomes more and more impersonal, it becomes for the use of the historian more and more valuable. It is of course inevitable that this very impersonality should bring with it a certain confusion growing out of the editorial "we,"—a custom almost contemporaneous with the origin of the newspaper press itself. ”

“ The troubles of editors with contributors do not end with the wrath expressed by them over the editorial changes made in their manuscripts. Often contributors claim that certain fields and subjects belong to them and that the editor should not allow others to poach on their preserves. To one such, Macvey Napier wrote with some asperity, "You think that I ought to have rejected an article on the Italian Economists by Spring Rice, on the ground that the whole province of Political Economy ought to be kept sacred for yourself. ”

“ Certainly in the early days of the newspaper, when Grub Street flourished, writers for periodicals were considered in much this light. Men wrote with equal facility on both sides of a question, and they are condemned to-day. But inventions have not shifted the responsibility from the human to the metal machine and while the early editor was apparently not over-sensitive to a condition that demanded that his right hand should not know what his left hand wrote, he can no longer plead this justification. ”

“ But in Germany "the fear of the law is the one great plague of the German editor's life," wrote Dawson in 1901. "So frequent are prosecutions of editors that many newspapers are compelled to maintain on their staffs what are known as 'sitting editors' whose special function it is to serve in prison the terms of detention that may be awarded for a too liberal exercise of the critical faculty." [69] The government does not own the press, but both editors and owners have in the past yielded to its superior power. ”

“ The editor is and must be prepared for every emergency.
This improvement in the general standard of the editorial has in part been made possible by the great extension of the newspaper plant. Through modern invention and through news-collecting agencies, the whole world has been brought to the sanctum, and the time and energy of the office staff thus released has been turned in the direction of perfecting the various parts of the paper.
The early editorial might claim infallibility of judgment, but the editorial of to-day may with greater justice lay claim to omniscience. ”

“ The substitution of the impersonal corporation for the personal owner has necessarily affected adversely the importance of the editorial. The frequent changes in policy that are inevitable when the editor becomes to a certain extent dependent on the corporation tends to uncertainty in the conduct of the editorial page. The growing importance of the business manager, the introduction of what has been termed "the department-store idea," the investment of large capital on which returns are expected—all combine on the business side to limit the influence of the editor. ”

“ Emerging from Grub Street, and Bohemia, the editor developed in England into a Delane,—the confidant of ministers and of royalty; or into a member of the House of Lords, commanding vast wealth and high social prestige; or into a recipient of birth day honors. "There is scarcely a large city in Great Britain," says Porritt, "in which there is not a titled journalist,"—a system practically begun by Lord Salisbury in 1885 and continued by his successors. [29] In America he has more than once left the editorial sanctum to represent his country at foreign courts. ”

“ The owner may have been termed a patron, the press may have been controlled by a political party, the editor may have been called a hack writer,—whatever the designation applied to the party of either the first or the second part, the friction that has existed between those who hold the purse strings and those in their employ has been well understood . Defoe's difficulties with Fog, Applebee and Mist, have been set forth by all of his biographers. Addison and Steele strove for independence of their patrons, not always successfully. ”

“ The slightest error of statement in regard to events brings on it the satire of its even more omniscient competitors while the danger of a libel suit lurks in every misstatement in regard to an individual. ”

“ But quite apart from these large phases of his work the position of an editor may involve situations that may bring many heart-burnings, much depression of spirit, and profound discouragement and questioning as to the real importance of his work. The conscientious editor may regret that he is not reaching certain classes in society, but he may himself find no adequate explanation for it ”

“ This attitude of infallibility and omniscience has almost inevitably been modified by the changes that have affected the paper as a whole. The principle of division of labor has entered the editorial columns as it has the business office, and the editor who himself once wrote on every subject now engages specialists to write editorials in their own special field and the editorial office may expand to include half a continent. ”

“ A general survey of an important question, or an exhaustive comment on a single phase of a subject prominently in the public eye may cover the first three columns of a great daily, while in the care taken in the presentation of the subject it may vie with all that is best in literature. ”

“ When Lord Lyndhurst invited the editor of The Times to dinner it "made a great uproar," [21] but a recent journalist can facetiously remark that an "editor attends more public banquets than a cabinet minister." [22]
The wheel turns round and Moberly Bell is cited as saying, only twenty years ago, that it was an unheard of thing for a member of the editorial staff of The Times to be seen talking with any member of the commercial department. Men working on the paper were forbidden to know each other. ”

“ It can seldom command men of the ability that represent the great London papers in foreign capitals, be cause of the inferior standing of journalists in Germany in comparison with those in Western Europe. Very few select journalism as an occupation because the social prestige belonging to the profession and professional pride among journalists are as undeveloped as when Freytag wrote Die Journalisten. ”

“ Whether Bismarck's attitude towards the press was cause or result is both uncertain and immaterial, but Bismarck himself spoke in contemptuous terms of the press, and foreign and German writers on the press of Germany during his time refer to the low social position of editors and press correspondents,—"no foreign correspondent can be received at the German court;" "editors are paid small salaries and are not in the highest social circles;" "journalists are a pack of fellows too lazy to work and too illiterate to be schoolmasters of children;" ”

“ To Porritt, it seemed "open to question whether the editorial writer is the power he once was in English journalism . He still helps to keep his party together; but nowadays it is doubtful whether the editorial columns of the daily press make many political converts." ”

“ The Oregonian is a newspaper whose function is discussion, as it thinks fit and deems just, of all subjects presented for consideration in the active life of our people even the claims of dogmatic theology, on occasion. ”

“ A pendant to the social position of the editor is the very considerable number of editors who have been imprisoned - usually for debt, libel, or blasphemy—and have continued to edit their papers from behind prison bars. ”

“ For the multitude the leading article is the obvious short-cut to convictions." [75]
It must be apparent that no off-hand statement that the editor controls the policy of the press or that he and the paper are both controlled by the owner is of weight unless it takes into consideration the factors of time and place. Equally necessary is it to remember the variations among editors and owners and even the variations in the moods and policies of individual editors. ”

“ The editor may be doomed, but his problems still persist and will not down. The names and the times of editors might at any period be exchanged for those quite otherwise and the same troubles would still confront him,—differences in degree and differences in constituencies would not alter the basic situation. Leslie Stephen has shown that in the eighteenth century Defoe considered that the journal "supplied the initiative and leverage for all movements of political and social reform;" ”

“ No man connected with the Review, none even of its founders, has ever claimed an exclusive right over any particular province." [116]
Brougham's infirmities of temper led Napier into frequent difficulties on the same score. "Pray send off your countermand to Macaulay," he wrote the harassed editor to whom Macaulay had offered an article on the politics of France after the Restoration, "I can trust no one but myself with it," and he plaintively adds, "Jeffrey always used to arrange it so upon delicate questions." ”

“ The recent transfer of ownership of the New York Evening Post was accompanied by a statement that the transfer would not affect in any way the editorial policy of the paper. [61]
The question in its entirety is closely allied to the fundamental problem of whether an editor should write at all or not,—a question to which E. T. Cook says "high authority, and probably the more general practice, are in favor of [giving] the negative answer." ”

“ During the war the spirit of infallibility once more asserted itself to an extreme degree, but it seemed a passing phase and the close of the war is bringing a return of moderate judgments and a decrease in that spirit of omniscience which is a characteristic of ignorance. ”

“ This is of small importance, but it is indicative of the difference which exists in the Cabinet on the subject, and the explanation of the inconsistency of the 'Times' is to be found in the double influence which acts on the paper." [98]
While these editorial variations have often given rise to pungent criticism, very real difficulties are frequently presented to an editor, as has been recently suggested. An editor starts out to support a Mr. Jones whose intentions seem the best. His methods turn out to be a trifle shady: He makes enemies. ”