The Globe (newspaper)

“ Thus the daily newspaper will be entirely a vehicle for the propagation of news, correctly so called: and very likely it will become almost entirely colourless, politically, because a well-informed public will resent obvious garbling or clearly unfair selection. ”

“ In the magazine the patchwork of daily journalism is assembled into more meaningful designs. Local news is sifted of its provincialism to become matter of national concern. Topics which you rapidly skimmed in the afternoon newspaper three or four weeks ago are re-discussed in the weekly or monthly magazines in a way which often makes you feel that here, for the first time, they become of personal import. ”

“ It is the imperative demand for news, embracing every movement of human life in every class and every country, that sets in action the wondrous organization that produces a daily newspaper. Its ministers of communication are almost ubiquitous. ”

“ These are the men—and there are more, too, I might name—who came forward with their touch upon the pulse of the nation when the day of the daily newspaper as a leader of enlightened public opinion had waned. ”

“ The time when the opinions, the power in phraseology, or the individuality of one man could alone make a daily newspaper a financial, literary, or political success had passed. The press had become an institution, journalism a profession, and the publication of newspapers a practical business requiring and rewarding enterprise and sagacity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I need not elaborate upon the wonderful growth of the press in our country, or refer to the great power which journalism wields in the development of the new world. I need not ladle out statistics to show you how the newspaper has encroached upon the field of oratory and how the pale and silent man, while others sleep, compiles the universal history of a day and tells his mighty audience what he thinks about it before he goes to bed. ”

“ It will uphold no candidate for office whom it believes to be unworthy of the support of honest men, and accept no platform which it believes to misrepresent or to contradict the true conditions of our national prosperity and greatness. As a newspaper The World, being the organ of no man, no clique and no interest, will present the fullest and the fairest picture it can make of each day’s passing history in the city, the State, the country and the world. ”

“ I have had no cause to regret my choice of a profession. I begin to feel the tremendous power wielded by the press in formulating public opinion, and am in a position to build up, by reflection upon what it is, a conception of what a newspaper should be, all of which I trust will enable me, when the time comes, to do my share in furthering the highest interests of the State and mankind in general. I have come to see where the dangers which surround the young newspaper man lie, and am endeavouring to keep myself free from their influence. ”

“ Under its influence, through the “natural selection” of the public, a new and nobler species of journalism has arisen and now exists. The newspaper of to-day, evolved from rudimentary forms, is a splendid and heroic organism; and the last upholder of the dogma of its miraculous creation and infallible power is dead.
37
SOCIETY’S EXILES. BY B. O. FLOWER.
It is difficult to over-estimate the gravity of the problem presented by those compelled to exist in the slums of our populous cities, even when considered from a purely economic point of view. ”

“ So long as party feeling ran high this style of journalism was popular and successful, but the newspaper, being in the nature of an educator of the masses, soon set the people to thinking for themselves, and created a demand for the news of public and political events without the color of individual opinion. ”

“ If the newspaper has not the news it may have everything else, yet it will be comparatively unsuccessful; and by news I mean everything that occurs, everything which is of human interest, and which is of sufficient interest to arrest and absorb the attention of the public or of any considerable part of it. ”

“ More than that,—and here I come to the crux of the whole business.—in my judgment, the newspaper that meets every important issue that comes up, not militantly necessarily, but squarely, is not only an example of better journalism from a moral standpoint but from a business standpoint. In other words I believe that in the long run, in spite of necessary sacrifices and set-backs, a vigorous and clear-cut editorial policy pays. ”

“ THE MISTRESS. Don't interrupt, unless you have something to say; though I should like to know how much gossip there is afloat that the minister does not know. The newspaper may be needed in society, but how quickly it drops out of mind when one goes beyond the bounds of what is called civilization. You remember when we were in the depths of the woods last summer how difficult it was to get up any interest in the files of late papers that reached us, and how unreal all the struggle and turmoil of the world seemed. We stood apart, and could estimate things at their true value. ”

“ All of them have souls to save—so has that lawyer who does not go to church. I must see him to-morrow. 'What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?'"
Meanwhile the newspaper man prints the news about them all, for he keeps his finger on the pulse of the whole world for news. "No factor in modern civilization is so important as the press," says he. ”

“ In brief, the newspapers of that time had not learned the baleful lesson that human society is a cone, broadest at bottom, and that the lower a newspaper cuts into it the broader its surface of circulation is. ”

“ They demand a high standard not only in the physical appearance of their newspapers but in the news service as well. Their daily paper must provide them with items of local, state and international interest and importance. In the complex activities of modern life, the newspaper must find and select the subjects which interest its readers. ”

“ Whitelaw Reid, editor of the New York Tribune, and now Minister to France, says: “Every great newspaper represents an intellectual, a moral and a material growth—the accretion of successive efforts from year to year—until it has become an institution and a power. It is the voice of the power that the twenty or thirty years of honest dealing with the public and just discussion of current questions have given.” ”

“ Let us endeavour to supply a rapid sketch of the wonderful organization that is required to produce this great necessary of modern society.
The essential characteristic of a newspaper is news. It may be philosophical, or critical, or imaginative—it may pour forth treasures of learning or eloquence, to live but a few hours and then be too readily forgotten—but no amount of ability will give it currency if it be deficient in news. ”

“ Given, formerly of the New York Sun, often called “the newspaper man’s newspaper,” has written to my mind the only valuable professional account of the newspaper world.
What is news? Americans give a more comprehensive answer to that question than any other people. In that country small things overshadow the great. Perhaps it would be truer to say that the important things to them are matters of detail. Foreign politics are to them outlandish matters. Their public life is itself a matter of small things ”

“ This is the limit of the power of the modern newspaper of large circulation, the newspaper that appeals to the grey element, to the average democratic man, the newspaper of the deliquescence, and if our previous conclusion that human society has ceased to be homogeneous and will presently display new masses segregating from a great confusion, holds good, this will be the limit of its power in the future. ”

“ Much more effort should be made by newspapers in this country to show108 the significance of acts of representative public bodies, in relation not only to the home and business interests of the individual reader, but to the welfare of the community, the state, and the nation. Intelligent interest in government on the part of the individual citizen, which is generally recognized as absolutely essential to the success of a democracy, can be more effectively created through the news columns of the daily newspaper than by any other means. ”

“ It is evident that a newspaper cannot do for a community of 1,000,000 inhabitants what the village did spontaneously for itself through the medium of gossip and personal contact. Nevertheless the efforts of the newspaper to achieve this impossible result are an interesting chapter in the history of politics as well as of the press. ”

“ Again, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the public has been taught many lessons. The immense newspaper publicity, which could never have been obtained except for a struggle on a stupendous scale, has proved a campaign of education for young and old, for business man and farmer, for lawyer and politician, for housewife and for student. It has left the manufacturer less cocksure of the soundness of his individualist philosophy. ”

“ The great number of, and the imperfect organization of the newspaper establishments, as has already been shown, is a principal reason; necessity, in some degree, compelling a manufacture of "news," when none exists in reality. ”

“ Want some advice from the Old Man?"
"I most surely do, Dad."
"Listen here, then. A newspaper is a business proposition. Never forget that. All these hifalutin' notions about its being a palladium and the voice of the people and the guardian of public interests are good enough to talk about on the editorial page. Gives a paper a following, that kind of guff does. But the duty of a newspaper is the duty of any other business, to make money. There's the principle, the policy, the politics, ethics, and religion of the newspaper in a nutshell. ”

“ It is only fair to the would-be reporter, therefore, to tell him that at times in his journalistic career he may be permitted to see snow only through a motorist's yellow goggles. The modern newspaper is a business organization run for the profit or power of the owners, with the additional motive in the background of possible social uplift,—social uplift as the owners see it. ”

“ Journalism has now taken its place as one of the most important of the liberal professions. Next to statesmanship, next to the actual conduct of public affairs, the editor of a leading newspaper fills, perhaps, the most important place in the practical daily life of the community in which he lives ”

“ It has come to this, that the newspaper furnishes thought-material for all the world, actually prescribes from day to day the themes the world shall think on and talk about. The occupation of news-gathering becomes, therefore, the most important. ”

“ The important thing, it seems to me, about the newspaper is that it represents the interest and reflects the opinions and intelligence of the average man in the community where the paper is published. ”

“ A modern newspaper is an enormously expensive institution. The day is past when a country printer could set up a hand-press and print news about the wedding of the village blacksmith’s daughter and the lawn-party of the Christian Endeavor Society, and so make his way as a journalist. ”

“ They want the simpler sort of editorial comment and are better pleased with that which explains than with that which argues. They want their news adorned with breath-catching headlines in big type.
In the large cities many professional and business men read several daily newspapers, but their number is small compared with the millions who read one paper only. In smaller cities and in the villages and on the farms it is quite the exception when more than one daily newspaper enters the household. In very many instances this one sheet is all the reading matter the members of the household have. ”

“ If this excess of daily miscellany is deleterious to the public, I doubt if it will be, in the long run, profitable to the newspaper, which has a field broad enough in reporting and commenting upon the movement of the world, without attempting to absorb the whole reading field. ”

“ There is scarcely a newspaper in the United States at the present day which restricts itself entirely to political subjects. Anything in the nature of human interests, social economies, moral reforms, and even the tastes and amusements of the people is a fair subject for the editor. ”

“ Except where they have been made political tools, newspaper writers and editors have never, I believe, been admitted into good society in England. It is otherwise here: newspapers are the main literature of America ”

“ The newspaper makes its theory first, or it inherits a theory, and then sends out for facts to fit it. Does not every one know beforehand how every daily paper in this city will treat any given political event? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Has the time come, or is it near at hand, when we can point to a person who is alert, superficial, ready and shallow, self-confident and half-informed, and say, “There is a product of the American newspaper”? The newspaper is not a willful creation, nor an isolated phenomenon, but the legitimate outcome of our age, as much as our system of popular education. And I trust that some competent observer will make, perhaps for this association, a philosophical study of it. ”