The Washington Post

“ And he depart off to catch an excessive automobile what done a crime.
Mr. Editor, it will require more than explosions to awake Hon. Washington from sweet sleep which will go on for next 4 years. When Associated Press hears slight shock along Patomac it will not be sounds of unrest—it will be merely snores from happy Congressmen. By time this loving letter are there in your post-office, White House furniture are already preparing to be sat on by another kind of Person. Perhapsly he will be a bigger man, but I bet my bootware he will not cover so many places at once. ”

“ The operation of the law establishing the post-office, as it relates to the transmission of newspapers, will merit our particular inquiry and attention, the circulation of political intelligence through these vehicles being justly reckoned among the surest means of preventing the degeneracy of a free government, as well as of recommending every salutary public measure to the confidence and cooperation of all virtuous citizens. ”

“ It is therefore not surprising that the political leaders of the country make very wide use of the Press in important questions of foreign politics, to influence public opinion in favor of the Government policy. Not only the great news agencies, but also all leading newspapers of the Union maintain their permanent special correspondents in Washington, and these are received almost daily by the Secretary of State, and as a rule once a week by the President. ”

“ In particular, the leading newspaper correspondents at Washington were as a whole a singularly able, trustworthy, and public-spirited body of men, and the most useful of all agents in the fight for efficient and decent government. ”

“ News coming out of Washington is apt to represent not what is so but what might be so under certain contingencies, what may turn out to be so, what some eminent personage says is so, or even what he wants the public to believe is so when it is not. ”

“ If some of my readers take exception to the political caste of the beginning of this letter, I will say that nothing else is thought of in Washington, much less talked about, and it is surprising to see the ladies conning newspapers that are devoted exclusively to politics. ”

“ There is an incurable desire in American newspapers to take things much more seriously than they deserve. Does Miss Lowell read the ponderous news from Washington? Does she read the society news? Does she, we wonder, read the newspapers? ”

“ In all popular governments, the press is the most ready channel by which the opinions and the passions of the few are communicated to the many; and of the press, the two great parties forming in the United States, sought to avail themselves. The Gazette of the United States supported the systems of the treasury department, while other papers enlisted themselves under the banners of the opposition. ”

“ A man who stands on a good footing with the heads of parties at Washington, reads the rumors of the newspapers, and the guesses of provincial politicians, with a key to the right and wrong in each statement, and sees well enough where all this will end. ”

“ Only six months before, this innocent young man fresh from the cynicism of European diplomacy, had expected to enter an honorable career in the press as the champion and confidant of a new Washington, and already he foresaw a life of wasted energy, sweeping the stables of American society clean of the endless corruption which his second Washington was quite certain to breed. ”

“ They treat an important event rather as a semi-news semi-editorial review article—an article of news with interjected comment, with expression of opinion as suits the writer’s fancy or belief or prejudice.
In American newspapers of high grade the reporter is not permitted to comment or inject opinion or seek to influence the reader; he must not depart from the cold facts of narration. No comment outside the editorial page is the rule. The foreign correspondent is excepted from this requirement and the Washington man partly so.
Not any other kind of newspaper work gives more useful experience. ”

“ The whole aspect of the humbler press has changed within these few years. Unquestionably the people have changed. Visit, if you can, the interior of that marvellous human machine, the General Post-Office, on a Friday evening, from half-past five to six o'clock. Look with awe upon the tons of newspapers that are crowding in to be distributed through the habitable globe. Think silently how potent a power is this for good or for evil. ”

“ It is most unwise to give credence to all one gathers from hearsay. If an illustration were necessary to make the reader cautious it might be found in Washington, where the good faith of a reliable newspaper was abused. ”

“ Notwithstanding the freedom of opinion and the license of the press, which should never be too much restrained in a free country, there are times and circumstances which require silence; and however disposed anyone might be to censure the conduct of General Washington, either for the want of enterprise, alacrity, or military skill, yet perhaps no man in the United States, under the pressure of so many difficulties, would have conducted with more discretion and judgment. ”

“ The associated press writers from Washington seem to be selected for their inability to be terse and pithy, and dribble out the simplest fact with pitiful iteration. The special news-writers, being often at their wits' end for their dole of day's work, can hardly be asked to be laconic. ”

“ It would like to have, of course, but it would not be fair to the business men who are paying ten thousand dollars a page to be advertised in it, for the Saturday Evening Post to let any other man—any man who is not dead yet, be advertised in it. ”

“ By far the greater part of the news which the American people absorb about the outside world comes through the Associated Press, and the news they get is, of course, the raw material of their thought. ”

“ But while that Press has its evil eye in every house, and its black hand in every appointment in the state, from a President to a postman,—while, with ribald slander for its only stock in trade, it is the standard literature of an enormous class, who must find their reading in a newspaper, or they will not read at all,—so long must its odium be upon the country's head, and so long must the evil it works be plainly visible in the Republic. ”

“ Over no nation does the press hold a more absolute control than over the people of America; ”

“ TUMULTY,
White House, Washington.
The issue of publicity is being obscured by the newspaper men and we have won for the press all that is possible or wise to win, namely, complete publicity for real conferences. Publicity for the conversations I am holding with the small group of the great powers will invariably break up the whole thing, whereas the prospects for agreement are now, I should say, very good indeed. Delighted that you are up and beg that you will not expose yourself or exert yourself too soon. Affectionate messages from us all. ”

“ The time of his leaving West Point and the hour of his return to Washington are also given.
The value of newspapers as an indication of public sentiment is sometimes questioned, but it can hardly be doubted that the average man will read the newspaper with the sentiments of which he agrees. ”

“ The country circulation of most of the large Eastern papers was so curtailed that only one or two, like the New York Tribune, were able to maintain through their weekly editions something of their national character; the organs in Washington, even Niles’s Weekly Register, which had been a most useful vehicle for the disseminating of political information, were still further shorn of their usefulness and soon eliminated; and the already vigorous provincial press became numerous and powerful.
§ 17. Growth of Specialized Forms of Journalism; Anti-Slavery ”

“ Next day, grown still more audacious, it had the hardihood to refer to the Post as "The Plonny Neal organ."
Now, of course, the reformatory had not been in any sense a burning public "issue." Measures like this, being solid and really important, seldom interest the people. There was not the smallest popular excitement over the legislature's conduct, or the Post's. The Chronicle's venomous remarks were dismissed as the usual "newspaper scrap." All this West understood perfectly. ”

“ The editorship of the Evening Post made him not merely a news vender but a molder of public thought, and his entrance into the world of opinion gave him more of an interest in life itself and less in his own emotions. ”

“ My own experience leads me to believe that if the newspaper performed no other service for the community but that of rooting out of the public mind the malice and prejudice that rest upon misinformation and gossip, it would justify its existence in this way alone. ”

“ The friends and the enemies of that instrument were stimulated to exertion by motives equally powerful; and, during the interval between its publication and adoption, every faculty of the mind was strained to secure its reception or rejection. The press teemed with the productions of temperate reason, of genius, and of passion; and it was apparent that each party believed power, sovereignty, liberty, peace, and security;—things most dear to the human heart;—to be staked on the question depending before the public. ”

“ Some of the newspapers were sufficiently sane to offer their readers definite figures on which to base judgment of American duty. Generally, the patriotic bias developed but little jingoism in the complacent American press. Washington, from the heart of things, assured the nation that Germany is our firm friend, innocent of all design against the bogie we have raised on our neighbors' towers. ”

“ I am letting the World speak for itself merely as an example of what many splendid newspapers have accomplished as leaders in public movements. The New York Evening Post is another example, it having long led popular demand for vocational guidance and control. ”

“ He’s not used to being challenged and he won’t be squeamish. You will have the whole of his Press against you, and every other journalistic and political influence that he possesses. He’s getting a hold upon the working classes. The Sunday Post has an enormous sale in the manufacturing towns; and he’s talking of starting another. Are you strong enough to fight him? ”

“ As matters stand, it is beginning to be doubtful whether parliament and congress sit at Westminster and Washington or in the editor's rooms of leading journals, so thoroughly is everything debated before the authorized and responsible debaters get on their legs."
PAPERS MUST BE BELIEVED
The newspaper must be believed if it is to gain and hold readers; and it must have readers if its advertising columns are to be sold at good prices. Good business and good principles point the same way. A clean, straightforward newspaper attracts and holds readers. ”

“ There is much that is ridiculous in the every-day tone of American newspapers, in their thirst for sensations and réclame, in their petty interviews. But here everything was suddenly swept aside, and the dominant tone of the American press became deep and significant. ”

“ He greatly deplored the misrepresentation of the partisan newspapers, believing that the people of a nation would never go wrong if they had the truth before them upon which to make up their minds. It is very generally true that parties have governed for the spoils of power and office. ”

“ The establishment of the militia, of a mint, of standards of weights and measures, of the post office and post roads are subjects which I presume you will resume of course, and which are abundantly urged by their own importance. ”

“ This movement is at its strongest in the nation's capital, for official Washington likes to live in an intellectual vacuum, and journalism strives successfully to please. With the world crashing about his ears the editor of the Star, the best newspaper in the capital, finds this to say:
"The Crown Prince of Japan and the Prince of Wales are young men destined for great parts in world affairs. ”

“ Newspaper Ethics
By ROBERT W. JONES
Assistant Professor in Journalism, University of Washington
The newspaper is the rudder of the ship of state. History could be rewritten to show that wherever and whenever great events occur the influence of newspapers can be perceived. We of America have better newspapers than any other nation. We buy more papers per capita than any other nation.
The newspaper is the average man's reading matter. It is his school, his teacher, his leader. For all of us it is our point of contact with the rest of the world . ”

“ Prejudice finds expression chiefly through the medium of special cor
respondents, and particularly the Washington
correspondents.
We
note
two
humanity, but,
classes of correspondents, those who seek
again, in the conduct of man and of humanity, its influence is small. The place
to supplement the regular news agencies and those who parallel those agencies.
obtained by reason is always restricted, the ofiice it fills is generally secondary.
the press bureaus have an admitted news
Openly or secretly, it is only a convenient
value. ”

“ If we only find fault with real offenders, we shall still have work enough to do.
I say this party has great names and powerful men. It will gain others from the Democrats and from the Whigs alike. See what it has gathered from the Democrats I Look at that high-toned and noble newspaper, the Evening Post, and its editor, not only gifted with the genius of poetry, which is a great thing, but with the genius of humanity, which is tenfold greater. ”