Editorial office

“ But I am sure that few persons who read the papers realize the great amount of time and thought that goes into turning out a good, up-to-date, artistically illustrated newspaper. The mere mechanical toil required is enormous; and in addition to this labor there is all the bustle, rush, and rivalry attending the securing of the latest news. The editorial office has its set of problems, as you know, if you yourself get out a paper. ”

“ The very best members of the staff are summoned to write of such events and the assignment comes to be considered as an office reward of merit.
To do the big thing of the day is one of the prizes of the reportorial business. Indeed, it may be said of the newspaper man, that from his earliest beginnings always there is something higher to be attained until he becomes the editor in chief.
In the newspaper offices of cities of the larger size, reporters develop into desk editors, city editors, managing editors, music or dramatic or book critics, or editorial writers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It would be a blessing if other editors, "who can see nothing in his paper," wouldn't steal his articles constantly—editorial and contributed—without credit.
But, on the contrary, how came that beautiful bouquet on his desk? Where that fine engraving on his office wall? How came that beautiful picture and convenient inkstand there? I'd have you to know that the donors have not always an axe they wish to grind in that office. I dare say you will try to make me believe that Editors are human. ”

“ He, too, has no control over the use which his customer may make of them. The reporters on an English journal sacrifice their individuality to the “Office” in order to remain in that position to an advanced age, or, if they are men of real talent, to create for themselves a free and independent position in literature. They all, from the leader-writer to the foreign correspondent, and from the foreign correspondent down to the penny-a-liner, submit unconditionally to the authority of the editorial body. ”

“ He who knows the scope and power of the press need desire no higher office than the editorial.
“In that silent realm of influences out of which proceed the 322actions of men and the events of history, the editor is the invisible leader. Votes cannot raise him higher. His pen is more than a sceptre. Profoundly impressed with such a responsibility, desiring to honor God in the welfare of men, we ask the sympathy of good men and the remembrance of all who pray.
“Henry Ward Beecher.” ”

“ For the sake of the contrast of juxtaposition, an editorial tilt of a later period, when journalism had become impersonal, may be inserted. As The Tribune had the better of it in the edi- torial controversy just recorded, an illustration may be used which reverses the honor. Long after The Courier and Enquirer had become a part of The World, a Democratic President made a very poor appointment to an office at his disposal. The Tribune, thinking that it might embarrass its neighbor, asserted that it would leave the explanation of this appointment to the official Democratic spokesman, The World. ”

“ The editorial offices are in a single vast room, in a corner of which the Colonel's flat-top desk is placed. There are no private offices. The city editor and his reporters have their desks at the center, under a skylight, and the editorial writers, telegraph editor, Sunday editor, and all the other editors are distributed about the room's perimeter. ”

“ Yet the press was still the last resource of the educated poor who could not be artists and would not be tutors. Any man who was fit for nothing else could write an editorial or a criticism. The enormous mass of misinformation accumulated in ten years of nomad life could always be worked off on a helpless public, in diluted doses, if one could but secure a table in the corner of a newspaper office. The press was an inferior pulpit; an anonymous schoolmaster; a cheap boarding-school but it was still the nearest approach to a career for the literary survivor of a wrecked education. ”

“ 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 journalist in the small city, like the village editor, is in close intimacy with his readers. He is bound to them by the tie of community interest. He lives with them as well as for them. He may make himself the most influential and the most beloved man in the neighborhood if he cares to do so. Repeatedly in the history of this Republic the editor of the small city newspaper has been called to the President’s cabinet, to a foreign ambassadorship, to the national congress, to the government of his state and to county and town office. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every editor’s drawer is crammed—every newspaper office besieged—by hundreds doomed to disappointment; not two thirds of the present surfeit of writers, born of the success of a few, obtain even a hearing. ”

“ III The Society Editor
They say that in the newspaper offices of the city men work in ruts; that the editorial writer never reports an item, no matter how much he knows of it; that a reporter is not allowed to express an editorial view of a subject, even though he be well qualified to speak; but on our little country daily newspaper it is entirely different. We work on the interchangeable point system. Everyone writes items, all of us get advertising and job-work when it comes our way, and when one of us writes anything particularly good, it is marked for the editorial page. ”

“ This is particularly the privilege of the editor in the small city where he is well known and where everybody seeks his good opinion and good will. There he is found in meetings and councils and all social gatherings of any account, taking active part in the speaking and the disposing. There, too, he is active in party politics, in community interests and in the town’s public life. In the big cities he is less in public gaze, yet, if he has reached editorial success, he finds himself welcome wherever people gather. ”

“ But I have about come to the conclusion that that one editor is the only one who has the right idea. He takes the job seriously. Well, who will take it seriously if he doesn't? And who will say it should not be taken seriously?
The editorial is really the mind and soul of the newspaper. It is what the newspaper is. And every community needs today as it never needed before intelligent leadership. It needs information,—information about everything, particularly itself. It needs above all, in this world of organized propaganda and partisanship,—the truth. ”

“ We confidently look to an enlightened public for aid in this great and indispensable effort.
The columns of the Expositor will be open to the discussion of all matters of public interest, the productions of all correspondents being subject to the decision of the Editor alone, who shall receive or reject at his option. National questions will be in place, but no preference given to either of the political parties. The Editorial department will contain the political news of the day, proceedings of Congress, election returns, &c., &c. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The business manager, with a few exceptions, controls the editorial department and dictates all policies. So [193] we poor wayfarers, hungry for information concerning some important interest, seize upon a learned editorial in a great metropolitan daily, and while we think we are being instructed by the weighty opinion of some friendly and scholarly writer, we are in fact reading THE PAID ADVERTISEMENT of our enemies, placed in the paper to confuse us. When, in the news department, we read a speech or an interview, it is often so garbled that the meaning is quite changed. ”

“ If the newspaper men in your town are too busy to give the Chamber the attention it deserves, write your own news; don ’t go for days without anything in the
papers about the Chamber. Be always ready to receive a reporter; don’t be too busy to see him; don’t let him cool his heels in an outer office.If there is a reporter on your beat who is at all capable, don't go over his head to the editor with a story.Do your kicking on a badly-handled story to the man who wrote it, not to his superior. ”

“ The editor-in-chief, under whom are one or more editorial writers, has charge of the editorial columns and determines the editorial policy, subject to whatever control of this policy the owner or directors desire to exercise. The editorial writers and the editor-in-chief confer daily to consider the attitude that the paper shall take in its editorials and to divide the work of writing them. Some of the editorials are written by men in other professions who are not on the regular staff, and often by such members of the news staff as the financial editor or the dramatic critic. ”

“ In the big cities the editor knows the quality of mind he is addressing better than does the writer in smaller communities. In New York, for instance, every sheet has a different sort of clientele. Everybody knows which newspaper, by reason of its scholarly editorial articles, its criticisms, its reviews and non-sensational news appeals to the highest intelligence. And every one knows the ones that appeal to the non-thinking public. ”

“ The able editor needs to know and does know every range of it between the editorial room, the composing room and the pressroom. He must hold well in hand everybody and every function, having risen, as it were, step by step from the ground floor to the roof. ”

“ It is of infinitely more importance that they should be absolutely trustworthy than that the editorial comments should be sound and wise. If the reports on affairs can be depended on, the public can form its own opinion, and act intelligently. And; if the public has a right to demand anything of a newspaper, it is that its reports of what occurs shall be faithfully accurate, unprejudiced, and colorless. They ought not, to be editorials, or the vehicles of personal opinion and feeling. The interpretation of, the facts they give should be left to the editor and the public. ”

“ The editor's function is still more intimately and constantly to hold the mirror up to society, revealing and reproving its faults. And to-day there is probably no more potent force acting directly upon the opinions and conduct of men than the daily editorial. ”

“ Consequently news values are constantly being readjusted as each important piece of news reaches the office. In the final decision in regard to what news shall be printed, what shall be omitted, and how much space shall be given to each piece of news that is published, the personal judgment of the editors is the determining factor. ”

“ As the average newspaper editor endeavors to anticipate public opinion he invariably keeps himself well informed concerning the activities of an office-holder, that he may be prepared to campaign against him at the instant he detects dissatisfaction among his subscribers. And the present governor was being scathingly arraigned by the newspapers of the state, while he sat in smug complacence in his office at the capital. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is, perhaps, in this department of a newspaper office that the change from the old regime is most apparent. The young sub-editors are frequently graduates of universities; but, in spite of this, most of them are well abreast of French and German as well as English literature. They bear out my contention, that journalism is beginning to be taken seriously. The new men have chosen journalism as their profession ”