Editorship

“ 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. ”

“ While not inclined to argue this point, it is my humble judgment that the newspaper begins its existence the moment the managing editor opens his desk for the day’s work. He is its main-spring! Whatever of distinctive character it possesses in methods of handling the news of the day it owes to him, and it is these very features that render one journal better or worse than others. He it is, as a rule, who establishes the chivalry of the press toward the public. It is he who decides the line of attack or defense when the vast interests which he represents are assailed. ”

“ The public does not give credit to the editor, particularly of the modern newspaper, for the high code of honor which constantly actuates him in his work. The prevailing notion is that an editor prints all that he knows, and much that he does not know. Outside of those in the inner government circles, no group of men, during the Great War, had more information of a confidential nature constantly given or brought to them, and more zealously guarded it, than the editors of the newspapers of America. ”

“ The editor feels that he is limited by the temperament of his contributors and the contributor languishes under the heavy hand of the editor. The editor must not offend the public, and the contributor must not offend the editor. With exceptions almost equal in number to those that prove the rule, the student of history must find the editor of the periodical press essentially conservative, a man with his hand on the public pulse, an observer rather than a leader, a critic rather than an initiator. ”

“ Many men had his respect, even his homage, but as an editor—and I never knew him as anything else—he would allow no man to dictate to him; he served only the Public and ‘those few great principles.’ ‘An editor,’ he would say, tapping a sheet of paper with his glasses, ‘is the servant of the Public although his duty is to educate it.’ And his innocent vanity would swell out into such monstrous proportions, would bud and blossom into such foolish phrases, that his hearer would wonder if he had suddenly strayed into the rigid world of the third-rate comic novel. ”

“ An editor who familiarises with his reporters imperils his authority, for every man of his staff considers himself to be as good a craftsman as the editor; and does not the humblest junior carry in his wallet the potential quill of an editor-in-chief?
A newspaper, moreover, for all the prating about the profession of journalism, is as much a business establishment as the grocer's round the corner. ”

“ His associates—the city 20editor, the religious editor, the dramatic critic, the police reporter, and the heads of several other departments—were in the habit of discussing the topics of the times from a strictly democratic standpoint, with the regularity with which day follows night.
The “old man,” or managing editor, could not take a deeper interest in the columns of the Banner than did his faithful coterie of assistants. The managing editor prided himself on his ability to recognize and command intellectual forces. ”

“ Two motives oblige me to study—to increase my knowledge, and prevent ennui. Having risen from a mere apothecary’s clerk to be the chief editor of an important journal, I have to apply myself to keep apace with my new profession. A journalist must be imprudent or dishonest who discusses any subject on which he has not sufficient information. And think of the multitude of questions connected with politics, political economy, legislation, literature, and religion itself which I have in turn to treat of! In the Paris newspapers, each editor writes on the subjects he understands the best. ”

“ You can get an intelligent opinion from an editor on almost any subject; but you are lucky if you can get an intelligent opinion on any one subject from the average professional man—a lawyer, of course, excepted.
But undoubtedly curious specimens of editors might occasionally have been found in the smaller newspaper offices in the provinces long ago. More than twenty years have passed since the sub-editor of a rather important paper in a town in the Midlands interviewed, on a matter of professional etiquette, the editor—he was an Irishman—of a struggling organ in the same town. ”

“ This decade of violence was nevertheless one of development in both the quality and the power of newspapers. News reporting was extended to new fields of local affairs, and the intense rivalry of all too numerous competitors awoke the beginnings of that rush for the earliest reports which was to become the dominant trait in American journalism. The editor evolved into a new type. As a man of literary skill, or a politician, or a lawyer with a gift for polemical writing, he began to supersede the contributors of essays as the strongest writer on the paper. ”

“ It may not be out of place here to remind new readers of this journal of that which old readers well know, that no articles are editorial except those which are unsigned or bear the name of the editor, or that of the sub-editor; for each and every other article the author is allowed to say his own say in his own way; the editor only furnishes the means to address our readers, leaving to him or to her the right and responsibility of divergent thought. ”

“ Nobody chooses his own reading; and a whole community perusing substantially the same material tends to a mental uniformity. The editor has the more than royal power of selecting the intellectual food of a large public. It is a responsibility infinitely greater than that of the compiler of schoolbooks, great as that is. The taste of the editor, or of some assistant who uses the scissors, is in a manner forced upon thousands of people, who see little other printed matter than that which he gives them. ”

“ Journalism was then, as it is now, a wonderfully agitated world in which editors knew what their readers wanted and were determined to see that they got it—whether they liked it or not. Oddly enough, an editor’s staff never seems to have this happy faculty of knowing what the readers want, but they do know what their editors want—and so everyone is mildly unhappy about it excepting the editors—and it is questionable whether an editor is ever really happy, or ever deserves to be. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ Every kind of persuasion was brought to bear on journalists—dinners, flattery, and presents. The following story will throw more light on the close connection between the critic and the publisher than any quantity of flat assertions.
There was once upon a time an editor of an important paper, a clever writer with a prospect of becoming a statesman; he was young in those days, and fond of pleasure, and he became the favorite of a well-known publishing house. ”

“ Public opinion can be created more rapidly by daily appeals and arguments which the newspaper reader can quietly look over by himself, pausing whenever he may like to think over what he has read, than anything that can appear in campaign speeches or magazine essays or books by the most noted writers and specialists. The editor, as a rule, has dropped the old stilted form of the essay, and puts his arguments in the ordinary colloquial form, with homely illustrations and forcible applications so far as words go. ”

“ The editor worthy of the name realizes that he has a triple responsibility. In selecting manuscripts, he must please the public first of all. But he must also please the owners of his magazine and he must please himself. He cannot make a success of his job unless all three demands are satisfied in every issue. The first responsibility is obvious. The magazine public reads to be entertained. The editor is under an unwritten contract not to bore his following. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The people are true to the editors only just as long as the editors are true to the people. An editor, with no readers of his paper, is in a much more pitiable plight than a lawyer without briefs, or a preacher without a charge. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They are not like this old fellow, who is my beau idéal of the jovial anchorite. The first editor of my acquaintance (he was the editor of a pseudo-religious magazine—it is solemn food for reflection that nearly all young fellows of literary-artistical tastes start with magazines of this stamp) , my first editor, I was saying, would not, some years syne, print this, my pet saint, “for,” said he, “he is irreverent, and”—with a fine disregard of grammar—“the proprietors would not like it.” ”

“ A ‘city editor’ directs the reporters in gathering news. A ‘news editor’ keeps in touch with outside correspondents through the telegraph and the telephone. What pours in from the press associations and a paper's own avenues must be thoroughly sifted by ‘copy editors,’ who now throw out far more than they put in. For important news articles there are usually special writers. ‘Exchange editors’ read other periodicals with scissors in hand, clipping what they think will interest the public. Comment on the news of the day is in the hands of a trained corps of editorial writers. ”

“ An editor who was not grossly ignorant would have perceived that no person to whom the House of Commons would listen could possibly have been guilty of such blunders. An editor who had the smallest regard for truth, or for the fame of the person whose speeches he had undertaken to publish, would have had recourse to the various sources of information which were readily accessible, and, by collating them, would have produced a book which would at least have contained no absolute nonsense. ”

“ The editor whose cranium is crammed with facts has great advantage over the editor whose cranium is empty, for the mind, especially the editorial mind,77 feeds on facts. The editor must furnish information and comment on a multitude of facts widely diverse in themselves, topics treating of every phase of human life, every shade of animate or inanimate condition. He must study the topic enough to write on it skillfully. He must convince the reader of his mastery of the subject. Bulwer Lytton’s reiteration that “Knowledge is power” finds constant verification in newspaper editing. ”

“ Whilst the editor has been holding this important parliament, the sub-editor has, on his part, not been idle. The mass of papers he has to examine and arrange far exceeds that of his chief, and no small judgment is required to determine what shall be retained and what shall be destroyed. Look at that heap of papers. Surprise is often expressed that an editor should be able to fill his forty or fifty columns with such unvarying punctuality, morning after morning. “Whence can he find matter?” ”