Managing editor

“ Each, of course, always has several assistants and often many.
The managing editor has charge of the collection and distribution of news. He has no routine duties, but is responsible for the conduct of his subordinates, for the character of the paper, and for its success as a business enterprise. The relation of the paper to the public is in his keeping. Not infrequently he has serious differences of opinion with the business manager, especially when he publishes news which does not please important advertisers. ”

“ The subordinates who report directly to him are the writers of special columns, the cartoonists, the editorial writers, the editor of the Sunday paper, and the assistant managing editor, or news editor. It is with the latter and his staff that we are at present chiefly concerned.
The news editor, or night editor, as he is called on a morning paper, has charge of all the routine that is involved in the production of the paper. Its make-up is in his hands. An autocrat on space and place, he is seldom praised, but must take the blame for everything that goes wrong. ”

“ DANA’S FIRST BIG NEWS MEN
Amos J. Cummings, Dr. Wood, and John B. Bogart.—The Lively Days of Tweedism.—Elihu Root as a Dramatic Critic.—The Birth and Popularity of “The Sun’s” Cat.
Managing editors did not come into favour in American newspaper offices until the second half of the last century. As late as 1872 Frederic Hudson, in his “History of Journalism in the United States,” grumbled at the intrusion of a new functionary upon the field:
If a journal has an editor, and editor-in-chief, it is fair to assume that he is also its managing editor. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That historian (he was a Herald man, and Bennett would have no managing editor) had not been reconciled to the fact that between the editor of a newspaper—the director of its policies and opinions and general style and tone—and the subeditors to whose various desks comes the flood of news there must be some one who will act as a link, lightening the labours of the editor and shouldering the responsibilities of the desk men. He may never write an editorial article; may never turn out a sheet of news copy or put a head on an item ”

“ The supervision of the modern newspaper is much more difficult than it was forty years ago for the reason that the staff is four or five times as large. The size of the sheet has been more than quadrupled. The managing editor no longer finds it possible to read every paragraph in proof sheet before its publication; he must trust to his helpers. The increased volume of matter compels increased labor in originating it, increased attention to its consideration and preparation for printing. The managing editor’s work literally is fourfold what it used to be. ”

“ Managing editors of big dailies are hard-worked men.
Atlas' job (merely physical) is easy compared with the mental strain and worry the managing editor of a big daily paper is subjected to these days.
You'll find him feeling the need of something—it's travel dope. ”

“ The managing editor shrewdly contends that these young fellows work with an enthusiasm and perseverance unknown to older and more experienced journalists, because they have a notion that the world is their oyster and a newspaper job the knife that opens it. When they discover their mistake they are dismissed and other ambitious ones take their places. ”

“ Gavit, managing editor of the “New York Evening Post,” wrote to Mr. Melville E. Stone, general manager of the Associated Press, that I had a reputation “as an insatiable hunter of personal publicity,” what Mr. Gavit meant was that I was accustomed to demand and obtain more space in newspapers than the amount of my worldly possessions entitled me to. ”

“ They canvassed the office and found everybody willing to contribute. The managing editor and the assistant editor-in-chief had gone home, but as they had shown kindness to Whiskers, and were, in fact, the only two men on the staff who knew anything about his private affairs, the exchange editor took his chances and put in a dollar for each of them. ”

“ I appreciate very much your generous invitation to be here tonight.
You bear heavy responsibilities these days and an article I read some time ago reminded me of how particularly heavily the burdens of present day events bear upon your profession.
You may remember that in 1851 the New York Herald Tribune under the sponsorship and publishing of Horace Greeley, employed as its London correspondent an obscure journalist by the name of Karl Marx.
We are told that foreign correspondent Marx, stone broke, and with a family ill and undernourished, constantly appealed to Greeley and managing editor Charles Dana for an increase in his munificent salary of $5 per installment, a salary which he and Engels ungratefully labeled as the "lousiest petty bourgeois cheating". ”

“ With an editor ever alive to the new message, the new note, the fresh way of saying a thing, the new angle on a current subject, whether in article or story—since fiction is really to-day only a reflection of modern thought—the foolish notion that an editor must be approached through “influence,” by a letter of introduction from some friend or other author, falls of itself. There is no more powerful lever to open the modern magazine door than a postage-stamp on an envelope containing a manuscript that says something. ”

“ The "new" editor, in fact, is little more than a clerk doing the bidding of his proprietor, and the proprietor's idea of editing is slavishly to truckle to the public taste—or rather to his crude conception of the public taste. The only real editors of today are the capitalist and the public. The nominal editor is merely an office-boy of larger growth, and slightly larger salary. ”

“ Lean on nobody. Trust the common sense of an experienced publisher to know whether your manuscript is worth something or nothing. Do not depend on influence. Editors do not care a drop of ink for influence. What they want is good material, and the fresher it is, the better. An editor will pass by an old writer, any day, for an unknown and gifted new one, with power to say a good thing in a fresh way. Make your calling and election sure. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That is no doubt a business which one can execute only in the name of another, and never in one's own (as editor) . The editor furnishes in his own name the mute instrument of the delivering of a speech of the author's to the public;** the editor can publish the said speech by printing, which consequently shows himself as the person through whom the author addresses the public, but he can do so only in the name of the author. ”

“ From that apprenticeship they have gradually climbed to the post of editor. An editor is therefore not a literary man as a rule, but a business manager with a sound judgment of the public pulse and what the public wants. If he is wise he never goes into Society or knows people, because then his106 hand is free, and he can be independent. He decides the policy and the attitude of his paper, therefore he must read all the contemporary Press, and about eleven o’clock in the morning he is so buried in other people’s newspapers that he has to be dug out of the pulpy débris and printer’s ink. ”

“ This little incident taught me a lesson, and the moral of it is: never trouble an editor about your immortal works; he can so easily be even with you. I commend it to all literary tyros. Even if you are in a position to command “puffs,” the public will find you out in the second edition, and revenge itself upon your next book. Here is a story that illustrates the accuracy of this statement; it came to me on good authority, and I believe it to be true. A good many years ago, the relation of an editor of a great paper published a novel. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The word "editor" as applied to the conductors of magazines and newspapers is rapidly becoming a mere courtesy title; for the powers and functions formerly exercised by editors, properly so called, are being more and more usurped by the capitalist proprietor. There are not a few magazines where the "editor" has hardly more say in the acceptance of a manuscript than the contributor who sends it in. Few are the editors left who uphold the magisterial dignity and awe with which the name of editor was wont to be invested. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Most of the men who edit newspapers will give the people the kind of newspapers they want. There will, of course, be exceptionally good editors who will make their papers better than their readers demand, and try to educate the people up to a higher level; just as there will be exceptionally bad editors, who will make papers worse than the readers want, and be the instruments, whether they try to or not, of educating the public down to a lower level. But the average
editor will work for the average reader. ”

“ 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. ”

“ His mind is so biased by long thinking in a certain direction, that he dislikes very much to look upon both sides of a question. Therefore, if you value your safety, never approach him with manuscript written on both sides of your paper. Let me say right here, children, that a good deal of sheer nonsense has been written about the editor. He uses his shears only when composing an entirely original article. He usually writes with his pen, but his most cutting articles are the product of his shears.
The editor would make a good public speaker but for his propensity for clipping words. ”

“ There may be some authors who have taken nerve tonics and are not afraid to meet an editor or publisher. I have even read of some who will walk cheerfully into an editorial sanctum—but I’ve never seen a sanctum, nor an editor, nor a publisher. ”

“ Nobody, except he has tried it, knows what it is to be an editor. It is easy to scribble local rubbish, with the facts all before you; it is easy to clip selections from other papers; it is easy to string out a correspondence from any locality; but it is unspeakable hardship to write editorials. Subjects are the trouble—the dreary lack of them, I mean. Every day, it is drag, drag, drag—think, and worry and suffer—all the world is a dull blank, and yet the editorial columns must be filled. Only give the editor a subject, and his work is done—it is no trouble to write it up ”

“ Editors are employed by the owners of periodicals to select and publish material which will render the periodical a paying concern. The editor who does not do this may lose his position and his salary.
“He is on the watch for attractive matter—and desires to find new material. He is delighted when he discovers a new poet or author. Being mortal, and having but one mind, he can judge of the poems and stories sent to him only from an individual standpoint. ”

“ The editors are ordinarily politicians or publicists, who devote their entire time to the discussion of political questions, and expect the party or faction to which they belong to furnish them with the means of living while they are so employed. Each of the papers has a director, who holds the relation of editor-in-chief, and a sub-editor, who is a man-of-all-work, edits copy, looks after the news, reads proof, and stays around the place to see that the printers are kept busy. ”

“ 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. ”