Review (journalism)

“ 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. ”

“ Publicity, when it is honest publicity, is as important a thing as the collection and presentation of evidence at a trial. Without the evidence, of what avail would be advocacy or judgment? I have dealt with the problem of publicity, but publicity of course is not the whole of journalism. Besides news there is comment, and comment, at any rate among serious-minded people like the British, is quite as well thought of as news. It is with that part of journalism, indeed, that the editor of a weekly newspaper has most to do. ”

“ Modern editorials have been reprinted, as those from the London Times,—"third leaders" that "are meant to turn the reader from affairs and interests of the moment to a consideration 'of man, of nature, and of human life' in their larger, more permanent aspect. In one or another form they represent the daily demand and supply of material for thought. ... They are journalism; but in them journalism is extending itself towards, is even becoming, literature." ”

“ You’re never safe in journalism. Get a post as editor, and begin to bound on your so many hundreds a year. Phew! the paper changes hands or politics—where are you? Get regular weekly features, make yourself an authority on some subject or other. The public doesn’t want your subject—or you. Journalism is rotten, I tell you, rotten. ”

“ Yet while it is true that this duplicate and to some extent self-overlapping system fulfils the fundamental duty of every paper, which can be called in any sense a newspaper, it is not that side of newspaper life, which arouses the greatest amount of attention from outside, at any rate in this country, nor does it absorb the greatest amount of energy and talent within. The sensational part of journalism is the control of opinion. ”

“ The paper came out every Monday, always truculent and always propagandizing one point of view in politics. The political issue was the only raison d’être of publication. Everything else—foreign news, essays, verses, squibs, advertisements—was filler.
Here was something original for this side of the ocean, an experiment in journalism as critical as ever was attempted by any members of our fourth estate; and successful, for the Journal lived and throve and became the ancestor of the great American political organs of modern times. ”

“ Perhaps the tendency of modern journalism is to epitomize too much. In the hurry of daily newspaper work and the press of matter upon our pages, very likely we are fatally brief, and sacrifice rhetorical beauty to naked and goose-pimply facts. ”

“ And, finally, as to your proposal of making some public journal the vehicle of a discussion independent of the lectures, I regret that I feel again obliged to decline pledging myself to concur in it. While I reserve to myself the right of noticing and replying to any communication which may appear, in a duly authenticated form, in any of the public journals, I must at the same time express my conviction, that a newspaper is not the most desirable medium for disquisition on the deep and awful subjects which must pass under review in a controversy like that in which we are about to engage. ”

“ The circumstances under which we live and the problems we have to deal with demand nothing more imperatively than independent journalism—that is, journalism honestly and fearlessly treating public questions on their own merits. ”

“ Journalism, so far as it is more than mere reporting and mere money making, so far as it undertakes to frame and guide opinion, to educate the thought and instruct the conscience of the community, by editorial comment, interpretation and homily, based on the news, is under obligation to the community to be truthful, sincere, and uncorrupted ”

“ That the interest thus shown is not confined to the hundreds of attendants, but must be shared by your great public, is shown by the unfailing barometer of journalism. Here we have a field in which the non-survival of the unfit is the rule in its most ruthless form. The journals that we see and read are merely the fortunate few of a countless number, dead and forgotten, that did not know what the public wanted to read about. ”

“ Anthony and the Reporters.—I am Interviewed.—My Manager drops Asleep over it.—The Interview in Print.—The President of the United States and the Reporters.—"I am the Interviewer."
ournalism has killed literature, and reporting is killing journalism. It is the last gasp of the dying of literature of an epoch ”

“ All points to this simple conclusion, which we firmly believe to be the golden rule of journalism:—that daily newspaper which has the best corps of reporters, and handles them best, necessarily takes the lead of all competitors.
There are journalists who say (we have often heard them in conversation) that this is a low view to take of their vocation. It is of no importance whether a view is high or low, provided it is correct. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The essential condition of journalism is that it seeks either to report a fact or an event in terms that shall be immediately intelligible to the great mass of people, or to reflect an opinion from that mass in equally intelligible terms for the satisfaction of the individual units that make up that mass. ”

“ The modern press, as we know it, is less than a hundred years old. Three generations, in this country at least, have witnessed nearly the whole of the evolution of the journalist, the man who regards the gathering, presentation and interpretation of the news of the world as a science and an art, and its practice as a profession. Before, say, 1830 we have in journalism only the psychology of the pamphleteer and the politician applied through one of the collateral activities of the job printer. ”

“ The possibilities of what has been termed “constructive journalism” have been dwelt upon at some length because it is evident that well-edited papers are undertaking more and more to present the news so that it will have a wholesome effect on their readers. ”

“ It is quite the practice for editorial writers to specialize on a few topics, to become office authority on them, to be able to explain, elucidate, construct, with that authority and conviction which expert knowledge alone can inspire—to assure the orator confidently that he has evaded the main question, to riddle the pretension of a dishonest promoter, or the fabrications of a fake explorer, or the vaporings of a scrubby scientist. The newspaper has to disclose the humbug of the world as well as its realities. ”

“ Even the old six-cent journals admitted editorially that the new type of journalism had both spirit and intelligence and that all that was wanting to make it a real force in the community was a little common decency and honesty. ”

“ They are “owre true” to obtain credence..
In this category, however, I do not include the story about the gentleman from Texas who, after trying various employments in Boston to gain a dishonest livelihood, represented himself at a newspaper office as a journalist, and only asked for a trial job. The editor, believing he saw an excellent way of getting rid of a parcel of books that had come for review, flung him the lot and told him to write three-quarters of a column of flare-up head-lines, and a quarter of reviews, and maybe some fool might be attracted to the book column. ”

“ Scholars sneer at and would fain dispense with them altogether; and the public, grown lazy and helpless by this constant use of props and stays, can now scarce brace itself even to get through a magazine article, but reads in the daily paper laid beside the breakfast plate a short notice of the last number of the long established and popular review, and thereupon passes its judgment and is content. ”

“ But however great a gift, if news instinct as born were turned loose in any newspaper office in New York without the control of sound judgment bred by considerable experience and training, the results would be much more pleasing to the lawyers than to the editor. One of the chief difficulties in journalism now is to keep the news from running rampant over the restraints of accuracy and conscience. ”

“ The reason, I am sure, that journalism is so popular a calling, in spite of its many drawbacks, is this: each journalist feels he is the boy walking up and down with the cane. The Government, the Classes, and the Masses, Society, Art, and Literature, are the other children sitting on the doorstep. He instructs and improves them.
But I digress. It was to excuse my present permanent disinclination to be the vehicle of useful information that I recalled these matters. Let us now return. ”

“ The fact is, that the public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesmanlike habits, supplies their demands. ”

“ The great magazines and publishing houses have an increasing need for trained, scholarly men, for capable critics, and discerning advisers in the field both of letter-press and illustration. Another calling which seems to promise great possibilities [155] both of usefulness and income to those who devote themselves to it earnestly is the comparatively new profession of journalism. The reporter, with all his present horrors, is in the process of evolution; but the journalist is sure to remain the high-priest of democracy. ”

“ Practical advice and useful information in special fields, humorous matter, and fiction, as given in the daily newspaper, do not differ materially from similar matter published in other forms and cannot be considered distinctly journalistic types of writing.
How news is gathered. Since the day’s news is the essential part of the daily newspaper, the gathering, writing, and editing of news is naturally the chief concern of journalism. ”

“ The press fills the consciousness of the people. A modern community breathes through its press. Journalism, to be sure, is a region of letters, where all the factors for truth are at a special and peculiar discount. Its attention is given to near and ugly things, to mean quarrels, business interests, and special ends. Every country shows up badly here. ”

“ Editorials, repeated editorials, are both desirable and necessary. But to one reader who is influenced by a given editorial many hundreds are influenced day by day by the headlines of the paper and by the wording and form of presentation of the news. It is therefore to a considered and continuous policy of news presentation that we must look primarily for help.
Of newspaper influence Arthur Brisbane has said:
There never was a corrupt official who could hear without dread the growling of a hundred thousand human voices outside his door. ”

“ This has involved a more popular form of presenting news, not only in a less literary style and by the presentation of “tit-bits” of information with an appeal to cruder sentiments, but also in a more liberal use of headlines and of similar devices for catching the eye of the reader. “Personal journalism,” i.e. paragraphs about the private life or personal appearance of individuals—either men or women—of note or notoriety in society or public affairs, has become far more marked ”

“ It must not be inferred that the feature story, or any other kind of news story, should distort the facts. The writer in the Sun has merely attempted to reduce to the absurd the theory that journalism should put aside attractiveness in writing for a bare summary of facts. The modern newspaper, while its main purpose is still to inform, is coming more and more to be a source of101 entertainment also. It aims to instruct, but in such a manner that the reader will not be bored. ”

“ We are not yet educated to that spirit of appreciation we should possess for those who are struggling to perfect themselves in journalism. The great mass of our people do not look upon our Press as educators, or even truthful reporters or delineators of the live issues of the day. Most of our papers are issued weekly, generally containing news read in the daily Press, and many things are found in them foreign to a well-conducted newspaper, which some denominate gossip; and again, there is a demand for light reading matter to the exclusion of all other. ”

“ What a newspaper needs in its news, in its headlines, and on its editorial page is terseness, humor, descriptive power, satire, originality, good literary style, clever condensation, and accuracy, accuracy, accuracy! ”

“ Thus, journalism per se has done little for the cause of American reviewing, and directly or indirectly it has done much harm, if only by encouraging publishers who found no competent discussions of their wares to set up their own critics, who poured out through the columns of an easy press commendations of the new books which were often most intelligent, but never unbiased. ”

“ A complete newspaper contains more than this; but it ranks in the world of journalism exactly in the degree to which it does this. The grand object of the true journalist is to be fullest, promptest, and most correct on the one uppermost topic of the hour. That secured, he may neglect all else. The paper that does this oftenest is the paper that will find most purchasers; and no general excellence, no array of information on minor or special topics, will ever atone for a deficiency on the subject of most immediate and universal interest. ”