The American Newspaper | Page 7

do a great deal of good or a great deal of evil, and he,
should be held and judged by his opportunity: it is greater than that of
the preacher, the teacher, the congressman, the physician. He occupies
the loftiest pulpit; he is in his teacher's desk seven days in the week; his
voice can be heard farther than that of the most lusty fog-horn
politician; and often, I am sorry to say, his columns outshine the
shelves of the druggist in display of proprietary medicines. Nothing
else ever invented has the public attention as the newspaper has, or is
an influence so constant and universal. It is this large opportunity that
has given the impression that the newspaper is a public rather than a
private enterprise.
It was a nebulous but suggestive remark that the newspaper occupies
the borderland between literature and common sense. Literature it

certainly is not, and in the popular apprehension it seems often too
erratic and variable to be credited with the balance-wheel of sense; but
it must have something of the charm of the one, and the steadiness and
sagacity of the other, or it will fail to please. The model editor, I
believe, has yet to appear. Notwithstanding the traditional reputation of
certain editors in the past, they could not be called great editors by our
standards; for the elements of modern journalism did not exist in their
time. The old newspaper was a broadside of stale news, with a moral
essay attached. Perhaps Benjamin Franklin, with our facilities, would
have been very near the ideal editor. There was nothing he did not wish
to know; and no one excelled him in the ability to communicate what
he found out to the average mind. He came as near as anybody ever did
to marrying common sense to literature: he had it in him to make it
sufficient for journalistic purposes. He was what somebody said
Carlyle was, and what the American editor ought to be,--a vernacular
man.
The assertion has been made recently, publicly, and with evidence
adduced, that the American newspaper is the best in the world. It is like
the assertion that the American government is the best in the world; no
doubt it is, for the American people.
Judged by broad standards, it may safely be admitted that the American
newspaper is susceptible of some improvement, and that it has
something to learn from the journals of other nations. We shall be
better employed in correcting its weaknesses than in complacently
contemplating its excellences.
Let us examine it in its three departments already named,--its news,
editorials, and miscellaneous reading-matter.
In particularity and comprehensiveness of news-collecting, it may be
admitted that the American newspapers for a time led the world. I mean
in the picking-up of local intelligence, and the use of the telegraph to
make it general. And with this arose the odd notion that news is made
important by the mere fact of its rapid transmission over the wire. The
English journals followed, speedily overtook, and some of the
wealthier ones perhaps surpassed, the American in the use of the
telegraph, and in the presentation of some sorts of local news; not of
casualties, and small city and neighborhood events, and social gossip
(until very recently), but certainly in the business of the law courts, and

the crimes and mishaps that come within police and legal supervision.
The leading papers of the German press, though strong in
correspondence and in discussion of affairs, are far less comprehensive
in their news than the American or the English. The French journals,
we are accustomed to say, are not newspapers at all. And this is true as
we use the word. Until recently, nothing has been of importance to the
Frenchman except himself; and what happened outside of France, not
directly affecting his glory, his profit, or his pleasure, did not interest
him: hence, one could nowhere so securely intrench himself against the
news of the world as behind the barricade of the Paris journals. But let
us not make a mistake in this matter. We may have more to learn from
the Paris journals than from any others. If they do not give what we call
news-- local news, events, casualties, the happenings of the day,--they
do give ideas, opinions; they do discuss politics, the social drift; they
give the intellectual ferment of Paris; they supply the material that Paris
likes to talk over, the badinage of the boulevard, the wit of the salon,
the sensation of the stage, the new movement in literature and in
politics. This may be important, or it may be trivial: it is commonly
more interesting than much of that which we call news.
Our very facility and enterprise in news-gathering have overwhelmed
our newspapers, and it may