Chapter the Twenty-Seventh
The Profession of Journalism--Newspapers and Editors in
America--Bennett, Greeley and Raymond--Forney and Dana--The Education
of a Journalist
I
The American newspaper has had, even in my time, three separate and
distinct epochs; the thick-and-thin, more or less servile party organ; the
personal, one-man-controlled, rather blatant and would-be independent; and
the timorous, corporation, or family-owned billboard of such news as the
ever-increasing censorship of a constantly centralizing Federal Government
will allow.
This latter appears to be its present state. Neither its individuality nor
its self-exploitation, scarcely its grandiose pretension, remains. There
continues to be printed in large type an amount of shallow stuff that would
not be missed if it were omitted altogether. But, except as a bulletin of
yesterday's doings, limited, the daily newspaper counts for little, the
single advantage of the editor--in case there is an editor--that is, one
clothed with supervising authority who "edits"--being that he reaches the
public with his lucubrations first, the sanctity that once hedged the
editorial "we" long since departed.
The editor dies, even as the actor, and leaves no copy. Editorial
reputations have been as ephemeral as the publications which gave them
contemporary importance. Without going as far back as the Freneaus and
the Callenders, who recalls the names of Mordecai Mannasseh Noah, of Edwin
Crosswell and of James Watson Webb? In their day and generation they were
influential and distinguished journalists.
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