The others were men of all work, writing and fighting
their way to the front, but possessing the "nose for news," using the
Bennett formula and rescript as the basis of their serious efforts, and
never losing sight of it. Forney had been a printer. Medill and Storey were
caught young by the lure of printer's ink. Bowles was born and reared
in the office of the Springfield Republican, founded by his father, and
Halstead, a cross betwixt a pack horse and a race horse, was broken to
harness before he was out of his teens.
Assuming journalism, equally with medicine and law, to be a profession,
it is the only profession in which versatility is not a disadvantage.
Specialism at the bar, or by the bedside, leads to perfection and
attains results. The great doctor is the great surgeon or the great
prescriptionist--he cannot be great in both--and the great lawyer is rarely
great, if ever, as counselor and orator.
[Illustration: Henry Watterson--From a painting by Louis Mark in the
Manhattan Club, New York]
The great editor is by no means the great writer. But he ought to be able
to write and must be a judge of writing. The newspaper office is a little
kingdom. The great editor needs to know and does know every range of it
between the editorial room, the composing room and the pressroom. He must
hold well in hand everybody and every function, having risen, as it were,
step-by-step from the ground floor to the roof. He should be level-headed,
yet impressionable; sympathetic, yet self-possessed; able quickly to sift,
detect and discriminate; of various knowledge, experience and interest; the
cackle of the adjacent barnyard the noise of the world to his eager mind
and pliant ear.
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