1.53. REPORTERS.
The following paragraph is going the rounds:—"How many a great man is now basking in the sunshine of fame generously bestowed upon him by the prolific genius of some reporter! How many stupid orations have been made brilliant, how many wandering, pointless, objectless, speeches put in form and rendered at least readable, by the unknown reporter! How many a disheartened speaker, who was conscious the night before of a failure, before a thin, cold, spiritless audience, awakes delighted to learn that he has addressed an overwhelming assemblage of his enthusiastic, appreciating fellow-citizens, to find his speech sparkling with 'cheers,' breaking out into 'immense applause,' and concluding amidst 'the wildest excitement!'"
There is considerable truth in the above, we are sorry to state. Reporters are too apt to smooth over and give a fair face to the stupidity and bombast of political and other public humbugs. For this they are not only seldom thanked, but frequently are kicked. Of course this sort of thing is wrong. A Reporter should be independent enough to meet the approaches of gentlemen of the Nincompoop persuasion with a flat rebuff. He should never gloss over a political humbug, whether he belongs to "our side" or not. He is not thanked for doing it, and, furthermore, he loses the respect and confidence of his readers. There are many amiable gentlemen ornamenting the various walks of life, who are under the impression that for a dozen bad cigars or a few drinks of worse whisky they can purchase the "opinion" of almost any Reporter. It has been our pleasure on several occasions to disabuse those gentlemen of this impression.
Should another occasion of this kind ever offer, we feel that we should be "adequate" to treat it in a similar manner. A Reporter, we modestly submit, is as good as anybody, and ought to feel that he is, everywhere and at all times. For one, let us quietly and without any show of vanity remark, that we are not only just as good as anybody else, but a great deal better than many we know of. We love God and hate Indians: pay our debts; support the Constitution of the United States; go in for Progress, Sunshine, Calico, and other luxuries; are perfectly satisfied and happy, and wouldn't swop "sits" with the President, Louis Napoleon, the Emperor of China, Sultan of Turkey, Brigham Young, or Nicholas Longworth. Success to us!