CONFESSIONS OF A PROVINCIAL EDITOR
BY PARACELSUS
There is something at once deliciously humorous and pathetic, to the editor of a small daily in the provinces, about that old-fashioned phrase, “the liberty of the press.” It is another one of those matters lying so near the marge-land of what is mirthful and what is sad that a tilt of the mood may slip it into either. To the general, doubtless, it is a truth so obvious that it is never questioned, a bequest from our forefathers that has paid no inheritance tax to time. In all the host of things insidiously un-American which have crept into our life, thank Heaven! say these unconscious Pharisees, the “press,” if somewhat freakish, has remained free. So it is served up as a toast at banquets, garnished with florid rhetoric; it is still heard from old-fashioned pulpits; it cannot die, even though the conditions which made the phrase possible have passed away.
The pooh-poohing of the elders, the scoffing of the experienced, has little effect upon a boy’s mind when it tries to do away with so palpable a truth as that concerning the inability of a chopped-up snake to die until sunset, or that matter-of-fact verity that devil’s darning needles have little aim in life save to sew up the ears of youths and maidens. So with that glib old fantasy, “America’s free and untrammeled press”: it needs a vast deal of argument to convince an older public that, as a matter to be accepted without a question, it has no right to exist. The conditioning clause was tacked on some years ago, doubtless when the old-time weekly began to expand into the modern small daily. The weekly was a periodic pamphlet; the daily disdained its inheritance, and subordinated the expression of opinion to the printing of those matters from which opinion is made. The cost of equipment of a daily newspaper, compared to the old-fashioned weekly, as a general thing makes necessary for the launching of such a venture a well-organized stock company, and in this lies much of the trouble.
Confessions imply previous wrong-doing. Mine, while they are personal enough, are really more interesting because of the vast number of others they incriminate. If two editors from lesser cities do not laugh in each other’s faces, after the example of Cicero’s augurs, it is because they are more modern, and choose to laugh behind each other’s backs. So, in turning state’s evidence, I feel less a coward than a reformer.
What circumstance has led me to believe concerning the newspaper situation in a hundred and one small cities of this country is so startling in its unexplained brevity, that I scarce dare parade it as a prelude to my confessions. So much of my experience is predicated upon it that I do not dare save it for a peroration. Here it is, then, somewhat more than half-truth, somewhat less than the truth itself: “A newspaper in a small city is not a legitimate business enterprise.” That seems bold and bare enough to stamp me as sensational, does it not? Hear, then, the story of my Herald, knowing that it is the story of other Heralds. The Herald’s story is mine, and my story, I dare say, is that of many others. To the facts, then. I speak with authority, being one of the scribes.