CHESTNUT-BURR XXXVIII—A SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM.
An Important Movement.—The Requirements of a True Journalist.—Hold He Should be Educated.—The Journalist at the Age of 95.
A number of friends having personally asked me to express an opinion upon the matter of an established school of journalism, as spoken of by ex-Mayor Henry C. Robinson, of Hartford, Conn., and many more through the West, who are strangers to me personally, having written me to give my views upon the subject. I have consented in so far that I will undertake a simple synopsis of what the course should embrace.
I most heartily indorse the movement, if it may be called such at this early stage. Knowing a little of the intricacies of this branch of the profession, I am going to state fully my belief as to its importance, and the necessity for a thorough training upon it. We meet almost everywhere newspaper men who are totally unfitted for the high office of public educators through the all-powerful press. The woods is full of them. We know that not one out of a thousand of those who are to-day classed as journalists is fit for that position.
I know that to be the case, because people tell me so. I cannot call to mind to-day, in all my wide journalistic acquaintance, a solitary man who has not been pronounced an ass by one or more of my fellow-men. This is indeed a terrible state of affairs.
In many instances these harsh criticisms are made by those who do not know, without submitting themselves to a tremendous mental strain, the difference between a "lower case" q and the old Calvinistic doctrine of unanimous damnation, but that makes no difference; the true journalist should strive to please the masses. He should make his whole life a study of human nature and an earnest effort to serve the great reading world collectively and individually.
This requires a man, of course, with similar characteristics and the same general information possessed by the Almighty, but who would be willing to work at a much more moderate salary.
The reader will instantly see how difficult it is to obtain this class of men. Outside of the mental giant who writes these lines and two or three others, perhaps——