I am aware that these things are elementary—exceedingly elementary, but they are of utmost import to young newspaper writers. Slovenly, disjointed, confused diction must retard your progress.
It was constant study that made Dana and Greeley the great journalists that they were. Neither of them wasted a minute. If at the close of the day’s work Dana’s final proof sheet was promised to him in seven minutes he withdrew from the little revolving book-rack on his desk a copy of the Greek Testament and utilized the seven minutes by reading it. Never was a question of fact raised but he joined in the search for the truth of it in the most enthusiastic manner. His zeal and his interest were a source of inspiration to the staff. With him study was the key to every problem.
When in 1880 he asked me to be the managing editor of the Sun, the answer was:
“Mr. Dana, I do not know enough to be your managing editor.”
“What do you mean by that?” was his question.
“I mean that the managing editor of your newspaper should have wide, extensive, general information. I know very little about politics, or finance, or art, for instance. A managing editor should have expert knowledge of them.”
“What is the objection to your devoting a little time each day to the study of these things in which you feel yourself deficient,” was Mr. Dana’s calm reply. “I did not know so much about them myself, when I first came to the city as I do to-day.”
I now appreciate that whatever progress I afterward made in the business came largely from this suggestion; and I feel like passing it along to the young man who aspires to newspaper honors. How true it is that to achieve you must study to the limit of your resources; you must think to the limit of your intelligence; you must strive to the limit of your endurance—then you have done your best and that marks the measure of your success.
Study—persistent, laborious, intelligent study—is the key to success in writing. Occasionally a genius startles the public with a spontaneous facility for the use of words and sentences, but the other nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine of us newspaper plodders must achieve our purposes by the hardest kind of hard work. We must study the derivation of words, the varied uses of words. And if we are to keep up with these snappy times we must hunt for strong masculine nouns, and rapid-fire verbs, and staccato adjectives, and sudden adverbs. Almost always we can find a better word than the one that first suggests itself, if we hunt for it. Almost always we may shorten and simplify a sentence if we study it.
The word spoken may be forgotten. The word written stands for all time. The orator may move his hearers by eloquence, by gesture, by facial expression, by the tricks of public speaking, even though his actual words be feeble or not well chosen, or his conclusions be not convincing. His words may be forgotten—certainly will not be remembered unless preserved—but they have been reinforced by his arts of eloquence, maybe by his audacity of speech, by his personality, and the net result is favorable. The orator’s bluff may at times serve him well, but the words of the writer must stand on their own merit for all time. Type inspires little emotion. There are few typographical tricks that cause heart-flutter or mental spasm. Just plain words alone—words, words, words, nearly every one of which is already familiar to the reader, must make the writer’s success or failure. How important that every word be studied.