The Young Man and Journalism

by Chester Sanders Lord

Little change has been made in the appearance of the editorial page in the last fifty years. The make-up remains about the same, the most important article or “the leader” occupying first place, the other articles tapering off in the order of their supposed goodness or importance. Few new features are seen. The column or two of letters to the editor appear with the same regularity and in the same place as they did fifty years ago, written, as then, for the most part by persons who delight to see their names in print, who like to find fault or criticize, who seek to exploit a hobby or a precious project for reforming something. Nevertheless, many letters to the editor are of great value, informative, suggestive, original. Some of the newspaper controversies in which the public takes part are amusing and instructive. Many of the letters to the editor are written by the editor himself—an easy, convenient device for avoiding personal responsibility for the sentiment exploited.

The increase in the size of newspapers has been that more pages of news and department features may be added. The editorial page has remained unchanged. Indeed, instead of additional editorial articles following increase of the sheet’s size the tendency has been to print less comment. We have quadrupled the volume of space devoted to general news, to sports, to financial reports, but have actually lessened the number of columns carrying editorial articles.

But we note decided change in the editorial articles themselves, in the choice of topics for comment, in the character, the quality, the spirit of discussion, in the diction. The old time editorial page was devoted almost entirely to politics. It was the expression of a strongly partisan editor and was surcharged with vituperation and abuse of his personal and political enemies and of the opposition candidates. “You lie, you villain; and you know you lie” was one of the gentler forms of argument in common use. The ability of the enemy candidate and the quality of his political principles were treated with unfairness and contempt. This unfairness flavored news reports as well. I distinctly remember a meeting of three thousand howling, shouting, partisan lunatics alive with vim and bursting with enthusiasm all honestly interested in their cause; and they were described next morning by an opposition newspaper as a handful of silent, melancholy, dejected, drooling curiosity seekers and vagrants who had crawled into the hall to keep warm.

But the modern newspaper has ceased to be a rigid partisan organ. It is much more moderate of discussion. There is less acrimonious attack on public men, less political misrepresentation, less unfairness toward any opponent. Indeed, it is common enough nowadays for an editor to make a fair and honest presentation of the opposition argument before undertaking to demolish it. It always has been a question whether excessive vituperation and venomous attack have as much influence as temperate reasoning and the moderate expression of righteous conclusions. It is easy to call names—to call a man a thief or a liar—and the personal journalism of fifty years ago rang with such language. The editorial writing of to-day is moderation itself compared with the old time kind.

Even more conspicuous is the change in the choice of topics selected for editorial discussion. Politics dominated four-fifths of the old time page, day after day. The stirring events preceding and succeeding the Civil War aroused great interest in political principles and in political leadership. It was a continuous performance of political strife involving the issues of secession, the extension of slavery to the new states, the conduct of the war, and the multitude of complications and consequences attending reconstruction. The period between 1850 and 1870 was perhaps the most important politically in American history after the Revolution. The American editor was in his glory.

Just at that time the Victorian era of literature was at full growth. It was a literary age. We are living just now in a commercial age and commercialism engrosses public attention. It is changing our processes of thinking, changing our choice of editorial topics from political and literary topics to commercial topics, changing our diction from the smoothly flowing ornate sentences of the Victorian era to a blunter, more robust form of expression that tells what it wants to say in a staccato of fewest, shortest words.

Nevertheless, in the plain robust writing of the day we miss much of the pleasure of reading. In the everlasting hunt for fact, for practical information, there is less food for the imagination, less suggestion on which we may enlarge the imagination. Our thoughts are directed in mathematical lines, in practical directions. There is less of the sentimental.

Politics we must have with us always, but the routine politics of ordinary times do not especially interest the public. It is in the few months of a presidential campaign only that we find the American people approaching political excitement. An Edison test of political knowledge would bring many of us to grief. How many readers of these lines, for instance, can name the officers of their state chosen at the latest election, or can name the state’s delegation in Congress, or can give even the name of each member of the President’s cabinet and the post he occupies?

Always there must be love for good literature among the cultured, but the mass of the people care less for literature than they did fifty years ago when the literature of the Victorian period was uppermost in thought.