The Young Man and Journalism

by Chester Sanders Lord

The personality of the general writers for the press in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, is known to a few of their associates only—is unknown to the general public. Indeed, it would puzzle even newspaper men to name the editors in chief and the managing editors of the morning and afternoon sheets in New York City, although many of them, of course, are known to almost everybody.

In the small cities, and especially in the villages, these conditions are in exact reverse. The editor owns his newspaper. He is known personally or by reputation to almost every member of the community. He may write as he pleases on any topic, about anything, about anybody. He may praise his friends or lambaste his enemies; may be brilliantly original or stupidly conservative or hopelessly imitative. He is of great community influence and importance. Not even the village clergyman is more so. He is made much of at all gatherings and is welcomed wherever he goes. The huntsman brings him bags of game; the gardener refreshes him with the earliest tender vegetables; his table is spread with the choicest of juicy fruits.

The writers for the big newspapers discourse on topics of national importance—topics that are supposed to interest the masses. Rarely do they write about people they know or have met unless they are doing reportorial work. The village editor busies himself chiefly with matters of concern to his community alone. His references to national topics may be few. Of his own people he may write with a sympathetic personal interest born of close contact with them, with knowledge of their whims, their excellences, their deficiencies, and their wants. His purpose is to interest them. He knows that they are more interested in themselves and in each other than in anything else.

A considerable proportion of village folks and farmers now take a daily paper from the nearest city of size. This daily sheet covers national and world-wide topics so completely that the weekly cannot compete with it advantageously in these lines. But the daily sheet cannot compete with the weekly in the printing of those delicious little intimacies of village life that most of all do interest the villager. The oft repeated assertion that the daily newspaper is running out the weekly is untrue.

If the village editor chooses to do so he may achieve a supremely satisfying influence. He is the spokesman of the community, voicing its sentiments, explaining its needs, defending its rights. He may render it extreme service by appealing to outside interests in praise of its enterprises, its attractions, its prosperity. He may assist it immeasurably by helping to organize and sustain its protective associations, its commercial leagues, its welfare organizations, study clubs and charity circles. He may encourage community pride. If he praises Deacon Stevenson for the beauty of his lawn and floral effects the deacon’s neighbors are sure to make rival lawns. The editor may urge to clean village morals as well as to clean streets and tidy door yards. He may create public sentiment and ripen patriotic spirit and be the moral and the intellectual force of the region. He may lead in all things.

The village editor may make himself beloved by his people. His relation to them is that of close intimacy. He may print the good things they say, may reproduce their ideas as well as describe their doings. He records the important events of their lives, the details of their successes, the parts they take in public affairs.

He welcomes the babies as they are born and wishes them their full share of all the good things this Jolly Old Earth has to give. He joins in congratulations, felicitations and joyful vociferations to bewildered brides and grinning bridegrooms. And when the hand of death is laid, he reverently and tenderly recalls that the summons must come to all sometime; and he sorrows and grieves with those on whom affliction has fallen.

The city newspaper is heartless when domestic scandals or business irregularities are under public consideration. It has no thought of lessening personal sorrow. The country editor reasons something like this: “I do not pretend to print all the news of this community. My readers are all known to me and are personal friends. They help me in my business. Why should I print stuff that will give them pain or sorrow? I am under no obligation to print anything about anybody. My newspaper is conducted as a business proposition. I am responsible for what it says and it is not any one’s business what I print. I am personally interested in community interests and I wish to advance them always; but I do not care to mix in my people’s personal quarrels or their domestic affairs unless community interests are involved. Why should I? Some people seem to think that I should print everything about everybody—except themselves. There is a certain element in every community that rejoices in other people’s discomfiture and I do not wish to cater to that feeling.”

Not only does every one in the community read the community paper, but every young man and every young woman brought up there subscribe for it when going to live elsewhere. It comes as an intimate letter from the old home, and nothing can be too trivial or too unimportant to interest them so long as it relates to somebody or something they have known in the days of their youth—the bursting of the old dam, the fall of the old chimney, the burning of the old academy, or of the old mill, the marriages, the deaths, the activities of former playmates in political, business or social life, anything pertaining to the old home town, anything that recalls the scenes of childhood, the memories of youth—all are of absorbing interest.