The village editor’s task is not easy. He writes almost all of the edition and conducts the business end as well. His editorial page may reflect his fancy for little or much comment, but he naturally will have one article in each edition on a subject of national importance and two or three relating to community interests. He will compile from the daily sheets a column or two of the most important news of the world and will clip from the exchanges interesting miscellaneous matter, paragraphs and articles. He will encourage his readers to write letters to the editor for publication, and these he will revise and prepare. He will have a news correspondent in every neighboring hamlet, and this news must be revised and made ready to print. His neighborhood news is of vital importance for his villagers know almost all of the inhabitants for miles around.
But his chief task is to be found in the collecting and writing of so-called local news. The very life of his sheet depends on this information. To gather it involves constant, painstaking toil. He has to hunt for it, has to mingle with the people in the search for it. The measure of his success as an editor may be found in his ability to recognize what is news and what is not. This is an editorial accomplishment that may be enriched by study and observation. Let him seek to know what will interest his reader, what his constituents are thinking about and especially what he can print that will set them to talking. To make the paper interesting, to make it talked about, should be his constant anxiety.
The mission of the village sheet is to amuse, to gossip, to reflect community life rather than to educate. The editor lives in close intimacy with his people and if he be wise he will assume the attitude of making their interests his interests. He will make elaborately long accounts of their public meetings, the social gatherings, the ball games, the school contests, the things the people do. His constituents may know of world-wide events from the city papers but they cannot read about themselves anywhere else than in his paper. Thousands of Americans never see their name in print except perchance in the village newspaper and they are grateful, indeed, to see it there.
The village newspaper should not seek to imitate the city sheet. Its editor should devote his energies to the rural needs and the rural activities of his five thousand or ten thousand constituents. Let them get their outside information from the city dailies or the periodical press.
And our provincial editor’s acute temptation will be to imitate—to make his sheet like his neighbor’s sheet. He will be tempted to save time and study by stealing the thoughts of others. He wants a leading editorial article. What so easy as to rewrite one from the columns of a distant daily changing not the form of construction or the argument or the conclusion—changing nothing but the wording. This is a common practice of the lazy editor. I hope to be forgiven for so constantly referring to it as a repressive influence, as a serious detriment to the progress of American journalism. It easily becomes a habit. Its practice is alluring for, if it produces a more thoughtful article than the editor is capable of writing, the people praise it thus giving to the editor the most subtle of all flattery, the flattery that is undeserved, the flattery that attributes to a man something he does not possess. The editor enjoys it overmuch.
The village editor usually is deep in local politics. Quite as much as any one else does he help to name the town officers, the county rulers, the man to the legislature, the congressman. Frequently, indeed, he is called to these posts or to the higher honors of the State. He sits on governing boards and he is a delegate to all sorts of conventions. He is big in public affairs.
This kind of newspaper life is entirely different from that of the city. It is a life that may be made exceedingly attractive and that may be enjoyed to the uttermost because of its independence, its great influence, its close intimacy with the people and its opportunities for wholesome service. What the editor writes is read by everybody, the children as well, and we all know how a child is influenced by what it reads.
Some one has said of the village editor: “He comes pretty near being the boss of the entire town.”