The interest which belongs to newspapers, as arenas for discussion and records of fact, is greatly marred by the abuses of the press. No more humiliating exhibition of human passion can be imagined than printed scurrility; and no meaner or more contemptible influence of skulking treachery than anonymous libels. By what anomaly base spirits enact and endure insult in this form, which public opinion and the faintest self-respect compel them to resent when orally uttered, we have never been able to explain. It is, however, a satire on the alleged freedom we enjoy in this country, that any malicious poltroon, who has the means to purchase types, may defame the character, and thereby injure the prosperity, of any one towards whom he entertains a grudge, with comparative impunity. Indeed, if a man comes before the public in any shape, even in that of a benefactor, he is liable to gross personal attacks from the press; here the shafts of envy, of party hatred, of blackguardism and of detraction, find a covert whence they may be sped with deadly aim and little or no chance of punishment. To realize at once the moral grandeur and the degrading abuse of which the press is capable, one should read Milton’s discourse on the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, and then a history of cases under the law of libel. The choice of weapons is allowed his enemy even by the inveterate duellist; but there is this essential dishonour in the attacks of the practised writer—that he adroitly uses an instrument which his antagonist often cannot wield. Thus the laws of honourable warfare are basely set aside; and cowardice often wins an ostensible triumph. The meanest threat we ever heard was that of a popular author towards a spirited and generous but uneducated farmer with whom he was in altercation, and who proposed a resort to arms:—‘I hold a pen that shall point the world’s finger of scorn at you!’ The cheapest abuse is that which can be poured out in newspapers; and besides the comparatively defenceless position of the assailed, if he have no skill in pencraft, it is the more contemptible because premeditated; the insulting word may be uttered in the heat of rage, but the slanderous paragraph goes through the process of writing and printing;—it is, therefore, the result of a deliberate act. The ‘scar of wrath’ left on the heart by the partisan combats of the press is seldom honourable, and the records of duels, persecutions, and street-fights, originating in libels, is one of the most degrading, to all concerned, of any in social history. Vituperation and invective, Billingsgate and the cant nicknames of newspaper controversy, belong to the most unredeemed species of blackguardism. No wounds rankle in the human bosom like those inflicted by the press; and no agent of redress should be used with such thorough observance of the golden rule. ‘The French,’ says Matthew Arnold, ‘talk of the “brutalité des journaux Anglais.” What strikes them comes from the necessary inherent tendencies of newspaper writing not being checked in England by any centre of intelligent and urbane spirit, but rather stimulated by coming in contact with a provincial spirit.’
From these various capabilities and liabilities of journalism we may infer what are the requisites of an editor. It is obvious that his intellectual equipment should be more versatile and complete than that demanded by any other profession. He is to interpret the events of the day, and must, of course, be versed in the history of the past; he is to speak a universal language, and the gifts of expression must be his chief endowment; he exercises a mighty influence, and, therefore, judgment, self-respect, a recognition of rights and duties, and a benevolent impulse are essential. The juste milieu between moral courage and respect for public sentiment should be his goal. It is a significant fact that, in this country, where there are more readers than in any other, and, at the same time, entire freedom of the press, journals have not attained to the intellectual standard of the best of foreign origin, nor has the profession of an editor reached the rank it has in Europe. With a few exceptions, the vocation has been adopted, as school-keeping used to be, as the most available resource. Cleverness has usually been the substitute for acquirement; loyalty to some dogma for philosophy, and glib phrases and cant terms for style. In some memorable cases, where the London system of a division of labour is resorted to, and the French practice of careful rhetoric and reasoning applied to current topics, the result has approximated to what a leading journal should be. Such names as Franklin, Russell, Thomas, Duane, Buckingham, Walsh, Gales, Noah, King, Hoffman, and the eminent contemporary editors of America, bear, it must be remembered, but a very small proportion to the sum total of newspapers published in this country; and it is the average ability and character of editors to which we refer. Yet familiarity alone blinds us to the ‘extraordinary talent’ exhibited in the journalism of our times. ‘I’ll be shot,’ says Christopher North to the shepherd, ‘if Junius, were he alive now, would set the world on the rave as he did some half century ago.’
The rarest and most needful moral quality in an editor is magnanimity. Of all vocations this is the one with which narrow motives and exclusive points of view are most incompatible. It is true that the office is self-imposed; but in its very nature is included a comprehensive tone of mind and feeling; the editor, therefore, who pronounces judgment upon a book, a work of art, a public man, or popular subject, according to his personal animosities or selfish interests, annuls his own claim to the position he occupies. If the pulpit, the medical chair, the justice’s bench, or the authority of elective office is exclusively used by an individual for direct personal ends, for the exclusive emolument of friends, or the gratification of private revenge, the perversion is resented at once and indignantly by public opinion; and the same violation of a general principle for a particular end is equally unjustifiable in the press. Yet how many journals serve but as channels for the prejudices, the likes and dislikes, the plans and whims of their editors; so that at last we recognize them, not as broad and reliable expositors of great questions and critical taste, but as mouthpieces for the spite, the flattery, and the ambition of a single vain mortal! For such evils Milton’s arguments, for patient toleration of all kinds of printed ideas, are the best remedy: ‘Punishing wits,’ he says, ‘enhances their authority; errors known, read, and collated, are of main service toward the speedy attainment of what is truest; and though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength.’ With all its defects, therefore, the emanations of a free press are the best expositors of the immediate in taste, opinion, and affairs; and copies of The Times, the Court Journal, and Bell’s Life in London, deposited under the corner-stone of a modern English edifice, are as authentic memorials of the country and people as they exist to-day, as the styles of Grecian architecture, or the characteristics of Italian painting, of epochs in the history of art, and far more detailed, minute, and elaborate. The complex state of society, the multitudinous aspect of life, the progress of science, and its influence on social economy, can indeed only be designated by such a versatile record. The miserable little gazzettas issued in the south of Europe, containing only the diluted news of the French journals; the spirited feuilletons of the cleverest authors of the day that appear in the latter, the enormous advertising sheets in this country, and the able rhetoric and argument of the daily press in Great Britain, are so many landmarks and gauges of the civic life, the mental recreations, the prosperity, and the political intelligence of these different countries. Although Fanny Kemble snubbed the press-gang, ironically so called,—perhaps in this age there is no office capable of a higher ideal standard and a more practical efficiency combined, as that of the public writer. Let us suppose such a man endowed with the greatest faculty of expression, learned in history and the arts, with philosophic insight and poetical sensibility, chivalric in tone, uniting the principles of conservatism and reform, devoted to humanity, generous, heroic, independent, and ‘clear in his great office;’ and thus furnished and inspired, waging the battle of honest opinion, a staunch advocate of truth, stripping the mask from fanaticism and dishonesty, and shedding pure intellectual light on the common mind;—no more noble function can be imagined. Seldom, however, is the ideal of an editor even approached; and hence the wisdom of an eclectic system and a division of labour; concentrating upon the same journal the humour of one, the statistical researches of another, the learning of a third, and the rhetoric of a fourth, until all the needful elements are brought into action for a common result.
In periods of war, emigration, or catastrophes of any kind, the newspaper becomes a chart of destiny to the heart, and is seized with overwhelming anxiety to learn the fate of the absent and the loved; and, in times of peace and comfort, it is the readiest pastime. What traveller does not remember with zest the intervals of leisure he has spent, under the trees of the Palais Royal, over a fresh gazette; or the eagerness with which, in an Italian café, he has devoured Galignani with his breakfast? It is difficult to imagine how the social reforms that distinguish the age could have been realized without the aid of newspapers; or by what other means popular sympathy could be kindled simultaneously on both sides of the globe. In view of such offices, we must regard the editor as a species of modern improvisatore, who gathers from clubs, theatres, legislative halls, private society, and the streets, the idea and the elemental spirit of the hour, the topic of the day, the moral influence born of passing events, and then concentrates and elaborates it to give forth its vital principles and absolute significance.
As a medium of controversy, the advantages of the newspaper are signal. In 1685, the discussion of popery in England was carried on by means of tracts issued from the presses of Oxford, Cambridge, and London; and some of the pamphlets of Defoe, Steele, and other popular writers, had a large sale; but the circulation of these vehicles of argument was limited compared to the daily journals of our day; and in order to reach the people, controversialist and agreeable essayists, from the times of ‘Sir Roger L’Estrange’ to that of ‘O. P. Q.,’ have wisely availed themselves of newspapers. That they now aid rather than form public opinion, however, is quite obvious. The implicit faith once bestowed upon editors has departed; and no class are more pertinacious in asserting the right of private judgment than habitual readers of journals; they derive from them materials of discussion rather than positive inferences. Yet there are two qualities that in Great Britain and America gain an editor permanent admirers—good sense and an individual style. The thunder, as Carlyle calls it, of Edward Sterling in the London Times, and the plain words of Cobbett, are instances. In fact, the same qualities insure consideration for a newspaper as for an individual; tone, manliness, grace or vigour, full and free knowledge, wit and fancy, and the sincerity or geniality of the editor’s character, are not less recognized in his paragraphs than in his behaviour. But as a general rule, as before suggested, in the United States, the press is the expositor, not the herald, of opinion; the newspapers simply mark the level of popular feeling; their criticism seldom transcends the existent taste, and their tone is rarely elevated above that of the majority. Between the radical and the conservative there appears no medium; and newspapers symbolize these two extremes. In our large cities there is always one newspaper which has a name for respectability, of which its editors are extremely jealous; it never startles, offends, or inspires, but pursues an even, unexceptionable course, is praised by old people who have taken it for years, and desire that it shall contain their obituary; its news, however, is usually stale, its opinions timid, and its spirit behind the age. To represent the opposite element, there is always a vigorous, speculative, and fresh-toned newspaper, which continually utters startling things, and suggests glorious impossibilities; it is the exponent of reform, a harbinger of better times, and appeals to hope and fancy, rather than to memory and reflection. Now the experienced reader will at once perceive that an editor, worthy the name, should be an eclectic, and combine in his own mind and work the expression of both these extremes of opinion and sentiment; but it is found, by experiment, that a hobby is the means of temporary success,—that a catholic temper is unappreciated, and that, in a republic, combativeness and self-esteem are the organs to be most profitably addressed.
There is a very large class whose reading is confined to newspapers, and they manifest the wisdom of Pope’s maxim about the danger of a little learning. Adopting the cant and slang phrases of the hour, and satisfied with the hasty conjectures and partial glimpses of truth that diurnal journals usually contain, they are at once superficial and dogmatic, full of fragmentary ideas and oracular commonplace. If such is the natural effect upon an undisciplined mind of exclusive newspaper reading, even the scholar, the thinker, and the man of refined taste is exposed to mental dissipation from the same cause. A celebrated French philosopher, recently deceased, remarkable for severe and efficient mental labour, told an American friend that he had not read a newspaper for four years. It is incalculable what productiveness of mind and freshness of conception is lost to the cultivated intellect by the habit of beginning the day with newspapers. The brain, refreshed by sleep, is prepared to act genially in the morning hours; and a statistical table, prepared by an able physiologist, shows that those authors who give this period to labour, most frequently attain longevity. Scott is a memorable example of the healthfulness and efficiency attending the practice. If, therefore, the student, the man of science, or the author dissipates his mental vigour, and the nervous energy induced by a night’s repose, in skimming over the countless topics of a newspaper, he is too much in relation with things in general to concentrate easily his thoughts: his mind has been diverted, and his sympathies too variously excited, to readily gather around a special theme. Those intent upon self-culture, or intellectual results, should, therefore, make this kind of reading a pastime, and resort to it in the intervals of more consecutive thought. There is no element of civilization that debauches the mind of our age more than the indiscriminate and exclusive perusal of newspapers. Only by consulting history, by disciplining the reasoning powers in the study of philosophy, and cherishing a true sense of the beautiful by communion with the poets,—in a word, only by habitual reference to standard literature, can we justly estimate the record of the hour. There must be great examples in the mind, great principles of judgment and taste, or the immediate appeal to these qualities is ignorantly answered; whereas, the thoughtful, intelligent comments of an educated reader of journals upon the questions they discuss, the precedents he brings in view, and the facts of the past to which he refers, place the immediate in relation with the universal, and enable us to seize upon essential truth. To depend for mental recreation upon newspapers is a desperate resource; not to consult them is to linger behind the age. De Tocqueville has shown that devotion to the immediate is characteristic of republics; and this tendency is manifest in the prevalence of newspapers in the United States. They, in a great measure, supersede the demand for a more permanent native literature; they foster a taste for ephemeral topics and modes of thought, and lamentably absorb, in casual efforts, gifts and graces of mind which, under a different order of things, would have attained not only a higher, but a lasting development. The comparative importance of newspapers among us, as materials of history, is evidenced by the fact that the constant reference to their files has induced the historical societies to propose an elaborate index to facilitate the labours of inquirers, which has been felicitously called a diving-bell for the sea of print. A list of the various journals now in existence would be found to include not only every political party and religious sect in the country, but every theory of life, every science, profession, and taste, from phrenology to dietetics, and from medicine, war, and odd-fellowship, to literature, catholicism, and sporting. Tribunals and punsters, not less than fashion and chess-players, have their printed organ. What was a subordinate element, has become an exclusive feature. ‘In those days,’ writes Lamb, ‘every morning-paper, as an essential retainer to its establishment, kept an author who was bound to furnish daily a quantum of witty paragraphs at sixpence a joke.’ Now Punch and Charivari monopolize the fun, and grave and gay are separately embodied. The cosmopolitan nature of the people would as obviously appear in the number of journals issued in foreign languages, each nation and tribe having its newspaper organ; and an analysis of the contents, even of one popular journal for a single year, would be found to touch the entire circle of human knowledge and vicissitude, without penetrating to a vital cause, or expanding to a comprehensive principle, yet affording a boundless horizon;—astronomical phenomena, causes célèbres, earthquakes, the advent of a great cantatrice, shipwrecks and revolutions, battles and bankruptcies, freshets and fires, émeutes and hailstorms, gold discoveries, anniversaries, executions, Arctic expeditions, World’s Fairs, the utterance of patriots, and the acts of usurpers; all the materials of history, the suggestions of philosophy, and the visions of poetry, in their chaotic, elemental, and actual state. It is evident that more excitement than truth, more food for curiosity than aid to reflection, more vague knowledge than actual wisdom, is thus promulgated and preserved. The harvest of the immediate is comparatively barren; and life only proves the truth of Dr. Johnson’s association of intellectual dignity with the past and future. The individual, to be true to himself, must take a firm stand against the encroachments of this restless, temporary, and absorbing life of the moment represented by the newspaper; he must cleave to Memory and Hope; he must look before and after, or his mind will be superficial in its activity, and fruitless in its growth.
There is no mechanical invention around which cluster such interesting associations as that of printing; the indirect agency of the press and of journalism is remarkable; and this is owing to the relation they bear to the world at large, and to personal improvement. The newspaper office has always been a nucleus for wits, politicians, and literati,—a nursery of local genius, and a school for knowledge of the world, and criticism. In Franklin’s autobiography, the natural effect of even a mechanical connection with the press is memorably unfolded; and scarcely a great name in modern history is unallied with some incident or activity connected with the daily press. Otis, Adams, Hancock, and Warren, used to meet at the office of the Boston Gazette, and write essays on colonial rights in its columns. Talleyrand and Louis Philippe frequented the sanctum of an editor in the same town, to read the Moniteur and discuss news. Chateaubriand first heard of the king’s flight from a stray newspaper picked up in a log hut in the backwoods of America; and it sent him back at once to the army of the Princes. Horne Tooke’s Diversions of Purley were written to beguile his imprisonment occasioned by a libel; and his trial resulted in making parliamentary reports legal. Hunt’s prison-life, for which he was indebted to his comments on the Prince-Regent in the Examiner, is the most charming episode in his memoirs; and some of the noblest flights of Erskine’s eloquence arose from the defence of those prosecuted for constructive treason based on the free expression of opinion in regard to public questions. Jefferson thought Freneau’s paper ‘prevented the Constitution from galloping into a monarchy;’ it was in the columns of a daily journal that Hamilton defended the proclamation of neutrality. It has been said that the most reliable history of the French Revolution, and wars of the Republic, could be gleaned from the pages of an American journal of the day, conducted by a man of political knowledge and military aptitude, who combined from various prejudiced foreign papers what he deemed an authentic narrative of each act in the drama; and it is certain that the best account of the massacre and the destruction of the tea—from which dates our Revolution—are to be found in the contemporary newspapers. Never was contemporary history so copiously and minutely written as in the newspaper annals of the war for the Union. In fact, the best history thereof has been compiled by an assiduous collator from current journalism. The history of censorship in Europe in modern times is the history of opinion, of freedom, and of society. We felt the despotism of the King of Naples in all its baseness, only when a writer of genius told us, with a sigh, that he had been driven to natural history as the only subject upon which he could expatiate in print without impediment. Thus we see how the fate of nations and the experience of individuals are associated with the press; and how its influence touches the whole circle of life,—evoking genius, kindling nations, informing fugitives, and alarming kings.
