J. D. Phillips and H. D. Orth
University of Wisconsin
XXVII
THE TEACHING OF JOURNALISM
The education of the journalist or newspaper man has been brought into being by the evolution of the newspaper during the last half century. Addison's Spectator two centuries ago counted almost wholly on the original and individual expression of opinion. It had nothing beyond a few advertisements. The news sheet of the day was as wholly personal, a billboard of news and advertisements with contributed opinion in signed articles. A century ago, nearly half the space in a daily went to such communications. In the four-page and the eight-page newspaper of sixty to eighty years ago, taking all forms of opinions,—leaders contributed, political correspondence from capitals, state and federal, and criticism,—about one fourth of the space went to utterance editorial in character. The news filled as much more, running to a larger or smaller share as advertisements varied. The news was little edited. The telegraph down to 1880 was taken, not as it came, but more nearly so than today. In an eight-page New York paper between 1865 and 1875, a news editor with one assistant and a city editor with one assistant easily handled city, telegraph, and other copy. None of it had the intensive treatment of today. It was not until 1875 that telegraph and news began to be sharply edited, the New York Sun and the Springfield Republican leading. Between 1875 and 1895, the daily paper doubled in size, and the Sunday paper quadrupled and quintupled. The relative share taken by editorial and critical matter remained about the same in amount, grew more varied in character, but dropped from 25 per cent of the total space in a four-page newspaper to 3 to 5 per cent in the dailies with sixteen to twenty pages, and the news required from three to five times as many persons to handle it. The circulation of individual papers in our large cities doubled and quadrupled, and the weekly expenditure of a New York paper rose from $10,000 a week to thrice that. These rough, general statements, varying with different newspapers as well as issue by issue in the same newspaper, represent a still greater change in the character of the subjects covered.
When the newspaper was issued in communities, of a simple organization, in production, transportation, and distribution, the newspaper had some advertising, some news, and personal expression of opinion—political-partisan for the most part, critical in small part. This opinion was chiefly, though even then not wholly, expressed by a single personality, sometimes dominant, able, unselfish, and in nature a social prophet, but in most instances weak, time-serving, and self-seeking, and partisan, with one eye on advertising, official preferred, and the other on profits, public office, and other contingent personal results.
In the complex society today, classified, stratified, organized, and differentiated, the newspaper is a complex representation of this life. The railroad is a far more important social agency than the stagecoach. It carries more people; it offers the community more; but the individual passenger counted for more in the eye of the traveling public in the stagecoach than today in the railroad train; but nobody would pretend to say that the railroad president was less important than the head of a stage line, Mr. A. J. Cassatt, President of the Pennsylvania Railroad and builder of its terminal, than John E. Reeside, the head of the express stage line from New York to Philadelphia, who beat all previous records in speed and stages.
The newspaper-complex, representing all society, still expressing the opinion of society, not merely on politics but on all the range of life, creating, developing, and modifying this opinion, publishes news which has been standardized by coöperative news-gathering associations, local, national, and international. In the daily of today "politics" is but a part and a decreasing part, and a world of new topics has come into pages which require technical skill, the well-equipped mind, a wide information, and knowledge of the condition of the newspaper. The early reporter who once gathered the city news and turned it in to be put into type and made up by the foreman,—often also, owner and publisher,—in a sheet as big as a pocket-handkerchief, is as far removed from the men who share in the big modern daily, as far as is the modern railroad man from the rough, tough individual proprietor and driver of the stagecoach, though the driver of the latter was often a most original character, and a well-known figure on the highway as railroad men are not.
Evolution of the profession of journalism