As this change in the American newspaper came between 1860 and 1880, the public demand came for the vocational training of the journalist and experiments in obtaining it began. When Charles A. Dana bought the New York Sun in 1868, he made up his staff, managing editor, news editor, city editor, Albany correspondent and political man, from among the printers he had known on the New York Tribune. In ten years these were succeeded by college graduates, and the Sun became a paper whose writing staff, as a whole, had college training, nearly all men from the colleges.
College men were in American journalism from its early beginnings; but, speaking in a broad sense, the American newspaper drew most of its staff in the eighteenth century and in the first half of the nineteenth century from among men who had the rough but effective training of the composing room, with the common school as a beginning. When the high school developed from 1860 on, it began to furnish a large number of journalists, particularly in Philadelphia, where the Central High School manned many papers. By 1880, college men began to appear in a steadily growing proportion, so far as the general writing staff was concerned. If one counted the men at the top, they were in a small proportion. In journalism, as in all arts of expression, a special and supreme gift will probably always make up for lack of special training.
Between 1890 and 1900, the American newspaper as it is today was fairly launched, and Joseph Pulitzer, the ablest man in dealing with the journalism of and for the many, was the first conspicuous figure in the newspaper world to see that the time had come for the professional training of the journalist, the term he preferred to "newspaper men." Neither the calling nor the public were ready when he made his first proposal, and with singular nobility of soul and sad disappointment of heart he determined to pledge his great gift of $2,000,000, paying $1,000,000 of it to Columbia University before his death and providing that the School of Journalism, to which he furnished building and endowment, should be operated within a year after his death. This came October 29, 1911, and the school opened the following year.
Journalism today requires general and technical training
The discussion of the education of the journalist has been in progress for twoscore years. In 1870 Whitelaw Reid published his address on the "School of Journalism" and urged systematic training, for which in the bitter personal newspaper of the day he was ridiculed as "the young professor of journalism." In 1885, Mr. Charles E. Fitch, but just gone after long newspaper service, delivered a course of lectures on the training of the journalist, at Cornell University. Two years later Mr. Brainerd Smith, before and after of the New York Sun, then professor of elocution in the same university, began training in the work of the newspaper in his class in composition, sending out his class on assignments and outlining possible occurrences which the class wrote out. This experiment was abruptly closed by Mr. Henry W. Sage, Chairman of the Cornell Board of Trustees, because the newspapers of Minneapolis inclined to treat the university as important, chiefly because it taught "journalism." Mr. Fred Newton Scott, professor of rhetoric in the University of Michigan in 1893, began, with less newspaper notice, training in newspaper English, continuing to the present time his happy success in teaching style to his students.
In 1908, Mr. Walter Williams, for twenty-four years editor, first of the Boonville Advertiser, and then of the Columbia, Missouri, Herald, became dean of the first school of journalism opened in the same year by the University of Missouri. This example was followed under the direction of Willard G. Bleyer in the University of Wisconsin. By 1911, nearly a score of colleges, universities, and technical schools were giving courses in journalism.
By 1916, the directory of teachers of journalism compiled by Mr. Carl F. Getz, of the University of Ohio, showed 107 universities and colleges which gave courses in journalism, 28 state universities, 17 state colleges and schools of journalism, and 62 colleges, endowed, denominational, or municipal.
The teachers who offered courses in journalism numbered 127. Of these, 25 were in trade, industrial, and agricultural schools, their courses dealing with aspects of writing demanded in the fields to which the institution devoted its work. The number of students in all these institutions numbered about 5000. This gave about 1200 students a year, who had completed their studies and gone out with a degree recording college or technical work in which training in journalism played its part. With about 40,000 men and women who were "journalists" in the country at this time, there are probably—the estimate is little better than a guess—about 3000 posts becoming vacant each year, in all branches of periodical work, monthly, weekly, and daily.
The various training in journalism now offered stands ready to furnish a little less than half this demand. I judge it actually supplies yearly somewhat less than a fourth of the new men and women entering the calling, say about 750 in all. As in all professional schools, a number never enter the practice of the calling for which they are presumably prepared and still larger numbers leave it after a short trial. In addition, training for the work of the journalist opens the door to much publicity work, to some teaching, and to a wide range of business posts where writing is needed. No account also has been made here of the wide range of miscellaneous courses in advertising provided by universities, colleges and schools of journalism by advertising clubs, by private schools, and by teachers, local, lecturing and peripatetic. It will take at least ten years more before those who have systematic teaching in journalism will be numerous enough to color the life of the office of the magazine or newspaper, and a generation before they are in the majority.
Development of courses and schools of journalism